#so yeah homestuck is garbage and all that but also homestuck very incredibly good and important

[olivereactsaboutgarbage]

Nana Episode 47 - Fireworks Display, Hachi and NANA

So... this is it... the end of Nana... let’s see what awaits us... in our final chapter...

We start with the Pooch Nanarrator stealing her job back from the Pinkish Nanarrator. That’s pretty finale-ish, I suppose.

A baby looks at a butterfly. Is this a baby Pinkish Nana? Or is the mysterious adult in this scene actually one of the Nanas, which would disprove that?

The baby is Satsuki, and the adult is... hmm... both Pooch Nana, but also Satsuki’s mother? So it seems this is a flash-forward... but... that can’t be it. Pooch Nana’s child very explicitly wasn’t going to be named Satsuki if it was a girl, so this must be a parallel universe.

Get out of my sight, foolish cup! I care naught for the symbolism you’re desperately attempting to invoke! Wretched cup! Leave!

Oh, I like this cup though. This cup can stay. If Pinkish Nana had broken THIS cup maybe I would have felt emotions about that.

TALL Shin... incredible! Oh and Yasu was already here, in this room, already.

Pooch Nanarrates that every year when there’s fireworks, everyone shows up to the old Nana Apartment and feels pain. Well that’s bleak

Nobu shows up too. He brought a doll for Satsuki. That’s probably a better gift than a cup. It seems Satsuki already has the world’s best cup.

Hmm... is Pinkish Nana actually dead after all? I remember when I had that theory. But then I forgot to keep having it, because I got distracted by something else.

Meanwhile, in the past, everyone including Pinkish Nana is watching the fireworks from a secluded location. They comment that their disguises are kind of stupid with no one looking at them. Pooch Nana isn’t here because she’s been sitting on a bench and crying this entire time. You know, ever since right after last episode where she told Shoji women shouldn’t have jobs.

Pooch Nana doesn’t want to meet up with Blast because she’s developed a phobia of ex-boyfriends, so Pinkish Nana lies on her telephone and says there aren’t any ex-boyfriends nearby. Yasu and Shin think that’s true.

Nobu doesn’t want to ruin Pooch Nana’s day, so he wants to leave. Pinkish Nana doesn’t like that, so she says some biting words to him:

shin would know what it’s like to get provoked by pinkish nana haha (remember when that happened?)

OMG Undertale reference!!!! Or, rather, timeline-wise, I guess Undertale was making a Nana reference. ...Hm, Undertale should have referenced something better. Like uh. Well, not Homestuck

Wait, how did we get into a situation where Nobu was literally the ONLY person in the apartment when Pooch Nana showed up? Who wanted this???

man pinkish nana is annoying, i can’t believe i used to think she was cool... let shin learn the skills he wants at the pace he wants, geez louise!!!! good thing she’s dead

Pooch Nana falls for everyone’s elaborate ruse where Nobu doesn’t exist within the world of their imagination. Nobu locking her out of the apartment ensured that this ruse would succeed!!! Okay

Wait yeah why not

Oh it’s because she didn’t think she would come

That’s stupid. That’s why it’s called an invitation and not a demand. Next time Pooch Nana, try not being stupid

After the fireworks, everyone from Blast is sad.

Pooch Nanarrates that she’ll wait for the rest of time to see Pinkish Nana, as we jump back to the flash-forward and the credits roll. Well that’s a bit of an inconclusive ending. We didn’t even see anyone from Trapnest. Not even the blonde Trapnest member! Literally no character arcs got concluded. Just... “and then later Pooch Nana was still alive and had a daughter, Yasu was still alive, Shin was still alive, Nobu was still alive, Ren was implied to be still alive, Pinkish Nana was implied to be ‘gone’ but not necessarily dead but not necessarily alive”. I guess it’s good that Shin’s still alive. If the show killed him on top of all the other garbage, that would definitely suck. And I mean, eh, Yasu and Nobu are nice enough fellows. It’s good that they’re still alive.

This anime feels like it’s screaming out for more content. But then I guess the manga “went on hiatus since 2009″ so...

I wonder what kind of ending the manga author had in mind. This can’t have been it, and whatever state the manga is left in probably isn’t it, so... I guess at this point the series is just sort of a collection of characters whose ultimate fates are largely indeterminate. Neato?

Well, to summarize my feelings on this show, I’ll bring everyone’s attention to a cool thing I said in my very first post about it: What a miserable show so far. 0/10.

As for what series I’m going to go through next... it was going to be Monster, but from what I’ve heard, the legal method of watching Monster is going to change from “nothing” to “Netflix” next month, and taking screenshots of Netflix is something I can indeed do, so maybe I’ll save Monster for later. I don’t want the next series to be Arakawa Under the Bridge or Spice & Wolf as much as I want it to be Higurashi, so I’m doing Higurashi next.

Goodbye fans of “Nana”. Hello fans of “Higurashi”. Although you probably aren’t reading this.

#nana #is what i'm consuming

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 103

this is like, my 11th 4/13 in the fandom? and i still get emo every time

#day 103 #year 3 #john egbert #rose lalonde #dave strider #jade harley #homestuck #4/13 #413 #theres of course the emo shit about just THEM #but also the emo shit about how fucking formative homestuck has been for me as a person #i would be absolutely unrecognizable if not for homestuck #my art would be worse my social life would be worse #my social skills In General would probably be way more stunted bc like #homestuck fandom spaces when i was 14 were really the ONE place i felt comfy talking to strangers at length so like literally #that is how i learned how to be a fucking Person in public spaces. it was homestuck meetups lmao #got me into cosplay and sewing! those are skills i wouldnt have if not for homestuck hitting me when it did #wouldnt probably have encountered any of YALL on this blog because lbr we are all here for the homestuck trash thats like 90% of my posts #so yeah homestuck is garbage and all that but also homestuck very incredibly good and important #and i will never be over the role it has played in my life

[robogreaser]

This is a Long Time Coming...

It’s been a relatively hard task to sit down and make sense of, well, a lot of things as of late. I could chalk it up to the state of the world, but it’s been troublesome for significantly longer than that.

Long Story Short Version: I’ve been in a hell of a place, mentally, physically, and otherwise.

The proper story is a hell of a lot more involved than that and I know damned right well it’s going to take me a fair bit to explain myself and my various professional and social failings over the past... while. I’m gonna try to contain this under a read more, of course, but I apologize to mobile users if tumblr fucks that up.

Okay. That took a fair more bit of effort to figure out than I remember. Which, I suppose, is a fair enough bit of a segue into one thing that’s happened to me.

Tumblr has been deteriorating.

Whether I like to admit it or not, tumblr has been my go to social media platform since... 2011. Yeah. I’ve spent the vast majority of the decade here. I’ve seen a lot. Sure, I’ve lurked elsewhere, but I really cannot stand the interface and nature of a lot of other social media, especially the likes of twitter. Unfortunately for me, this place has been in constant decline for years now at this point. It extends well beyond the porn ban, but that’s a whole separate discussion.

I’ve lost touch with a lot of people I care about, some vanishing into the ether, some ghosting me, some just drifting into other communities or onto other sites. I’ve come to terms with the majority of this. It’s been happening for a while. It’s the very nature of digital relationships. It hurt, and I do think it’s contributed to a fair bit of stress and depression that has resulted in my... withdrawal from online spaces. It’s not a major factor, but its here, it’s present, it’s a factor in all of this.

I’ll be honest in that, well, I’ve tried to make this post several times over the past several weeks and months. It’s hard. Talking about my issues, using ‘I’ and ‘me’ so much in a post... it’s a bit jarring. But I’ll try to suck it up.

It’s been ten years (god I fucking hate time) since I’ve graduated high school. Yeah. It’s a fair thing to say that, on reflection, that’s incredibly jarring. The vast majority of that time has been... relatively unstable. I spent a fair few years working on my book and my publishing journey, now all but scrubbed clean from this blog (more on that later) and... well... Trying to be an adult. I’ve applied to, gotten accepted, and had to withdrawn from my dream school twice in this time. I’ve had a fair few jobs, nothing worthy of my resume, and lost all of them in one form or another, whether being fired for retaliating to my shitty work conditions, or, well, quitting for the sake of my own health during this pandemic. There has been a lot of family troubles. I’ve been through a lot of... ‘varied’ living situations, some horrendous, some just stressful, some, like now, actually really good compared to the others. And for the past few years in particular, it’s been constantly one thing after another, nonstop.

In short, progress is slow, but it’s happening. I don’t care to delve into a lot of these sorts of personal details lest this get to a ridiculous length, but that’s the short of the stuff I’d rather gloss over.

I’ve been on a health... Let’s call it a journey. I’ve been on a health journey. Over the past few years I’ve gone through the long processes of being diagnosed with ADHD, discussing my options regarding my depression and anxiety, and finally getting myself on a medication regimen that works. And then, because the health care system is a joke, I was without insurance. I had been off my medication, an absolute lifesaver and release of burden on my garbage tier brain, for eighteen months. Until last week. I think it’s fair to say, between my revolving door of living situations, employment, and then being un-medicated in a continually more stressful environment... That this is the main reason I’ve been absent. I’ve had no focus. There were weeks where I had no drive to do anything outside of routine that others depended on. I had not only gone back to how I was before situating my mental health, but in some ways, found a worse state.

Finances have been slowly eating away at me. I had been working a part time retail job until November, which made decent enough money, but not nearly for the amount of work and responsibility I was handling. I got fired. I found work with one of the big, corporate postal services. The pay was phenomenal, but it began to actively destroy my health, mainly physically, but also mentally, especially considering I was working a graveyard shift. Eventually when I began having prolonged health issues there, and then a whole lot of the symptoms of covid-19, on top of them turning me down for an entry-level position outside of the package handling, I had to quit. This was shortly after the lockdowns, in early April, and I refuse to look back despite people like my parents insisting on me trying to get work there again. Sure, the pay was phenomenal compared to anything else I had until then, but I cant continue to sacrifice my health. As of now, I’m unemployed, and... well...

I’m working on my commission queue. It’s art. It’s stuff I’ve owed friends (luckily those who are incredibly understanding and good to me) for an embarrassing amount of time, even before moving to and from Oklahoma at the end of 2016. I’m terrified of being the person who is known for taking commissioners’ money and running.

I know, I’m not good at giving updates. I’m not good at a consistent work schedule. I’ve had numerous tech failings over the past few years that constantly slow my roll on any progress I have made. Hell, I’ve had files corrupt despite being two thirds of the way complete when transferring from one computer to another. I’ve lost my cable for my external hard drive. I’ve had my tablet go to hell and back multiple times. But I am working. I am trying. I am sitting down as often as I can between looking for work and managing family nonsense to try and get my workload tidied up.

Which... brings me to my next point. And one I’m rather... ashamed about.

I have used trello, infrequently, since taking on a large load of commissions, and despite not being faithfully updating it and checking back on it, and using it to it’s fullest potential, I had kept, at the minimum, a list of all the work I did owe people using it. Well. Dumbass me attempted to use a mobile app. In short, in an effort to try and make myself tech literate and allow me easier access to my queue, I ended up deleting it. Somehow.

I’ve gone through and slowly flagged all my paypal notices and various emails concerning my commissions. I’m putting it together again. I’m trying. Granted, I am damned sure I am going to be missing someone, somewhere, somehow. I know it. I’ve got a shit brain, and despite my need for organization and minimalism, I don’t put it past me to have missed something along the way.

If you have commissioned me, please, do not hesitate to reach out and contact me regarding your commission. I owe every last one of you a massive apology for my continued failure to produce what you have paid for.

More likely than not, I have a wip already started somewhere, and if not, I have a slew of reference and thumbnails already compiled together somewhere on my computers. I am not ignoring this work. It’s been painfully, embarrassingly slow. It’s been one obstacle after another. But I have every intention of doing this work, and, likely, upgrading the quality of the finished piece past what my commissioners have paid for simply because I do feel bad about the wait time.

I have been inexcusably unprofessional. I know this and I am working as best I can with the time and resources I have to correct it.

In a similar vein, as I mentioned before, I have slowly been cleaning up my rather unimpressive publishing attempts. I’ve gone through and cleaned this blog recently, deleting reference to my work by name and the process of trying to get myself published. I may have missed a few posts here and there, but for the most part I would like a clean slate in regards to building a social media platform surrounding my written work. And this is the part where... I am probably going to be the most upfront and honest with you reading this than I have been publicly before.

I am not ashamed of who I’ve been online these past ten years or so, but it reflects only a sliver of my personality, a sliver of who I am as a whole. I catered to a very specific subset of who I am in pursuit of finding acceptance in communities much larger than myself. I’ve learned a hell of a lot about myself in that time. I figured out what’s important to me, my health, my sexuality, my relationships and my long term goals. I’ve found a very important group of friends. I’ve found people who understand and empathize with a lot of the things I have been through, experience, and am at my core.

But the fact of the matter is, this hypersexual, sci-fi aesthetic-oriented, very open person is only a singular facet. And it is not nearly enough of a reflection of who I am, or who I want to be as a professional, public adult. Will I always be gay for robots? Yes. Will I, when time permits and creative energies are present, continue to make nsfw art? Absolutely. Will I always have a toe dipped in erotic literature and the like? Most likely.

But a lot of me, a lot of my emotion and strife and feelings regarding most things in the world, are completely separate from this. It’s separate from me liking porn on twitter or having a homestuck roleplay blog. It’s separate from who I am in real life, with my boyfriend or with my family or with my work. And I have been dwelling on this, sincerely, for a while. I need to allocate more energy into my life. The separate life offline and online too, where I am pursuing an actual professional career, because, at the end of the day, I want to be an author. I want to have a career telling stories. And, in my time online, I’ve found a lot of skeletons in authors’ closets, the kind that really put mine to shame, and the kind that will always be a footnote to their work. You know the ones.

I want my creative work to speak for itself. I want people to be able to enjoy what I do without a specter, without my time and energy having to explain to a future audience why it is I had explicit thoughts about x,y, and z. I want to be able to write a book, write many books, and have people enjoy them without a footnote about me, a person with a sexual life and a history exploring it through years of depression and isolation, clouding it. It’s not fair to my work. It’s not fair to a future reader. It’s not fair to me.

I’ve got several social media accounts made and slowly coming to life that I need to spend more time with as I try and pursue this new, second leg of a very long journey into publishing. I’m not going to link those here, now or in the future. It’s likely a few people I know and trust have access to them. But I am, effectively starting over from scratch trying to build a platform as a writer. And it’s hard. Juggling that, alongside all of the things in the world today, alongside family and my relationships, alongside my commission queue? It bears down on me and if I didn’t have experience handling more than one thing at a time, I might trip up more frequently. Hell, I forget to post and use those new accounts regularly.

But I’m trying.

I’m not moving away from my current social circles or hobbies or anything like that. I’m not abandoning any fandom or friends or communities. But I am going to be trying to balance myself more thoughtfully moving forward, past just commissions, past just writing.

I’m here. I’m moving forward, slowly but surely, and I am making an effort to improve.

#jesus christ mike shut up

[imdoingthismspaintadventure]

As Brian and I returned to the loft, I felt more than a little apprehensive.  It wasn’t just that I was going to be around Bitch again, but I was also having to face Lisa and Alec.  After shouting and talking about quitting the team, I was turning around and going back.  A part of me wanted to apologize, but a larger part of me felt I shouldn’t.  I had been justified in everything I had said and done, right?  Maybe it was just because I wasn’t used to violence or raising my voice.

Going back after that display is a little awkward yeah..., but I think you put on a strong enough performance to salvage that.

...with some of the members at least. I don't think Bitch will appreciate much the glorious asskicking you delivered.

For not being used to violence, you sure had an incredible start, both with powers and without them.

As I’d feared, there was a bit of an awkward silence as we reached the top of the stairs.  Bitch was sitting in a chair beside one of the tables, her dogs nowhere to be seen.  As she saw me, she scowled, but didn’t say anything.  Alec grinned as I came back, but I couldn’t decide if it was because he was glad or if it was at my expense.  I didn’t know him well enough to guess either way.

Bitch must be wanting to start shit again. She contains herself because a) the team in general (or at least Brian) don’t want any fights, and b) Taylor could go apeshit on her again.

Alec isn’t making fun of you... I think. Her trauma colors a lot of harmless gestures in a bad light.

“Glad you came back,” Lisa told me, a bit of a smile on her face, “Alec, can you go get the first aid kit?  It might be in the storage closet.”

Lisa seems to be always cheerful. I’m starting to like her a lot.

While Alec did that, Brian sat me down on the arm of the couch and I pulled off my sweatshirt to get a better look at the damage.  I pulled the bottom of my tank top up around my ribs to get a look at where one of the dogs had been gotten at my stomach and back.  My clothes had taken most of the damage, and I’d only suffered three or four shallow-ish scrapes.  There was bruising and some raw areas where I felt tender, but I figured I’d recover from that in a day or two. I had a cut on my ear, which would be harder to hide, but I was pretty sure I could keep the incident from my dad without him raising hell.

There was only one spot of real damage, a puncture where it looked like a fang had buried itself deep in the top of my forearm and then dragged an inch or so down towards my wrist as it made its exit.  The area around it was already turning colors with bruising.  I wasn’t sure how deep the puncture was, but I was pretty sure it should have been hurting more than it did.  The blood from the injury had trickled down my arm, and was still welling out.

It’s crazy to think you got more serious injuries from a bunch of dogs than from Lung, with all his fire and power. I guess that shows the effectiveness of your costume though.

Poor Danny, he’s probably going to notice anyways, not say anything and worry silently.

“Christ,” I said, mostly to myself.

“That was awesome, you know,” Alec told me, as he returned with the first aid kit, “I didn’t think you had it in you to kick someone’s ass.”  I glared at him, but he just sat on the back of the sofa, his legs kicking like an excited kid.

Alec strikes me as an Amethyst-type character from SU.

I also really like him.

I’m starting to warm up to most of these villains.

Is this what it feels like to be Taylor?

“I think we’re going to clean that and stitch it.  Tattle’s power should give us a better sense of whether stitches are necessary,” Brian said, quietly.

“Alright,” I agreed.

Her power is probably one of the most useful you can have for situations like these.

I would hardly describe getting stitches as a bonding experience, but Bitch more or less stayed quiet throughout the process.  We were both sat down and told to sit still while Brian both cleaned and sewed up the hole in my arm and the tear my kick had made in Bitch’s ear.  Brian insisted I take two Tylenol, though the pain was still limited to a mild ache in my arm.  I grudgingly obliged.  I’d never liked taking pills, and never felt they made a real difference.

Bonding moment: Getting stitches for the wounds you gave eachother.

“You have first aid training?” I inquired, to make conversation and break the tense silence.

Alec complained, “We all do, Brian made us all take a comprehensive class less than a week after we were gathered as a team.  Such a pain in the ass, believe me.  He’ll make you do it too.”

Brian likes to be prepared. Brian is cautious. Nice

Having first aid training for the types of situations you are probably in HELPS.

“I already did,” I admitted, “One of the first things I did.”  I jumped a little at a snarling from my left, but it was just Rachel cussing as Lisa taped a cotton pad to her ear.

Ooh Taylor is on the same wavelength!

I bet Brian likes to hear that.

Brian just looked at me and flashed that boyish smile again.  I looked away, embarrassed that a guy like him would get pleased like that on my account.  He got up to head to the bathroom, garbage from the bandages, sutures, cotton swabs and ointments in his hands.

Oh Taylor you are precious.

This is being a strangely wholesome stitching session.

With Brian gone and Lisa absorbed in trying to patch up Bitch’s ear, I was left with Alec.  To make conversation, I said, “Alec.  You were going to tell me what you do.  You go by Regent, right?”

“The name is a long story, but what I do is this.”  He looked over his shoulder at Brian, who was returning from the washroom with a damp washcloth in hand.  Brian, mid-stride, stumbled and fell onto the floor.

Oh what?

Ok so he either:

1) Makes people clumsy by lowering their overall balance or their skill

2) Makes people unlucky

3) Controls them momentarily to make them stumble or fall

All three can be OP as all hell in the right hands.

Way to look good in front of the new girl, gimpy!” Alec mocked his teammate, laughing. Grateful for the break in the tension, I couldn’t help but laugh too.  While Alec continued laughing, Brian got to his feet and ran up to the smaller boy, at which point he got Alec in a headlock and began punching him in the shoulder repeatedly.  This abuse only made Alec laugh harder in between his cries of pain.

Alec and Brian are such friendly assholes to eachother and it’s great.

Lisa turned to me, smiling at the prank and play fighting between the boys, “It’s a bit complicated to explain, but basically, Alec can get into people’s nervous systems.  This lets him fire off impulses that set off reflexes or make body parts jerk into motion.  It’s not a dramatic power, but with timing, he can make someone fall over midstep, drop something, lose their sense of balance or pull the trigger on a gun.”

Oh so it’s a nerfed version of option 3! He manipulates their involuntary reflexes and motions.

...I don’t think I’ve seen that before. It’s a very fun and still pretty useful ability!

Ok so here’s the first part! Next part hopefully up tomorrow, along with a homestuck part too.

#worm parahumans #worm #worm liveblog #wildbow #parahumans #parahumans liveblog

[betweengenesisfrogs]

Homestuck is My Favorite Sprite Comic

Yes, you read that right.

Homestuck is my favorite sprite comic.

Those of you who remember the earlier days of the internet are probably looking at this post in disbelief right about now. Others of you might be scratching your heads, not knowing what I’m talking about.

But here’s my pitch: Homestuck is the culmination of an entire genre of internet art, and the tools that make it so powerful are the very tools that made that genre once so reviled.

Homestuck is the greatest and most successful sprite comic of all time.

And honestly, I’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, so let’s do it.

WHAT SPRITE COMICS WERE

Many of my readers are probably too young to remember the era of sprite comics. So: what were sprite comics?

Sprite comics were a genre of webcomics made entirely by taking pixel art from video games – especially character art, called “sprites,” but also backgrounds and other images—and placing them into panels to tell a story. They were near-ubiquitous on the internet in the early 2000s, emerging right as webcomics in general were seeking to establish themselves as an art form.

They were not, shall we say, known for their quality. The low bar to access meant that art skill was not an obstacle to starting one. The folks behind the huge swell of them tended to be young people, kids and early teenagers recreating the plots of their favorite video games with new OCs—not the most advanced writers or artists. They were the early 2000s’ quintessential example of ephemeral, childish art. Unfortunately, they look even worse today—blown-up pixels don’t hold up well when displayed on higher-resolution monitors.

Today, they’re mostly forgotten, remembered only as a weird, strange moment in the youth of the internet. Someone who evoked them today, such as a blogger who compared them to one of the most successful webcomics of all time, would be inviting good-natured teasing at the very least.

It would be unfair to dismiss them entirely, though. In this low-stakes environment, comics where the author could bring more skill—engaging writing, legitimately funny jokes, or especially, a real ability to work with pixel art—really stood out. (Unsurprisingly, these authors tended to skew a bit older.)

The obvious one to mention is Bob and George. Bob and George wasn’t the first sprite comic, but it was the most influential. Conceived initially as Mega Man-themed filler for a hand-drawn comic about superheroes, it quickly became a merging of the two concepts, with the original characters made into Mega Man-style sprites, full of running gags, humorous retellings of the Mega Man games, elaborate storylines about time travel, and robots eating ice cream. It was generally agreed, even among sprite comic haters, that Bob and George was a pretty good comic. Worth mentioning also are 8-Bit Theater, which turned the plot of the first Final Fantasy into a spectacular and hilarious farce, and of course Kid Radd, my second favorite sprite comic. (More on that later.)

But even if you weren’t looking for greatness—there was something just damn fun about them. The passion of sprite comic authors was clear, even if their ideas didn’t always cohere. To this day, I think the sprite comic scene has the same appeal pulp art does—it’s crude and rough, full of garbage to sift through, but every so often, something deeply sincere and bizarre shines through, and the culture of its authors is a fascinating object of study in itself.

Okay, full disclosure: I was one of the people who made a sprite comic. I’ve written about my experiences with that in more depth elsewhere, but yeah, I was on the inside of this scene, rather than a disinterested observer, and from the inside, maybe it’s a lot easier to see the appeal.

Still, let me make this claim: even with all their flaws, sprite comics were doing some incredibly interesting things, and Homestuck is heir to their legacy.

TAKE ME DOWN TO RECOLOR CITY

One of the problems people always had with sprite comics was the sprites themselves. They’re the most repetitive thing in the world. You just keep copying and pasting the same images over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks. That’s not really being an artist, is it? It’s so lazy. Re-drawing things from different angles keeps things dynamic, develops your skill, and makes your work better in general. Right?

I’m mostly in agreement. Certainly I think it’s fair to rag on the Control-Alt-Delete guy, along with other early bad webcomics, for copy-pasting their characters while dropping in new expressions and mass-producing tepid strips. And to be fair, digging through bad sprite comics often felt like an exercise in seeing the same slightly-edited recolors of Mega Man characters over and over again. You got really tired of that same body with its blobby feet and hands.

(It should be noted, though, that there were folks in the sprite comic scene who could pixel art the quills off a porcupine. I salute you, brave pixel art masters of 2006. I hope you all got into your chosen art school.)

All this said, I think the repetitive and simplistic nature of sprite comics was often their biggest strength.

THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION

In his classic work Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud makes an observation about cartooning that has stayed with me to this day.

McCloud notes that simple, abstract drawings, like faces that are only few lines and dots on a page, resonate with us more strongly than more detailed drawings. This is because our minds fill in what’s missing on the page. We ascribe human depth to simple gestures and expressions based on our own emotions and experiences – and this makes us feel closer to these characters as readers. Secretly, simple cartoons can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling. If you want your readers to fall in love with your characters, draw them simply, and let them fill them in.

Video game sprites work very well in this regard. They have that same simplicity that cartoons do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a huge part of the success of SNES-era RPGs was simple, almost childlike character sprites drawing people in. I think sprites did the same for sprite comics.

Here’s the weird thing: Bob and George worked. Despite four different characters being variations on the same friggin’ Mega Man sprite in different colors, they immediately began to seem like different people with distinct personalities. For me, George’s befuddled, helpless dismay immediately comes to mind whenever I picture his face, while with Mega Man himself it’s usually a wide-eyed, childlike glee. I would never confuse them. This, despite the fact that the only actual difference between their faces is that George is blonde. It’s pretty clear what happened. The personalities the author established for them through dialogue and storytelling shone through, and my brain did the rest.

Sprites, in short, were a canvas upon which the mind could project any story the author wanted to tell. Even the most minute differences in pixel art came to stand, in the best sprite comics, for wide divergences in personality and ideals, once the reader spent enough time with them to adapt to their style of representation.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Character designs that focus on variations on a theme, with subtle differences that nonetheless render them instantly recognizable?

Oh, right.

Look at what greets us on the very first page of Homestuck. An absurdly simple cartoon boy, abstracted to a ridiculous degree—he doesn’t even have arms!—followed a whole bunch of characters that follow suit. Though many other representations of the characters emerge, these little figures never quite go away, do they? Why is that?

Simple: they’re very easy to manipulate. They’re modular—you can give John arms or not, depending on whether it’s useful. You can put him in a whole variety of poses and save them to a template. You can change out his facial expressions with copy and paste. You can give him a new haircut and call him Jake. It’s all very quick and easy.

Sprite comics proliferated because they were very easy to mass-produce. Andrew Hussie’s original conception of Homestuck was very similar: something he could put out very quickly and easily, where even the most elaborate ideas could rely on existing assets to be sped smoothly along. We all know the result: an incredible production machine, churning out unfathomable amounts of content from 2009-2012. I’d say it was a good call.

But it goes way deeper than that. The modular nature of sprites always suggested a kind of modularity to the sprite comic premise. George and Mega Man were different people, true, but also two variations on a theme. Was there something underlying them that they had in common? Perhaps their similarity says something like: We exist in a world which has a certain set of rules? One of my favorite conceits from Bob and George was that when characters visited the past, they were represented by NES-era Mega Man sprites, while in the present, they were SNES sprites, and in the future, the author used elaborate splicing to render them as 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites or similar.

Suppose there was a skilled cartoonist thinking about his next big project, who wanted to tell a story centered around this kind of modularity, a narrative that was built out of iterative, swappable pieces by its very design. He might very well create a sprite comic named Homestuck.

Homestuck is a story about a game that creates a hyperflexible mythology for its players, where the villains, challenges, and setting change depending upon what players bring to the experience, yet which all share underlying goals and assumptions. What more perfect opportunity to create a modular story as well? Different groups of kids and trolls have motifs that get swapped around to produce new characters, whether that’s through ectobiology, the Scratch, or the eerie parallels between the kids and trolls’ sessions. And yet each character can be analyzed as an individual.

This is an incredible way to build a huge emotional investment from your readers. Not only does this kind of characterization invite analysis, the abstractions draw readers in to generate their own headcanons and interpretations. A deep commitment to pluralism is at the heart of Hussie’s character design. Then, too, it encourages readers to build their own new designs from these models. Kidswaps, bloodswaps, fantrolls—these have long been the heart of Homestuck’s fandom. And what are bloodswaps if not sprite recolors for a new generation? With the added bonus that now a change in color carries narrative weight, evoking new moods and identities for these characters in ways that early sprite comics could only dream of.

In Hussie’s hands, even the dreaded copy-and-paste takes on heroic depth of meaning. Even when Hussie moves away from sprites to his own loose art style, he continues to remix what we’ve previously see. Indeed, Hussie talks about how he would go out of his way to edit his own art into new images even when it would take more time than drawing something new. Why? Because he wanted to evoke that very feeling of having seen this before—the visual callback to go along with the many conceptual and verbal callbacks that echo throughout Homestuck. This is at the heart of what Doc Scratch (speaking for Hussie) called “circumstantial simultaneity:” we are invited to compare two moments or two characters, to see what they have in common, or how they contrast. Everything in Paradox Space is deeply linked with everything else. And Hussie establishes this in our minds using nothing less than the tool sprite comics were so deeply reviled for: the “lazy” repetition of an image.

(It’s fitting that some of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous images in Homestuck—dream bubble scenery and the like—are the result of Hussie taking things he’s made before and combining them into fantastic dreamscapes.)

But it all started with the hyperflexible, adaptable character images Hussie created at the very beginning of Homestuck.

And if you need more proof that Homestuck is a sprite comic, I think we need look no further than what Hussie, and the rest of the Homestuck community call these images.

We call them sprites.

THE FIRST GENRE-BENDERS

Was Andrew Hussie influenced by sprite comics in the development of Homestuck? It’s hard to say, but as a webcomic artist in the first decade of the 2000s, he was surely aware of them. It’s likely that he quickly realized that his quick, adaptable images served the same purposes as a sprite in a video game or a sprite comic, and chose to call them that.

One purpose I haven’t mentioned up until now: sprites lend themselves very well to animations. In fact, in their original context of video games, that’s exactly what they’re for: frames of art that can be used to show a character running, jumping, posing, moving across a screen. It’s not surprising, then, that sprite comic makers quickly saw the utility in that.

Homestuck was, in fact, not the first webcomic to make Flash animations part of its story. There were experiments with various gifs and such in other comics, but I think sprite comics were among the most successful at becoming the multi-media creations that would come to be known as hypercomics..

Take a look at this animation from Bob and George. It represents a climactic final confrontation against a long-standing villain, using special effects to make everything dramatic, but ultimately, like many a Homestuck animation, leads to kind of a pyscheout. The drama and the humor of the moment are clear, though. This relies in large part on the music—which is taken directly from the game Chrono Trigger. This makes total sense. Interestingly, it also contains voice acting, which is something Homestuck never tried—probably because it would run contrary to its ideals of pluralism. What I find fascinating is that in sprite comics, animations like these served a very similar purpose to Homestuck’s big flashes: elevating a big moment into something larger-than-life. Another good example is this sequence from Crash and Bass. Seriously, it seems like every sprite comic maker wanted to try their hand at Flash animation.

(By the way, it’s a lot harder than it looks!! I envy Hussie his vectorized sprites. Pixel art is a PAIN to work with in the already buggy program that is Flash.)

The result: because of the sprites themselves, sprite comics were among the first works to play around with the border between comics and other media in the way that would come to be thought of as quintessentially Homestuck.

What it also meant was that another genre emerged in parallel with sprite comics: the sprite animation. Frequently these would retell the story of a particular game, offer a spectacular animated battle sequence, parody the source material, or all three. Great examples include this animation for Mega Man Zero, and this frankly preposterous crossover battle sequence. Chris Niosi’s TOME also found its earliest roots as an animation series of this kind. You also found plenty of sprite-based flash games, in which players could manipulate game characters in a way that was totally outside the context of the original works.

The website the vast majority of these games and animations were hosted on?

Newgrounds, best known to Homestuck fans as the website Hussie crashed in 2011 while trying to upload Cascade.

What’s less talked about is that Hussie was friends, or at least on conversational terms with, the owner of the site, hence the idea to host his huge animation there in the first place, and other flashes, like the first Alterniabound, were initially hosted there as well.

It’s hard to believe that Hussie wasn’t at least a little familiar with the Newgrounds scene. I suspect that he largely conceived of Homestuck as part of the world of “Flash animation—” which in 2009 meant the wide variety of things that were hosted on Newgrounds, including sprite animations.

The freedom and fluidity sprite comics had to change into games and animations and back into comics again was one of their most fascinating traits. Homestuck’s commitment to media-bending needs, at this point, no introduction. But what’s less known is that sprite comics were exploring that territory first—that Homestuck, in short, is the kind of thing they wanted to grow up to be.

PUT ME IN THE GAME

I would be a fool not to mention another big thing Homestuck and sprite comics have in common: a character who is literally the author in cartoon form, running around doing goofy things and messing with the story. This was an incredibly common cliché in sprite comics, no doubt because of Bob and George, who did it early on and never looked back. You might have noticed that the animation I linked above concerns a showdown between Bob and George’s author, David Anez—depicted, delightfully, as another Mega Man recolor—and a mysterious alternate author named Helmut—who is like Mega Man plus Sepiroth I think? It’s all very strange. I could ramble for hours about the relationship between Hussie and the alt-author villains of Homestuck and what it all means, but I’m not sure I can nail anything down with certainty for these two. Maybe Bob and George was never quite that metaphysical.

But yes, bringing the author into the story in some form was already a cliché by the time Homestuck started up. Indeed, I think that’s why Hussie’s character refers to it as “a bad idea” to break the fourth wall—he’s recognizing that people will have seen this before, and are already tired of this sort of shit. And then he goes and does it anyway and makes it somehow brilliant, because he’s Andrew Hussie.

Homestuck breathes life into the cliché by taking it in a metaphysical/metafictional direction. I don’t think that was really the motivation for most sprite comic authors, though. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

I think the cliché kept happening because sprite comic authors were writing about a subject that very closely concerned themselves: video games. I’m only kind of joking. The thing about video games is that even though they’re made for everyone, playing through one yourself feels like an intensely personal experience. You develop an emotional relationship to a world, to its characters, that feels distinctly your own. Now, suddenly, thanks to the magic of sprites, you have an opportunity to tell stories about that world for others to read. Of course you’re going to want to put yourself in the story in some form.

When it wasn’t author characters in sprite comics, it was OCs. You know Dr. Wily? Well here’s my own original villain, Dr. Vindictus. You know Mega Man? Here’s my new character, Super Cool Man. He hangs out with Mega Man and they beat the bad guys together. Stuff like that. Most sprite comics retold the story of a game, or multiple games in a big crossover format, with original elements added in. There was quite a lot of “Link and Sonic and Mega Man are all friends with my OC and they hang out at his house.”

What’s interesting, though, is that because these sprite comics were very aware that they were about video games, this was where they sometimes got very meta. It started with humorous observation—hey, isn’t it funny that Link goes around breaking into people’s houses and smashing their pots? But sometimes, it grew into more serious commentary. Is Mega Man trapped in a never-ending cycle, doomed to fight the same fight against the same mad scientist until the end of time? Is it worth it, being a video game hero?

Enter Homestuck. What I’ve been dancing around this whole time is:

Homestuck is a sprite comic…because Homestuck is a video game.

Or more specifically, Homestuck’s a comic about a video game called SBURB, where the lines between the game and the comic about the game blur as characters wrestle with the narratives around them, both those encoded into the game and those encoded into our expectations.

Homestuck presents the fantasy of many a sprite comic maker: I get to go on heroic quests, I get to change the world and become a god. I get to be part of the video game. And then it asks the same question certain sprite comics were beginning to ask:

Is it worth it, to be that hero?

I want to tell you about my second favorite sprite comic, a comic called Kid Radd.

Kid Radd distinguished itself from other sprite comics of the time by being a completely original production. Its sprites looked like they could be from a variety of NES and SNES-era video games, but they were all done from scratch, and the games they purported to represent were all fictional. Kid Radd used animations with original music, and sometimes interactive, clickable games, to tell its story. It also used all sorts of neat programming tricks to make it load faster on the internet of the early 2000s, which was great—unfortunately, these same techniques made it break as web technology evolved, something Homestuck fans in 2019 can definitely relate to. The good news is, fans have maintained a dedicated and reformatted archive where the comics can still be seen and downloaded.

Kid Radd’s premise is that video game characters themselves are conscious and alive—more specifically, their sprites. Sprites developed consciousness as human beings projected personality and identity onto them, remaining aware of their status as video game constructs while also seeking to be something more. The story follows the titular Kid Radd, at first in the context of his own game, commenting on the choices the player controlling him. He must endure every death, every strange decision along the way to save his girlfriend Sheena. Then the story expands into a larger context as Radd, Sheena, and many other video game characters are released onto the internet as data. They try to find their own identities and build a society for themselves, but struggle with the tendency toward violence that games have programmed into them. The story culminates in an honestly moving moment where Radd confronts the all-powerful creators of their reality—human beings.

It’s a very good comic.

The first sprite comic authors wanted to fuse real life with video games. Later sprite comic authors decided to ask: what would that really mean? Would it be painful? Would you suffer? Would you find a way to make your life meaningful all the same? Despite the limitations of sprite comics, these ideas had incredible potential, and in works like Kid Radd, they flourished.

Homestuck is heir to that legacy.

It takes the questions Kid Radd was asking, and asks them in new ways. It tries to understand, on an even deeper level, how the rules of video games shape our own minds and give us ways to understand ourselves.

At its heart, Homestuck is a sprite comic, and it might just be the greatest of them all.

EPILOGUE

I’ve seen a lot of good discussion recently on how Homestuck preserves a certain era of the internet like a time capsule: its culture, its technology, its assumptions, its memes.

I think sprite comics, too, are part of the culture that created Homestuck. Do I think Hussie spent the early 2000s recoloring Mega Man sprites? No, probably not. But what I do know is that sprite comics were part of his world. The first webcomic cartoonists came of age alongside an odd companion, the weird, overly sincere, dorky little sibling that was sprite comics. Like them or hate them, you couldn’t escape them. They were there.

And maybe a certain cartoonist saw a kind of potential in them, in the same way he summoned Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from the depths of bad gamer culture.

Or maybe he just knew, as some sprite comic authors did, that the time was right for their kind of story.

On a personal level—Homestuck came along right when I needed it.

Around 2009, the bubble that was sprite comics finally burst. People were getting tired of them, or growing out of them, and blown-up sprites no longer looked so good on modern monitors.

I was more than a little heartbroken. I’d enjoyed Bob and George, read my fill of Mega Man generica, and fallen utterly in love with Kid Radd. I’d been working on my own sprite comic for a long time out of a sense that there was huge potential in them that we were only scratching the surface of. I’d dreamed of maybe someday doing something as amazing as the best of them did. But I was watching that world disappear. I had to admit to myself that my work wasn’t going to continue to find an audience. That I could live with. But it was painful to think that the potential I sensed, the feats of storytelling I wanted to see in the world, would never be realized.

And then, in the fall of 2010, a friend linked me to a comic that broke all the rules, that mixed animation, games, music, images and chatlogs. A comic that crafted its own sprites, just as Kid Radd did, and remixed its images into an ever-expanding web of associations and meanings. A comic that took on the idea of living inside a video game with relish and turned it into a gorgeous meditation on escaping the ideas and systems that control us.

That this comic would exist, let alone that it would succeed. That it would become one of the most popular creations of all time, that it would surpass other webcomics and break out into anime conventions and the real world, that it would become such a cultural juggernaut, to the point where it’s impossible to imagine an internet without Homestuck—

I can’t even put into words how happy that makes me. It’s the reason I’m still writing essays about Homestuck nearly eight years after I found it.

And it’s why Homestuck will always be my favorite sprite comic.

-Ari

[Notes: The image of the kids came from the ever-useful MSPA Wiki—please support and aid in their efforts to provide a good source of info about Homestuck! They need more support these days than ever.

For more on Homestuck’s place as a continuation of the zeitgeist of early 2000s experimental webcomics, this article by Sam Keeper at Storming the Ivory Tower is excellent and insightful.

Thanks for reading, y’all.]

#homestuck analysis #homestuck #homestuck's influences #hypercomics #understanding homestuck #sprite comics #internet culture

[dragimal]

ok this is like. MAJORLY self-indulgent, self-psychoanalyzing rambling so I’m putting it under a readmore, but my thoughts have been spinning in circles over this for like. practically my whole teen/adult life. and I just need to put it down somewhere

idc if anyone wants to read this or respond or anything, again I’m just basically trying to vomit out my thoughts until something makes sense

so like. anxiety. I know I have it, that’s the ONE Problems Disorder I’m 100% certain I’ve got, to whatever degree it matters

but that’s kinda the thing-- to WHAT degree, and DOES that matter? at what point can I say it’s a legitimate part of me, and at what point is it something negligible and unobtrusive?

b/c here’s the other thing-- anxiety is, in fact, a strong aspect of my self-image. it’s something I associate strongly with as a character trait, and I tend to relate to ‘meek’ characters

I know part of it is a defense mechanism. I had to make myself small, being raised by my mom. she’s a whole other rant, but essentially she’s a very defensively prideful person, and any attempt to steer a conversation towards your own accomplishments/needs/interests is met with a blank look and a swift topic change back to herself. (and god forbid u bring up her faults, that would guarantee manipulative guilt-tripping at best, screaming and crying at worst)

but there’s also another convoluted level to this defense mechanism. I recognized at a young age, on some subconscious level, that pride was/is my mom’s greatest downfall. so I internalized that as, “pride (and even more broadly, confidence) is bad and and a danger to those around you” 

not to be Homestuck on main, but Dave’s first conversation with Dirk struck me on a level of personal experience that few other pieces of media have ever hit, particularly this bit

obviously the physical aspect of this abuse is beyond me, but the emotional manipulation, and Bro subsequently ruining a generally positive concept (the concept of heroism, in his case) hits incredibly close to home

my mom exuded confidence and always told me that confidence in myself over all else would save me, but she ultimately ruined confidence for me. I know there will always be this underlying thread of fear that if I’m not afraid-- that if I allow myself confidence-- that I will become like her. that I’ll hurt people with my pride

now this is all shit that I’ve known abt myself for a long time, and I know I’ve even mentioned some of this in passing before. but here’s what’s fucking me up nowadays: what happens when you cling to anxiety like this? what happens when you craft a disorder into your personality? where does subconscious reaction end and deliberate masking begin?

b/c here’s the other thing: I don’t truly hate myself. not rly-- not on the level I would say is dangerous or clinical. some of it may very well be real, but I definitely play it up. like play-acting at under-confidence

and it’s not like I don’t have pride either. I have tons of pride for various things I do or accomplish, namely academic studies, crafting/art, and just like working standards in general. when I can eloquently describe/argue my point, or accurately craft something to my inner image, I feel very real pride

but pride hurts. I feel pride, but equal to that is the shame I feel at feeling pride in the first place. it’s genuinely painful at times to accept a compliment without argument NOT because I necessarily disagree (tho there are definitely times where I DO actually disagree), but to accept a compliment is to admit I have pride in the thing being complimented, and THAT is unacceptable

and it’s not like my fear is unfounded either. I’ve hurt ppl w/ my pride before-- and this isn’t my anxiety making me self-critical, I KNOW this for a FACT. it simply comes with the territory of all that “gifted child” bullshit in school. yeah I was one of those. thankfully not a very outspoken student (the anxiety in my younger days was a lot more real and visceral), but I do still distinctly remember moments where my academic pride gave me an... inflated sense of presence over those that didn’t get the material, I guess u could say

I know there were times I made ppl feel small, due to my pride. hell, times I got overly, fearfully defensive of my knowledge or artistic skill to the point of talking over others and making them feel stupid. no one deserves to feel small, and it fucking tears me up to know that I did that to ppl. that I still knee-jerk react in that way sometimes, even now, and it still slips out

and isn’t that just proof that I can’t appropriately handle pride? that I’m not mature enough for confidence?

and it’s not even all about making myself small for others’ sake. half of it is this incredibly selfish knowledge that not living up to my own standards will fucking kill me if I let it

I feel like every ‘gifted kid’ experiences a chain events that starts at, “wow I’m so smart, I’m great at every subject!” and ends at, “christ I’m fucking garbage at literally everything.” we’re taught that success is in being able to do something well the first time (or at least quickly and with little effort), so if we’re not immediately good at something, we shut down b/c we were never taught that success is actually in the effort at the task

this has been talked to death by others so I don’t want to bother w/ it too long, but the critical thing to note is that there’s there’s this eventual sense of defeat in everything you do, when ur brought up w/ this mindset

I used to be somewhat competitive in certain things when I was younger-- the rare sports I played when I was RLY young, academics obviously, etc. or at least, competitive with my own personal standards, if not necessarily against other ppl. but every failure and mistake made me so upset that the angst was like. genuinely dangerous to my health

I used to play golf on a team in middle school, and every time I whiffed it I would get SO angry at myself that my dad literally told me that that level of upset would kill me someday and that I rly needed to stop

so I took that to heart and just. stopped caring

every time I whiffed it after that point, I was just like, “ah, well, what can ya do ¯|_(ツ)_/¯ ” this attitude definitely lowered my blood pressure, but it also rly killed my motivation to like... improve. b/c the thought of even trying to improve brought up all these feelings abt trying to meet my own standards of success, and how much it would hurt to fail

when u don’t set any standards u gotta meet, then when u fail u don’t rly fail, y’know? “well I didn’t even try, so it’s actually fine”

obviously I couldn’t give less of a shit abt golf anymore, but sometimes I wonder if my cold-turkey drop in confidence played a part in killing the interest itself? I know that sports and physical activity were never rly my thing in the first place, but did I perhaps give up so hard that I convinced myself that I didn’t even like those things in the first place?

I know it happened w/ academics at least: start to struggle with math? now I hate math. chemistry? that sucks too. etc etc

I kinda side-tracked here w/ all the talk of ‘gifted kid’ stuff, my point is that I have a vested interest in humbling myself-- to actively craft the persona of a meek, humble person

and I’ve been wondering if that, in and of itself, is manipulative. like, is it manipulative to let others think I rly lack THAT much in self-confidence? that I rly hate myself that much?

it certainly feels that way when I knee-jerk reject a compliment abt something I do, in fact, feel pride in-- when the shame at that pride is too much. but my friends don’t know it’s that reactive shame-- they think it’s that I rly don’t have confidence in that thing

but god, how do I even explain this fucking tangled, convoluted bullshit over my reaction to compliments? that I have to be small or I’ll hurt someone? that I do feel pride, and that’s the problem? what does that even MEAN to someone outside my own head??

and that’s not even to get into whether that manipulation is like, actually some subconscious tactic to get MORE compliments! am I fishing? when I make a post like this, am I actually just fishing for more compliments? is that what I’m doing??

I feel like I’m running in circles here, nipping at my own goddamned heels abt pride and shame and what is real and acting and does it even matter if nobody gets hurt?

do people get hurt? ppl get hurt when I allow myself pride, it’s happened before. but now I’m realizing that my self-hate may hurt ppl too-- my self-deprecation often goes too far, and it hurts the ppl who care abt me

how do I explain that self-deprecation is safe? a shield to hold back my pride? hell, it’s more accurate to say it’s a safe way to EXPRESS my pride in a way that ppl don’t detect. I acknowledge my faults, and if I frame it in a socially-acceptably comedic way, I get the pride of making someone laugh! it’s SAFE pride!

but is it? but is it, when it hurts ppl to hear me self-hate?

is there any way to feel pride safely?

I’ve never thought of myself as an actor, or as someone who can lie well (or at all). but can I lie, when I also believe the lie? is it a lie that I have anxiety? that I hate myself? that I have no confidence?

how much of me is real? how much does that hurt others? how do I carve out the parts of me that hurt others how do I make myself smaller in ways that are genuine and lasting and don’t hurt people??

I want to be small. I like being small. but am I small? or am I playing at being small?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

(cashing in on that safe comedic validation babeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy)

#long post #shut up ashley #also @ my friends who may read this: #if it feels like I'm vagueing I'm not like. trying to do that #it's just genuinely easier for me to lay this out in an open format #rather than bring it up in a conversation #I have no idea what the FUCK I'm talking abt right now

[theorynexus]

This would seem to bring us to Post Number 60, the 62nd post of this series, if you count the decimalized ones.

LAST TIME ON MEAT EPILOGUE It would seem we are returning to John and Terezi, this time--- wooo!~   Apparently, he looks pretty bad. This is unfortunate. On the other hand:  YES, MEAT EPILOGUE CHAPTER/SECTION 6!!!

Hey, don’t try to shame John for being the sub in this situation. It’s not like he has experience with that kind of thing (not that it’s something generally to be ashamed of: I’m just saying that it is something he seems to be somewhat embarrassed about, and his inexperience meant that it wasn’t exactly by choice on his part--- which is not to suggest that Terezi molested him in any way).  Aaaannnd Trolls (especially highbloods) are supposed to be particularly vicious in nature, generally, right? It makes a whole lot of sense that that would extend to the bedroom, as well.

... But yeah, that doesn’t help with his health. He was already doing pretty badly, just after the surgery. He didn’t really need that sort of mess tacked on afterward.     Oh, and... why “mysteriously” sticky, you derp? XD

And I am glad you were kidding.   (That slapping was very interesting to hear. Hmmm.)      Yeah, him being confused and uncertain about it also feels just about right~ ~~~ On a random note, I am reading this just after going through the memo where Karkat, John, and Dave were talking about romance/the propagation of the species, and KK insisted that John and Dave stay away from troll women.    That makes this all wonderfully hilarious, in retrospect. 

Huh. I’ve never seen “cuckold” used in that sort of context before.  Indeed, this is quite the question, though.  Could John Egbert handle a blackrom? A caligionous one, at that?   A very hard question, that is.   I’m not sure he’s emotionally capable of giving himself into the kinds of hate and playful ribbing that would be constantly involved in that kind of relationship, if healthy.  I suspect it might have been just a particularly violent flushed thing, though.  We’ll see.

Pffft. Slithers.   That said:  Huh. I was not expecting that turn. Let’s see where this goes~

Oh my gosh, Dirk, would you stop being such a downer? XD I think this is indeed very, very cute~     Soul-shattering is a weird sort of term to use there, for a normal person. Seems right for Dirk, though. He understands the nuances of how shattering can be more or less than a whole break.

That is practically the definition of a subjective judgment.  I know you’re being ironic and all, but come on, man, that’s just base as heck. But yeah, I think he might have it bad, indeed. 

The question here is, “Does he mean to suggest that Andrew Hussie is God to him, or does he mistakenly [in the context of Homestuck, which has given no distinct evidence for it] believe that there was a God that he actually usurped?”   “replaced” is a very interesting and useful word, here, given the working interpretation that I have is indeed that he is interpreting AH as God and likely believes him to have abandoned Homestuck, thus removed himself from his directorial capacity over its narrative, until he managed to take over.

WHY ARE NEITHER OF YOU THINKING OF RETCON-PORTING IN TO RESCUE HER FROM HER DEMISE BEFORE IT HAPPENS?!?!?!? But yeah, you really should get home and recover first, if it is possible.

Whoops. Not a good sign. Noooot a good sign.

The Power of Three is a very strong thing.

Here we gooooooo!!!~    The first time (I think) that I’ve continued a post beyond one page!!!

No.  Also, probably Jake English. He has strange effects on people.

Wow, someone’s a bit miffed.  That said: Hooray, acknowledgement by the narrative! :’D

I do not appreciate your repeated suggestions that Jake is dumb! That said: No. No, I do not want to engage in wanton promiscuity with such a man.  I am, to put it quite simply, not interested in meaningless sexual encounters with people I am not deeply connected with. Even if I had such a bond with Jake English, I would not be inclined to engage in such activities. Quite frankly, I am not exactly partial to the type of equipment he sports. As for the political side of things... well, that’s complicated. Yeah, people can indeed become far too energized by the attractiveness of candidates and those associated with them, rather than their substance.  Maybe that’s the case, here.   I’d like to think that the actual results of the election will in fact prove people wrong. Maybe there will be exit polls that we can see excerpts of to judge things for certain.   I don’t know~

FINALLY, SOMEONE FRICKING ADMIRES THE SUFFERER!!!

Eh?  I mean, I guess even Dave and Karkat were acknowledging the possibility of a misstep. We’ll see what happens.

Heee’s probably gonna try to sabotage this, isn’t he?   Also, I wish I were more familiar with human muscle anatomy.

“The Kibosh” is a good phrase to use.  That said:  ***snerk***    It’s like Karkat has wedding day jitters. XD

Man, it is annoying how spiteful you are toward him, Dirk. Can you give him a break for just a second?   I mean, you probably caused the sweating to begin with.

Wow. Such dudebroism, which I just suddenly realized/-membered Dirk was supposed to slightly embody, somewhat.  (I blame Gamebro Magazine, and the sharp contrast between the diction there and Dirk’s writing style.) That is a funny description, though, the brain-tonguing.  Also, gosh, Jake is nervous.

Oh, hey, I think Dave’s going to finally get a feel for the Narrative, and maybe end up confronting Dirk.  That will be incredibly interesting.

Wow, this is getting to him.  It’s like he’s made of sugar, and someone’s just begun to drizzle water on him.  Or maybe made of witch.

***lip curls up in a snarl***    Dave better make this quick.  I am somehow edging on more angry at this Unreliable Narrator than I was before Alt!Calliope took over...!

Well, that’s, umm... interesting. Particularly, the cultivated Obfuscating Stupidity bit. But moreso the fact that Dirk will acknowledge he’s smarter than he seems.

Yes... I think I most definitely am more furious than ever at this piece of garbage, now.  After the sweet taste of freedom that Jake was finally able to feel, and the burst of confidence he’d found in it, you pour all of this blithering waste on him?   Jane was trying to use him!   I’m sure she hasn’t loved him for a long time, and even then, I Jake never toyed with her heart intentionally, I’m sure!   Grrrrr...!

Honestly, though, he brings up a complicated and intriguing question.  Jake has definitely been used and abused throughout his history, and at least part of his recent activity to exploit his Hope-y Assets must have been Dirk’s doing, but how much of his sexually promiscuous revelry has actually been something that he would not and did not choose, say, as a result of his drinking problem, rather than him reveling in his identity as a   

WORLD RENOWNED EXPLORER-NATURALIST-TREASURE HUNTER-ARCHEOLOGIST-SCIENTIST-ADVENTURER-BIG GAME HUNTER-BILLIONAIRE EXTRAORDINAIRE 

 just as your pre-Scratch self was?  Regardless of the level of culpability he actually has in the matters of his life, he is nowhere near deserving of this kind of shaming, and Dirk should be ashamed of himself for this kind of disgusting behavior which he is almost certainly engaging in specifically to throw Jake off.

Oh, also, victim blaming is BS, and the answer is an unequivocal, “You, you insincere, megalomaniacal, self-justifying dirtbag.”

***is so fricking ANGRY that it is taking a great deal of willpower not to release a roar of primal fury and break my hand on my computer screen*** THIS IS NOT HOW HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS WORK!!! THAT IS NOT HOW SOMEONE WHO IS ACTUALLY WILLING TO SUBMIT TO YOU LIKE THAT WILL BEHAVE, YOU FFF---     ***RRRRRGH!!!***

YOU HAD BETTER NOT FRICKING LISTEN TO THIS GARBAGE, JAKE!!! RESIST HIS INFLUENCE, AND---         Huh. The thought just occurred to me that both Dave and Jake could be interpreted as stand-ins for Simon, if Dirk were Kamina (despite how different Kamina’s personality is from Dirk’s), because Simon really seems like he could be interpreted as a Page of Hope too, for some reason (but curse my ADHD! XwX)   ---AND DEFEAT HIM WITH YOUR HOPE BUBBLE!!!

...  At least he apologized. For what that is worth.    This is going to seem so obvious to Dave, though.  Obviously, he isn’t going to kill his Bro, but... well, let’s see how things turn out. Hmm. Also, this is hilarious insofar as it derailed the press conference and probably took away much of the steam that could have been generated for the Karkat/Vantas ticket by Jake’s endorsement, but it doesn’t exactly do all that much for Jane Crocker’s side, either.  It was a very sickening and weird spectacle, but I am not sure how it will actually play out in their favor?   Seems like it might cause Jane’s side trouble, and might cause tensions between them.

I still can never consistently remember what “smh” means. But yes, “HICCUP???” is right.   STOP HIM, DAVE!!!  

TACKLE HIM AWAY INTO THE FUTURE!!!

Realistically, he should have no problem with speed at all. Time power shown a la cheating with Jade in games should let him get there instantly, and even his flash step that he has shown since before entering the Game should allow him to get there on time.      Man, Dirk is a prick about manipulating things. Especially since we are going to see things derailed and shift to another setting, right when Jake is supposedly going to make the biggest contribution he’ll ever make.  WHICH DOESN’T EVEN FRICKING MAKE SENSE!!!

#Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Liveblog #Rage #Dirk Strider #Evil #Piece of Garbage

[waitineedaname]

tell me about the strilondes (i would go anonymous, but it wouldn't be a secret anyway)

HELL YEAH LET’S GO

Rose

How I feel about this character

she’s extremely good!! somehow kind of underrated despite being one of the main characters? she reminds me of someone I would’ve gravitated towards when I was her age lol we would’ve been friends in like eighth grade

All the people I ship romantically with this character

I mean Kanaya, obviously. Can’t go wrong with rosemary. also maybe Vriska but only in highly specific spades circumstances

My non-romantic OTP for this character

John/June!!!! their interactions in the early parts of Homestuck are so fucking funny, and they seem to really bring out the best in each other

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t really have any spicy takes on Rose... I’ll just go with something funny: she’s the most chaotic of the strilondes. Yes, she has more of a brain to mouth filter than some other people in her family, but her impulse decisions are Big and Dramatic. this is the girl who argued with her brother about going on a suicide mission, lost the argument, and then knocked him unconscious so she could go on the suicide mission anyway. what a woman.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

GIVE! HER! HER WIFE! am I talking about the meat epilogues? am I talking about how we didn’t get rosemary in pesterquest? BOTH BABY, I WANT ROSEMARY

Dave

How I feel about this character

that there is my SON. I would die for this boy. he’s one of those characters that I liked upon first meeting, and then he only got better from there

All the people I ship romantically with this character

I will talk endlessly about how good his relationship with Karkat is, don’t even test me. I could maybe get behind him and John too? It’s one of those ships that I don’t actively ship but it’s cute when I see it

My non-romantic OTP for this character

pale John and Dave is oh so very good!!! I shipped that before I even knew what moirallegiance was and only knew it was kinda like QPRs. also, his familial relationship with Roxy makes me so happy

My unpopular opinion about this character

again, I don’t really have any spicy takes on him? uhhh this is really only because I’ve come across a couple really old fics on ao3, and folks. this boy is not cool. he THINKS he’s cool and he PRETENDS he’s cool, but he’s really a BIG DWEEB. incredibly awkward. never been cool a day in his life. this hasn’t been an unpopular opinion in a while but eh

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I would’ve liked to have seen him interact with some other trolls! like Sollux or somebody, or even more interaction with Kanaya! his conversations with her were very funny and I wish there was More

Dirk

How I feel about this character

garbage boy stink man. I love him dearly. he’s so easy to pick on and I don’t know why, but he’s so much fun to bully relentlessly even though I love him as a character

All the people I ship romantically with this character

John! I didn’t ship dirkjohn at first, and then I read Romancing The Spitting Image Of Your Ex and it made me cry so here we are

My non-romantic OTP for this character

ROXY!!!!! they are pale and good. also his friendship with Jane is super underrated!

My unpopular opinion about this character

I Do Not Like d/rkj/ke. both because of aro jake reasons, and because it just? wasn’t good for either of them? they’re just not romantically compatible, and that’s FINE. they can be FRIENDS. FOR FUCKS SAKE.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I’d love to see how his initial interactions with Kanaya and Karkat went. he was probably like “oh shit these are Dave and Rose’s partners, I should do the older brother thing and intimidate them” and then they both decimate him

Roxy

How I feel about this character

MY LOVE! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. FUCK. GOD THEY’RE SO GOOD. sometimes I think about Roxy too much and my heart explodes

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Jane, Callie, or Jane AND Callie! Also, I’ve seen some cute stuff with Jade and Terezi too. Roxy just has so much love to give :’)

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Dirk! and Jake! Roxy is a Pale Sorcerer, moirallegiance runs in their veins. also their dynamic with Hal is quite good, and of course I love them and Rose and Dave

My unpopular opinion about this character

not necessarily unpopular but definitely a hot take: Roxy and Terezi are objectively the best characters in homestuck. the COMPLEXITIES. the HUMOR. the STRENGTH. the FLAWS. homestuck peaked on page 1524 when Terezi first spoke, and then again on page 4156 when Roxy first spoke, and that’s just the facts

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I want them to talk. to more. trolls. pls. and also talking to John about the fact that the two of them (and half of Davepetasprite I guess) are the only ones left from their universe :(

#hs blogging #I love the strilondes..... #I don't have many unpopular opinions????? #except for the d*rkj*ke one LMAO #braveadrien #asks

[theorynexus]

Chapter 10 in the Ongoing Live Reaction Blog

Well, now. Good for her.   This feels like something that could be used to establish a proper timeline, if I could just remember what happened in those bloody... Instagram (?) pictures... .  Also:  Jake continues to embrace hope, distracting everyone with his manliness, as is the natural order of things.   I do not know how to feel about either of the relationships showcased here.  Specifically, it feels like both of them might be unhealthy, but there’s not enough displayed to judge for sure.   At least Jake isn’t the one being pressured into things, right now.

Of course she is. She’s the heiress to the Batterwitch. Obviously. 

Yeah, I’ve noticed humans are often Xenophobes too. It’s a very strange phenomenon.  But this is why it struck me as odd when John was thinking of them as celebrities, earlier. It is also why gods living among mortals in general is a dangerous proposition. It could potentially stifle greatness emerging from within the population, despite all the potential good that could be acquired via the intervention/aid/ingenuity of incredibly long-lived beings with super powers. That problem becomes worse when the gods in question are barely adults. Great Power coming with Great Responsibility has a correlate suggesting Great Irresponsibility among the Greatly Powerful results in Massive Tragedy and Horror. We’ll see how that will play out for Homestuck, I guess. Let’s hope for the best!

On the other hand:  HECK YEAH, KARKAT!!!   (I just really want him to have an important and leading role again. I loved what he was able to do during the trolls’ session with Aradia’s help, and I missed him being important. [No, it didn’t feel like his role in the fights against Lord English, or against Clover were enough to really earn that feeling of role fulfillment~] I’ve always been a sucker for his personality.)

I am just... extremely happy that this is the case. It almost brings tears to my eyes.  (Not only that Karkat is loved, but also that Dave recognizes all the great leadership potential within him, even despite all the garbage programming he’s shoved down his own throat following the end of the Trolls’ session.)

Ouch. Low blow on two notes:  Not only the puppet mastery comment, bringing back all the cringe memories of his ninja brother madness, but also calling him a coward after all the struggling Dave has had related to that conception of himself. “ or talking about the top six hundred stupid things Karkat saw earlier that day because he made his intrepid annual decision to go outside. “ How can something be so cute and horrible at the same time?   I mean this specifically regarding the possibly hyperbolic annual trip, not the semi-cuddling, by the way.

This. It is also sad and beautiful. *shakes my head and quietly laughs, because I knew that Dave would bring up Obama, here*      Just so fricking ridiculous and sortof beautiful, after he tries to pretend that he was purely thinking about their current Earth.  I love how neurotic and silly he can be, at times.

It’s funny because it doesn’t even matter what side of the aisle you’re on. There is a horribly great sum of ironic humor to be derived from this. It’s almost painful!

Yes. As long as you are friends with a god and are one of the ancestral heroes of your no-longer-dead race, YOU TOO can become President!    (Which is a horrible joke, considering I secretly aspire to high office, myself.) ... Did we really just have a massive time skip, demonstrating Karkat/limebloods are extremely long-lived, or was that “thousands of years” referring to things before these creatures were transplanted to the new Earth? HOW THE HECK DID THE MAYOR DIE?!?!?! ***rewatches the Credits***    Oh, well that time travel explains some things. I am going to continue, then~ Wow, that Dirk Pinata was quite beautifully cut down in the prime of its youth. I approve. OH!  Thaaat’s where John went Trickster Mode.  That makes much more sense than the Easter Egg being canonized. ...  I just realized that John’s reaction to his black hole dreams is sortof weird, given his conversation with Terezi, who’s going out and investigating things around it at the time. I do appreciate the consistency of Karkat’s frustration with Jake’s butt. Thus John’s malaise starts at 18.  I suppose this makes sense, in a coming of age story.  He had no endgame plans, so it’s a bit harder for him, maybe.   At least he doesn’t have to abandon some massive project he had in the works, or anything like that. (Kanaya and Rose look very cute in front of that mother grub together~   As is the picture of all the chess people coming together to celebrate John’s birthday.) ***wonders if indeed the ten people other than Caliborn are John’s 10 closest friends***   If so, has Terezi indeed returned, then? Or perhaps Calliope has replaced her on that list, for some reason?  It is indeed a difficult mystery to untangle, to be sure. I love Caliborn’s “COME TO MY DARK CARNIVAL” picture. He just looks so excitable and strangely almost cute.   Also: Hooray for knowing where that was in the timeline, now!

OH NOOOOOO!!!~            (It’s a good thing I chose to confront him.  ;3)

#Homestuck Analysis #Homestuck Liveblog #Backlogging #Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Epilogue