#i haven't written a lot but he's always being developed off screen anyway so | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ardenttheories · 4 years

Note

Hi! I haven't been reading HS2 because how the story was developing didn't really ispired me all that much, but how has it been mocking the fanbase and being against fans of Homestuck in your opionion?

In general, the writers have been incredibly antagonistic to the fanbase. They have outright stated several times that:

- We should be grateful for the fact that any content is being produced at all, despite is not actually asking for this

- We have no right to Homestuck as a piece, and that they will do everything to make sure that we understand this - despite, of course, the fact that Homestuck was so unique in its inception with the fact that it was written WITH the fandom

- We do not understand the core messages of Homestuck, even though they literally retconned several of those messgaes out of the fucking comic

We have been mocked for caring about the characters by the writers as well; Kate, especially, has belittled Tavros stans and claimed that Tavros is barely even a character, and has victim blamed him for as long as she’s been in the fandom. Apparently, Vriska has done nothing wrong, and a lot of her on-screen time is dedicated to explaining this - despite the fact that a lot of people are just outright fucking fed up with her.

I suppose, in that sense, that what I mean is: you’re allowed to like some characters, but you’re mocked for liking others. Case in point: the entirety of Gamzee’s appearance in the Epilogues and Homestuck^2 was just to mock the concept of redemption arcs as a whole, because apparently wanting a character to improve and get better is impossible.

(That’s not even beginning to get into the fact that Gamzee is an anti-black stereotype, and is even more heavily associated with drugs, pedophilia, and sexual assault than any other time in the comic.)

Criticism about the treatment of Jake was met with jokes of him being a cuckold. You know. A man who has been sexually objectified his whole life and in both timelines was put into positions where we was sexually assaulted or emotionally manipulated. But, no. Anyone who says that the blaise treatment of Jake’s trauma is disgusting gets met with belittling jokes where he’s treated as a cuck who should go back to his wife because hehe, a clown fucked her right under his nose!! It only got worse as more criticism came in. Apparently it’s gotten better - but it’s not actually been resolved at all.

This goes hand in hand with the fact that the writers have, at times, outright denied that men can be abuse survivors. I shouldn’t need to go into why that goes against a fanbase that has mentally ill and LGBT+ men who very often tend to associate with characters like Dave.

There’s also the fact that any actual criticism is met with outright hatred. If we tell the writers that they did something wrong or gross, they tell us to grow up, say that we don’t get the message, that we need to fuck off - and more often than not, put it all down to “shitty Twitter users being shitty”, rather than the actual fanbase being upset with their form of representation.

They made Jade - a cis woman - have a dog dick, and claim this to be actual representation. Their response to upset about it was hidden in Patreon comments, which they stated was that: we hate Jade because she’s “a woman” who “has sex”. Not, you know, the fact that she’s become a toxic wreck of a human being, associated with cheating and beastiality and forcing partners into relationships.

Additionally, the writers have made it so that Homestuck^2 is virtually impossible for some readers to read. Homestuck has always had triggering content, yes - but it’s always handled it in an acceptable and respectable manner. Or, at least not been so fucking blunt about it like they are in HS^2. It’s quite literally unsafe for people who have triggers because the content is just shoved in your face, made to be upsetting, made to hurt, because it’s meant to portray the “gritty reality of being an adult”. As if all it means to be an adult is infidelity, rape, abuse apologism, victim blaming, sexual assault, facism, and child abuse. They know that this content isn’t suitable for a fair portion of its fanbase. They’re doing it anyway.

Of course, what makes this worse is that there WERE trigger warnings on each chapter. We were warned, chapter by chapter, what we were going to see, so that people could decide if it was safe or not for them to read. Of course, then we had the “gall” to “complain” (read: we pointing out that they were handing serious triggers with an incredible amount of insensitivity), and they took the trigger warnings away, replacing them with a general trigger warning on their FAQ page (where people may not even look) and a bit of advice to have your friends read it first to decide if you can (ignoring the fact that friend groups tend to share trauma triggers because people group around people like them). So, basically, where once we at least had an IDEA of what could potentially trigger us - now we have no fucking clue.

They did that specifically to hurt us. They did that knowingly - knowing it would cause dissociation, panic attacks, and worse. They did this as “punishment” for us requesting that they treat things with a little more respect. This is about as against the fans as you can possibly get, in a physical sense.

In general, it’s also just very reader unfriendly; the heavy text focus is meant to replicate fanfiction, I know, but even Homestuck’s bigger text-heavy parts were surrounded by short panels and videos, or even games. This has none of that. It’s closed off the comic to people with attention defecit disorders and people with dyslexia (such as my boyfriend, who physically cannot read texts like that without extreme difficulty), and in general is just so fucking painful to read (especially for people with triggers, as mentioned before), that it is emotionally and mentally draining to go through.

There’s probably more, but that’s what I can think of off the top of my head now. It’s just very anti-fandom, and is mostly that because of the writers and their interactions with the fanbase - and their response to genuine criticism with more hurtful in-comic bullshit, as well as social media drama.

#homestuck^2 critical #ardenttheories #long post//#Anonymous

49 notes · View notes

itsclydebitches · 4 years

Note

I just read some of your meta about Ironwood and thought it was an excellent take. There's one thing I've been wondering, and I haven't worked my way through processing it yet. The Bees debated telling Ironwood The Secret - and ultimately went with a different secret when they reached out to Robyn. Do you think they made the choice to trust Robyn because Blake was able to relate to her more?

Hey there---and thank you!

Ultimately I think this is another example of something I’ve brought up a few times before. Namely that RWBY relies very heavily on viewer headcanons to make its writing cohesive, particularly when it comes to things like decisions and motivations. Rather than being explicit about why characters do what they do---which isn’t an issue of “show don’t tell” like some have claimed but rather the fact that characters rarely have nuanced conversations in which they work through and establish their thinking for the viewer---the writing just has the characters do the thing and then leaves it up to us to do the work of interpreting why. I use the term “headcanon” above because ultimately there’s very little textual evidence for any one individual’s interpretation (if any), which leaves the fandom making claims based in, again, interpretation rather than fact. Everything from “Ozpin is evil because he got Summer killed” (big impact) to “Oscar didn’t join the geist fight because he’s not strong enough yet” (little to no impact) gets thrown around like obvious, forgone conclusions even though the story itself doesn’t actually show/tell us that these are the answers to our questions (Why is Ozpin shady? Why is Oscar not included?).

That’s the trend and I think this moment is another excellent example of that. We can spin a headcanon that relating to Robyn is why Blake, and by extension Yang, chooses to help her... but we don’t see any evidence for that on screen. All Blake says is that, “ambushing a huntress who’s just trying to help isn’t an option I’m thrilled about choosing,” equating Robyn with every other hard choice she’s mentioned in the conversation, including telling lies to Ironwood and killing Adam. The story then goes onto have Yang orchestrating this whole thing: she raises the option of not stopping Robyn, she spills the secret to her, she admits as much to Ironwood, all of which, to me anyway, undermines the claim that this choice is based in Blake’s personal history. In the end there is no on-screen evidence to suggest that Blake is sympathetic towards Robyn specifically because they were both outlaws attempting to do good. We can make an assumption that this is why they helped... or we could make an assumption that it’s because Yang’s mother is also an outlaw and so she’s the one feeling sympathetic. Or because they’re both women and see her as a role model, identifying with her Happy Huntresses rhetoric. Or because they just hate Ironwood right now more than they hate her. Etc. etc. In the end every explanation has pretty much the same amount of evidence attached to it---none---relegating all to the realm of headcanon. Which is great for fun fandom activities, but makes for bad canonical storytelling.

In the end, the story simply never bothered to tell us why the girls are suddenly so loyal to a stranger. Why they trust her more than Ironwood. Why they’re willing to create another secret to keep when they were just bemoaning the fact that they had to keep secrets---all of which are very important motivations to establish given the repercussions of these choices. But the story just doesn’t do it. Instead, we’re shown the girls making this decision and then shown them standing by it with a shocking intensity, Yang yelling about how Robyn was always trustworthy, the narrative itself completely bypassing Elm’s question: you couldn’t know that so why did you think that? We’re not given an answer. And when a story fails to provide explanations most viewers are inclined to fill in the blanks for themselves. The story insists Ozpin is morally gray so he must have done something super horrific off screen, even though there’s no evidence for that. The story eliminates one of the core group members without explanation, so obviously the explanation must be that he’s not ready to fight, even though there’s evidence he is. The story has the girls make a huge decision without establishing their motivations, so obviously it must be because Blake identifies with Robyn. We instinctively search for those parallels and connections---both are outlaws trying to do good! There! That makes sense!---and apply them because the alternative is just that Rooster Teeth wrote a bad arc. Which, ultimately, is why a lot of people dislike my metas. Not just because we disagree from an ethical standpoint (which is fair) but because I try my hardest to work with the text. What are we actually told and what do we actually see on screen? How can I prove this based on canonical evidence, not just my personal and preferred interpretation? Meanwhile, others start viewing their headcanons and interpretations as canon---or they’re so obvious to them that it must be obvious to everyone else---so when I say, “Hey.... this didn’t actually happen” from their perspective I’m lying. It did happen because this interpretation makes so much sense to me and I like it. In a hypothetical scenario, this explanation might get super popular and spread thread like wildfire through the RWBY fandom, with fans talking about a theory like it’s basic fact:

“Rooster Teeth did such a good job with the Robyn arc. It makes so much sense that Blake would trust her, given their similar histories. Yang too I mean, remember how much she’s struggling coming to terms with her mom? Yang wants Robyn to succeed because she’s everything her mom isn’t. The better version of her. She’s lost that relationship, Blake is far from home, we had a whole volume of them mistrusting authority figures... they really need someone to look up to right now. Robyn is that figure. No wonder they’ll go to hell and back for her. Elm says she’s not trustworthy? Of course she is! Elm just doesn’t understand what Blake and Yang have been through. God, Rooster Teeth just has so much nuance going here...”

Those are the sort of posts you get and then no one wants to hear that Rooster Teeth didn’t actually do that work. You, the fan, did it for them, drawing connections, interpretations, depth, and nuance that simply doesn’t exist in the canon. In short, upholding the canon as having done more and thus being better than it actually is.

So yeah, I think “Yang and Blake trusted Robyn because Blake specifically was able to identify with her” is a compelling interpretation, just not one that Rooster Teeth themselves gave us on screen. So kudos for coming up with a fantastic motivation that could have been developed on screen in a better written show. Sadly, that scenario exists purely in the mind of the viewer, not in the canon of RWBY.

#rwby #rwby volume 7 #rwby volume 7 spoilers #mymetas #fairy-anon-godmother

44 notes · View notes