#pre retcon vriska clearly struggles to grow past what alternia made her but retcon vriska is just like oh i’m good. i’m a marxist now btw | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ardenttheories · 6 years

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istrige-namuose

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“Honestly I should go back do filling all those classpect requests in...”

#AddressedTheElephantInTheRoom

If the elephant in the room is “John is not okay” then I’ve got you entirely covered. If it’s not then you’re about to be deeply disappointed about my thesis on “why John is not okay”.

I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but from the very beginning John is at an incredible disadvantage when it comes to SBURB. Compared to all the other kids, trolls and our dear cherubs included, John is the only one with a significant amount to lose, and almost nothing to gain: Dave is being physically abused by his older brother, and has repressed himself to such a point that he sees no value in his life; Rose lives with a functioning alcoholic who she is convinced engages in passive-aggressive warfare with her, unable to tell who actually loves her and who does not; Jade lives with a dog, a dead grandpa she has never truly accepted the loss of at the beginning of the comic, and is almost completely isolated from society with no true way to enter it at her current age; Dirk and Roxy have never seen their parents, with Dirk’s isolation causing a severe negative impact on his mental health and Roxy’s causing her to partake in heavy drinking, and both live with the constant threat of death at the hands of HIC; Jane, while having a loving father, is under constant threat of assassination; Jake, sharing a similar situation to Jade, actually buried his dead grandmother’s body and was left to fend for himself on an island inhabited by creatures made to raise a species entirely more violent than he; the lowblood trolls live in a society that sees them as playthings, and wishes for them to be dead more than anything else; the midbloods hang on by a thread; the highbloods face constant instability, with Gamzee having to self medicate with sopor, Eridan struggling to find his place in a society that wants him to be brutal and a friend group that didn’t let his loves flourish, and Feferi living with the knowledge that her lusus could kill everyone should she not feed it correctly, as well as with the knowledge that her duty is to fight HIC, and either win or die trying; and Calliope, isolated in one room her whole life, lives reading a book that becomes what she wishes she could be part of, trapped in eternal, lonely war with her brother. None of these characters have the most optimal of lives; all live in fear of something, all struggle with and suffer from things that affect them deeply enough to continue well into the game itself. They are things each player needs to learn from, to grow out of and to move past in the process of growing up that SBURB facilitates in its challenges throughout the course of a session. This is, ironically, how you know the trolls’ game is not finished; they are not, for lack of a better term, “grown up” yet when they reach their door.

When we consider what each surviving player gains at the end of the game in Earth C, we can see that they have achieved true growth, as well as the happiness, safety and content that did not exist pre-game. Dave has Dirk, Rose has Roxy, Jade has Jake; each gains that which they had lost, or never had, in the form of their guardians’ younger selves, giving them what is essentially a fresh slate to build upon in a manner that is beneficial to them all. Dave no longer lives in fear, has found love, acceptance of himself, and is moving past his abuse to begin healing. Rose has a mother she knows loves her, the ability to love herself, to love her wife, and a much more stable homelife that allows her to heal from years of neglect and uncertainty. Jade and Jake no longer live in isolation, no longer live in danger; they integrate into a society built for them, a society which loves them unconditionally, near friends that remind them that they are no longer alone. Dirk and Roxy are no longer in danger of HIC, have moved on past the negative coping habits and the accidental neglect they suffered in youth, and Dirk particularly is making an effort to grow from the toxic habits he picked up as he struggled with severe mental health issues alone - both with lovers that, for two isolated children who initially never had a single human within any sort of distance to them, represent everything they never thought they could have, and a step into actual life with people who are in their same time. Calliope is no longer bound to a tiny room with a brother who wishes to kill her, and has found a love which, initially, was never meant to be something she could have. Jane has her father, the only surviving guardian of the entire game, the business she was always meant to run, a love that she struggled to gain so desperately at the beginning of her session, and a chance to live without complete fear of assassination. Karkat no longer lives in fear of a society which wishes to kill him for his blood; Kanaya gets to live the life she chooses, not the path that is chosen for her; Terezi is no longer at a potential threat due to her blindness, and similarly is not under societal pressures to be who she thinks she should have been on Alternia; and Vriska, freed from the confines of what feeding her mother required, is able, when she returns, to be who she wishes to be, to achieve the enlightenment that (Vriska) did. All of the kids began with nothing, with situations that were, to say the least, less than ideal, and grew to a place where they were finally free.

John is the exact opposite of every other child in the game.

John begins with a loving father, one he does not entirely understand, but who plays to his son’s interests in an attempt to form a closer bond. From what we see of Poppop, he had a rather good future ahead of him; a wife, child, and a job that made him a fairly wealthy man, and if nothing else a very happy and kindly one. He had a perfect home in the suburbs, an education, a hobby that was in and of itself profitable should he have attempted to put any merit to being a professional pianist, and he suffered from no sort of trauma during his first thirteen years of life. There was nothing inherently wrong with John’s life, unlike the other kids.

This is where everything goes horribly wrong.

The other kids have suffered hardships. They have faced monsters day in and day out throughout their lives; fighting is no issue to Dave, who has fought his Bro his whole life; it is no issue to Jade, who takes her gun with her wherever she goes, and has essentially raised herself; it is certainly no issues to the trolls, quite literally tailor made to win the game by Doc Scratch. John has no ability to cope. He has had no reason to develop coping mechanisms, or to learn how to defend himself, or to learn how to handle the trauma that comes with death, war, and a daily struggle to survive.

This is likely why we never see John react. He simply doesn’t know how to.

He doesn’t know how to handle waking up to see, for his first interaction with her, Jade’s dead body, when they had promised to spend so much time together before. He doesn’t know how to handle seeing his father’s dead body, covered in blood, only seconds before being killed himself. They are not a situations he has ever had to deal with, situations unlike anything he has ever struggled with - and thus, he buries it. Focuses on the game, shoves it all to one side, focuses on the struggles of his friends and attempting to ensure they win the game when all else fails - because John is, essentially, a failsafe.

Think of his classpect. John is the Heir of Breath; freedom inherited, under his control. He is the epitome of his aspect. John’s role in SBURB is to free those who are trapped; to free his friends from abuse and neglect, to free all their players from the doomed timelines of the game itself, to free the session from its barren state so a new universe can emerge at the end. John is made simply to ensure that their session wins, no matter how much they have to fight for it to begin with. It’s why, without John, the session is doomed from the start, with no potential to go on; it’s why Dave has to become Davesprite to ensure he survives. As the inheritor of freedom, John has a duty to ensure he similarly frees everyone he possibly can from whatever may be chaining them down. Think, for instance, how in the retconned timeline Vriska stops Rose from drinking; how Karkat and Dave’s relationship allows Dave to open up more clearly to himself about who he is and how he feels. John’s actions as a Heir of Breath are inherently linked to the freedom of his friends, whether he realises it or not. It’s why, ultimately, he needs to be someone who comes from such a stable background; he is free when he begins the game, and in an adequate place to free those around him as he has no prior baggage to deal with.

However, this puts him in a place to gain it as the game progresses. Whereas his friends are allowed time to heal from what which they suffer from, John himself simply loses things throughout the session. He loses his life, his home, his dad, his future, his stability - he sees things which he is unable to cope with, losing his innocence and naivety - with no true understanding of how he is meant to handle the stress and trauma. John, in essence, regresses to the same place his friends began at, as they continue to grow to the place he once knew well.

Why is his classpect so vital to this? I have mentioned this before, but as the Heir of Breath, the freedom that John inherits is all-encompassing. With an inability to cope, he is unable to control what he frees people - including himself - from, and takes on the role of a True Heir of Breath. He frees unknowingly, without proper direction, and suffers deeply for it - because in the end, what he frees himself from most is his friends.

John frees himself from all the bonds he once had through all of his efforts to free his friends from their doomed timelines; once reaching Earth C, they are in a position to live the lives they never had, to evolve into the people they should have been. John is not. John’s position is weak, is regressive; it is a position in which the only way is down from the pedestal that he, very long ago, began the game on. Distanced from his friends - who likely do not realise that there is an issue, as the post-credit scenes would seem to imply (because why would they? They have won the game after years of struggle and have entered into a better world; why would they, for a moment, think that John does not share the same sentiment?) - John does not have anything to truly tie him to Earth C. It is not a world that holds anything for him; yes, his friends are there, but they are friends who do not remember the same things that he does due to the retcon, friends who have developed and matured and progressed without him, friends who no longer need him now that they do not need freeing, do not need a leader, do not need that failsafe to rely on. He has Jane, yes, but she is only his Nanna, and she has her Dad, as well as Roxy and Calliope, as well as a business; she has no reason to pursue the same bond with John as the other kids have with their young guardians. Worse still, he does not have his Dad. Yes, he has Jane’s Dad, but he is quite simply that; Jane’s Dad. He does not remember raising John, he does not remember things that John and his Dad did, he is not even the same man due to having to save Jane frequently from assassination attempts.

I have seen people mention multiple times that John does not reveal his struggles because he doesn’t like to burden his friends, and in this case, this is simply another way that his classpect is freeing him from everything. Without an ability to tell them that something is wrong, they have no reason to be concerned for him; they have no reason to assume that he is struggling, that they need to keep an eye on him, to help him. This is why, I think, we got such a surge of “John is depressed” headcanons post-credits; he is in the perfect position to suffer from severe, perhaps chronic, depression, as well as (at least in my mind) PTSD, insomnia, and dissociation - and he has absolutely nobody to rely on.

John, at the end of the game, is not in a good place.

And this is almost entirely because of his classpect, what he began with, and what he has lost throughout the game’s progression.

#istrige-namuose #homestuck #homestuck analysis #long post//#john egbert #character analysis

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