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rosemary-is-in-pesterquest · 3 years

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HS2's themes are fuckin wack crap cuz like... idk it all starts with the epilogues, right? the thing that the epilogues are trying to say is that all conflict that the characters face within the narrative is there because the audience cast their gaze upon this story and demanded entertainment. something has to happen on the stage to keep us watching, thus, it is the audience's fault that the characters suffer. but that's bullshit for so many reasons. for one thing, it ignores the role of the author. audience demand doesn't force an author's hands to write... that's a decision that the author made. we could've lived with nothing at all.

and conflict comes in many flavors. some stories hardly have any conflict at all. the whole iyashikei genre exists, like, I think we're well past understanding that cynicism, tragedy, and destruction are not the only forces that can drive a narrative. "conflict" is not the only reason for a story to be told. once again, stories tell us as much about the author as their audience. the kind of story an author deems worthy of telling is just as relevant to consider as the kind of story an audience deems worthy of attention.

and even in conflict driven stories... it matters what the conflict is, who wins, how, and why. as a simple example, when the conflict is a battle between good and evil, good wins, it does so by way of the power of friendship, and the reason it is presented this way is to promote the idea that you should be kind and help others... that's a story with a purpose. obviously this is like, children's cartoon level simple, and a story can be written to say different or more complex things, but I should always be able to ask those questions and come up with an answer.

if, as an author, Hussie wanted to accuse his audience of being culpable in the suffering of his characters, he would at least have to present the reader with a meaningful choice. and at first glance, it would almost seem like he did. meat and candy, even by their naming convention, seem as though they are giving you the option to consume a light or dark tale. but even in the names, there is a seed of judgement. Hussie has described the concept of a narrative containing both "meat" and "candy" in terms of story content, wherein meat is anything heavy in terms of plot or drama, and candy is anything that provides levity as a counterbalance, such as jokes or feel good fluff. these categories are already identified as "substance" vs. "a lack of substance" which places value on the cynical, dark route as being more truthful... conflating cynicism with realism.

and already I can see making a case for the idea that neither route is legitimate, because no story should subsist on just one or the other... both need to be at play for the story to be balanced. and you could even argue that the lampooning of the epilogues' legitimacy was the point... that they were supposed to be outside of canon and regarded as illegitimate all along. but then not only does that negate the author's ability to let the audience choose the kind of story they're participating in, but the story itself doesn't play by its own rules.

does candy truly read like some fluffy pandering fanservice filler, the way one might expect it to? and is meat totally devoid of any levity, while focusing only on plot machinations and/or the characters' dramatic downward spiral? I would argue that, even though the consensus seems to be that both routes are equally dismal, neither even gets dark enough to live up to that end of the bargain either. the execution is messy... the concept doesn't hold up.

and what of the initial concept? that the audience's observation of a story forces the characters to enact a conflict for the sake of our entertainment? is that really what's going on here? from the initial pitch, you could already tell that the answer was no. nobody asked for this. and so we cast our apparently destructive audience gaze onto Homestuck 2.

but there, we find another curveball. the story is... almost becoming self aware? in that it casts a character in the role of the author, and also identifies him firmly as the villain. but see, this is still a blame shift. and maybe that would've been less obvious if Andrew Hussie had not introduced himself as a character inside of his own web comic throughout the original narrative. the true author is already here.

the villain of homestuck was never the audience, and it was never a fictional character. if we're really shattering the 4th wall... if we're really ceasing our suspension of disbelief, pulling back the curtain, and acknowledging that these characters are fabricated, manipulated entities with real people behind the wheel, then there is only one conclusion we can possibly come to. the author has control over the narrative... no one else. and the things the author chooses to say with the platform they've made for themselves? those things are on them. what are we to understand about the author, as his audience?

this is why people are looking past the story entirely and engaging with the creative team, for better or for worse. if you break your story enough, it won't work anymore. and when the audience finds it in shambles, completely unusable as a story... you know, the thing it was intended to be? they might actually look to the people who broke it and ask them why they did that. it was a nice story. it performed several functions that people actually enjoyed. was dismantling it like this really the most fulfilling thing they could've done with it?

and I'll tell you another thing. part of why people take it so personally is because, just like how Andrew Hussie, the homestuck character, was a stand-in for Andrew Hussie, the human being... many of the characters in homestuck were stand-ins for us. John Egbert was for people who had an obsessive nerdy interest in movies, Rose was for people who wrote fanfiction, Nepeta was for people who ship characters a lot, she and Terezi were for people who RP, and also... Dave was for people who were trying to act cooler than they felt, Jade was for people who were lonely, Kanaya was for people who wanted to help people and be accepted, Vriska was for people who were hard to love and felt judged for that.

who do these writers think they're messing with?

and I just want to make it clear that I'm not condoning any kind of harassment of them, or anything like that. ultimately, my point here is that we are not our effigies. and in the same way that an author can't blame shift onto a fictional character, a person cannot claim the direction of a fictional story as a reason to do real harm.

but homestuck was always unique in that it spoke very directly to its audience. when Hussie added real pieces of us to his fake people, he had a powerful vehicle for the messages that he wanted us to hear. lots of stories have characters that are written to be relatable, but you'd be hard pressed to find ones that feel quite so specific as the cast of homestuck. to our era. to our humor. to the values of people growing up in our online cultural circumstances.

if this specific author is going to choose to act like a villain, at least in the small-scale context of this comic, then what is that setting us up to be? maybe nothing so presumptuous as a hero... maybe just like, Dave of Guy, y'know? but Dave made normal a pretty heroic thing to be... I think it's up to us to just be normal and have normal fun, in spite of the shit show. regular old homestuck already said all the valuable stuff it was gonna. for my part, I'm just gonna take that and run off with it. ignoring HS2 doesn't make it go away, but paying attention to it doesn't make it good either... so I guess whatever.

that's the themes. the themes are just a big "so what" shrug. most complicated way to say "who cares" I've ever seen.

This is a really good analysis

#long post /#I should probably start using that tag just in case it clogs up people's feeds

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keeper-not-hero · 2 years

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For the ask game: Homestuck perhaps? ^_^

Favorite character: Oh gosh that's hard to choose... Kanaya or Vriska for completely different reasons, but I can't pick between the two.

Least Favorite character: Vriska out of principle, but actually Jane. Most boring of the alpha kids (or was it beta? GOD i need to re-read it), also generally just... kind of meh? I prefer grandma jane, honestly--

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Rosemary, Davekat, Mailwoman and Mayor, Calliope x Roxy, Vrisrezi.

Character I find most attractive: Vriska. Robotic limbs, a cool eyepatch, trans, and a #girlboss for all the wrong reasons.

Character I would marry: Kanaya is probably the most stable person of the entire cast to marry, so her or John!

Character I would be best friends with: Good fucking question I think I'm too annoying and docile for anyone of the cast to actually like me enough to consider me a bestie... maybe Roxy. Hopefully Roxy--

a random thought: wish we got more of the midnight crew tbh and the dancestors were kind of... unecessary? I prefered the Ancestors being vague honestly--

An unpopular opinion: Is the dancestors being unecessary thing unpopular? If not, I think just that I don't really mind the retcon. People lose their minds over it, it was kind of a nothingburger plotwise but hey, displaying things in the story we'd never see otherwise and character moments, hooray.

My Canon OTP: How can you make me choose between Rosemary and Vrisrezi, you monster. And Davekat. And calliroxy. And--

My Non-canon OTP: Solkat probably? Even though I already prefer Aradia X sollux that's the only non-canon OTP I really enjoy or think about at all.

Most Badass Character: No other piece of fiction will top Terezi drawing the outline of where her body would fall before fucking dying on top of it. Also just Terezi in general.

Most Epic Villain: Vriska. :^) NAH it's Jack. English is fun and spooky and all but god I love Jack Noir.

Pairing I am not a fan of: I dunno, I like most of them. (i am not looking at HS^2 therefore janeXjake is not a thing :) )

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): I feel like Vriska became too much of a goody two shoes therapist queen at the end, or at least she did it too quickly? She kinda lost her edge during the meteor retcon era, I feel like she should've remained an unlikeable bastard who bit the bullet and did bullshit because she saw the bigger picture and, though she loves her friends, cares more about pulling the W of... y'know... saving reality-- Also Feferi should've had a WAY bigger role but the cast is bloated enough as it is, tbh.

Favourite Friendship: I was thinking about it and pretty much any friendship with John seems functional, fun, and pretty well balanced. So all of the friendships he has! :D

Character I most identify with: oh god i have to give myself a kin uhhh Rose? i guess I try my best to play therapist, am very lightly into occult stuff and am an absolute nerd who hates mages despite pretty much always playing a mage slightly to the left--

Character I wish I could be: Kanaya. Vampire? Tall? Horns??? Pretty???? A girl????? yes please.

#oh good lord this was long #homestuck

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homestuckexamination · 4 years

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What do you think about the characters becoming who they are in epilogues and HS2 like Dirk, Jane, etc.

For them, as people, it’s a step in the wrong direction. Dirk succumbed to the multiplicity of Bad Selves he’d been trying to fight back against for years due to Bullshit Ultimate Ascension Shenanigans. Jane fell for toxic systems of old Earth, mixed with a good slathering of biases stemming from subliminal influences and a wrong reconciliation with her Aspect that Maids go through. They’re not irredeemably evil, though. Dirk is afraid to show weakness, doubts and fear and tries to cover it up with a mean brand of narcissism. Jane pushes away her doubts through sheer stubbornness and doubling down on what she’s doing through emotional outbursts. They’ve gone really far, SPECIALLY Candy Jane, but also they don’t mark an unchangeable and inherent evil in their characters, just a bad road taken, a lack of communication with the people they used to care about. It’s painful to see them fall for their worst flaws.

As characters though it’s kind of really cool for me, I actually love Dirk’s verbosity and his justifications for his actions, while embracing the role of the Villain, and Jane going off the deep end and mirroring Condy’s ideals and Aesthetics, to the point of being called the Batterwitch? That’s fascinating to explore.

Other than them though, each character develops in different ways. Jade, isolated all her life, starts to crave excitement and action and other people, and I love love love love her new characterization personally, but you all know that. She’s made some major mistakes in Candy, yes, but I adore the... I don’t know. Open bluntness of her? Taking no shit attitude? All packaged into a still extremely-loving dog girl that adores her friends and family.

Rose, manipulated in Meat? Heart-wrenching, missing Kanaya but trying to justify ‘her own’ actions. In Candy? Spur of the moment decisions, past mistakes. Inability for foresight. But still a deep care for her friends, and now, the conflict with the wife whom she loves so much, but whose trust she’s betrayed and couldn’t DARE to tell her for over a decade, in fear of the retaliation. Unable to face the consequences. What a disaster of a woman, I love her.

Kanaya? Heart-broken, Rose taken away by Dirk in Candy, she sets out on a Galactic Quest, pinning over her, to get her back, rescue her. In Meat? A rebel leader, fighting for the freedom of Trolls, alongside her wife, and just having found about this major breach of trust. Angry, but trying to be understanding, a balancing act of high emotions, with knowing their love for each other has not faltered, but will need time to mend. The drama-

Dave and Karkat? Comfortable, domestic, in Meat, but complacent with the little pocket they have built for them, eventually pushed too far by Dirk, and deciding to take matters into their own hands before others can push them to it of their own accord. Actively dating, and searching for Rose, and Dirk. In Candy, lovers, split. Karkat cannot leave his race to suffer again, not like in Alternia. And he doesn’t want Dave and Jade to risk their lives. Dave, who keeps pinning after him, even with Jade by his side, Jade, who stays with him to cheer him up, because he lost Dirk, too, and knows it doesn’t work as a relationship, but can’t simply abandon him. And in the end, he just can’t, he succumbs to an offer from another Dirk, and finds catharsis in Other Iterations of Himself, led down a path of Narrative Relevance, but abandoning those he seemed to care so much about in the process.

Jake, oh poor Jake. He gets a rough deal, complacency, inaction, a lack of drive to push forward, he remains rather static. Dumped and manipulated by Dirk, in Meat, is left lost and aimless. Making bad choices in Candy, ending up in a loveless and abusive marriage, but eventually, oh, eventually, better late than never, takes his Kid from Jane, and stays by her side as a counter-spy attempting to outdo her. He hasn’t done much yet. But he’s in a fantastic position to actually show some drive for his family, and stop Jane from doing something even more awful.

John, depressive, isolated, fated to fight a fight he doesn’t want to and die in one Timeline, and stuck seeing a surreal and fake reality on the other. Aware that something is ever so slightly OFF with Candy, it consumes him, as the Heir of Breath he is, detaches himself once more from those he loves- But finds catharsis thanks to Jake, the drive to actually talk things out. Revelations, introspection, the slow return to form of the Protagonist, the realization that there may be more in them than they ever thought there was.

Roxy... The exploration of their gender. In Meat, leaning transmasc, non-binary, trying something that feels right for him. Friendly and open to those around him, going through his own journey of self-discovery. In Candy, they don’t transition. Finding solace in a familiar structure, she is stuck in complacency. Inaction. Not standing up to Jane and trying to gloss over that things will just work out! They won’t. She cares deeply for her family, and has found a purpose and happiness in trying to just, be a good Mom. One she never had herself. And although those potential feelings are still in there, isn’t life about being happy with what you’re doing, rather than torn up about what could have been? Mistakes can be made, bad things can happen, but... You keep pressing on.

Terezi, fuuuuuuck. Her pinning for Vriska? Vriska, stuck in Candy, isolated from contacting with her. Giving up on Vriska JUST as Vriska would’ve tried to contact her. Unable to let go of Dead John, clinging to him still. No place for her on Earth-C, no home to return to, torn up about her feelings, she joins the Narratively Relevant Journey of Dirk and Rose, only to find what she’s seeing is two broken up people who try to act tough, but are entirely unsure of what they’re doing. She’s trying to make Rose See, but those robot eyes of hers are too closed. Pitch feels arise. A fling, to try and stave off the need for a connection they both have lost.

Calliope, poor sweet dear Calliope. A Muse of Space. In both Timelines, cast aside. Ending up an Observer of what’s going on. Unable to assert their want to still be with Roxy, and ending up scared away by Alt Calliope, they at least seem to have been with her and Harry off-screen, so she’s probably Harry’s cool alien... Aunt? Gender-neutral aunt. In Meat, shocked out of their wits by Callie’s Jade-possession. Venting through gruesome art- Maybe even influencing the Candy Timeline unknowingly, which would explain so much of the Candy Timeline in general... Jade is now awake in the ship, and they may stop being so reclusive and coming back into the picture, which may also mark a shift in some things, as the scared, horrified fan regains their trust on the story, and takes on a more positive outlook on what’s to come.

Like I would love of they were all HAPPY on EARTH-C and exploring these things in healthier environments instead of being thrust into Angsty Space Adventures or Fascist Dystopias, but I looooove these characters, the good AND bad, their ties with each other, the unwarranted lashing out sometimes, the driving others away, the self-blame, the healing, the trying to make things better, the realization they have made something wrong... And the NEW characters? The Omega Kids... Just. *Chef’s Kiss*

#Homestuck #HS^2 #Homestuck^2 #Epilogues #Long Post #Longpost #Hhhhhh #Character Analysis #Analysis

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thelifeknight · 3 years

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thinking abt how HS was always supposed to be about the journey and not about the ending

i think a big criticism of the end of HS is the predictability or generic qualities of the way the story wrapped up. but the way homestuck set itself and its villains up really meant that there was no unpredictable way andrew could reasonably end the comic without just killing the cast and letting lord english destroy all reality. like ok we have 4 main bad guys that need to go down, and 3 of them are nearly or completely invincible. caliborn destroyed the only way of permakilling a god tier, of COURSE he’s gonna have to just go in a black hole if we want any way of defeating him. i don’t think the story ever intended to provide any mystery for how they were going to take him down, they built up their methods for 1000 pages and went over the plan thoroughly. the excitement is seeing the culmination of the character arcs and the way they’ll use their powers.

my biggest issue with the end is not how the final battles went or the predictability, but rather how andrew chose to wrap up certain characters’ arcs but not others. like i said there was no way to end the story with any real surprises and i think all plot points got wrapped up nicely, but the characters were a great opportunity to throw some surprises at us. dave had a great moment confronting dirk with his traumas, and while it was really late into the comic for him to be going into his arc, it was at least complete. dirk similarly had the penultimate part of his arc come when he allowed dave to cut his head off, and it really cemented both striders as complete characters. i feel like jake and jane never had a real moment where their arcs culminated at the end. the last time i remembered them having any significant character moments was when they went god tier, because nearly everything after that was non-stop action and drama. all the crockercorp and aranea stuff didn’t technically happen to them, so any realizations they came to during that time were wiped clean.

alternate calliope kind of addresses this, telling jade that even if she doesn’t have memories of the doomed and alternate timelines, they all contributed to the alpha timeline, and she is the culmination of all possible jades and their experiences blah blah blah, but at the end of the day any character moments we saw in the original alpha timeline were wiped clean, and might even mean less than the doomed timelines in terms of significance. this is where i have another issue, i think jade understood what calliope told her and found peace, but her 3 years of pure loneliness must’ve been so horrible for her, and she doesn’t get nearly enough closure. she had feelings from age 13 that she kept inside her that whole time, and that’s so traumatizing for a teenager and must’ve stunted her maturation in some way or another.

and poor jane never got a proper reunion with her dad ;__; i know that the john-dad moment was supposed to be an important thing for john, but he barely ever talked about his dad, meanwhile jane and her dad had a VERY important connection and she spent so much time in the game looking for him! i mean, john barely blinked when he saw his dad’s dead body, and dad crocker didn’t see john as his son, he saw him as poppop crocker, and that just really sucks for both john and dad since they both had entirely different thoughts about that “reunion.” ugh that might be one of my biggest issues with the ending, poor jane got shafted in so many different ways and it irritates me because she is just as important as john and yet she gets forgotten by both the fanbase and the narrative.

basically it comes down to characters that got resolutions for their stories: john, roxy, rose, karkat, dave, dirk, kanaya, calliope (both of them), terezi, vriska

characters that didn’t: jade, jane, jake, even gamzee, all the ghosts ??? like do they just stop existing when the game is over? the sprites too?????

and this wouldn’t be a problem because like i said journey not ending, but so much of the journey is totally undermined by the ending. i don’t want jake’s last real moment in the comic to be him lamenting about how he can never form a proper relationship with someone and he ruins all the friendships he gets into by being a dumbass!! i don’t want dirk’s last real thoughts about jake to be about how badly their relationship and friendship got fucked up! i know we see them getting along later in act 7 and in the credits, but it’d be nice to understand how they began this reconciliation. aro jake is a perfect way to finish his arc but when he comes to this ““realization”” he doesn’t seem satisfied with it, he mostly seems to want to avoid relationships for the sake of not acting like a dumbass while in one. it doesn’t even come across as him being aro to me, he just seems upset that he can’t form real connections to people because of his isolated upbringing, so he wants to isolate himself even more. i guess dirk/jake is one of those things, like many aspects of HS, that are left purposely up to fans to decipher and interpret, but it still feels unrefined and makes the ending rushed. and the ending was rushed! andrew was sick of writing his own comic, and that’s fine, but it’s still fine to criticize it on that condition, no matter how he felt about wrapping it up.

i might add onto this post in a bit im still Processing and also trying to fact check myself lol it’s a long comic

#2020 reread #meta

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utopianparadoxist · 7 years

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Lilith in Starlight: Light as a romantic motif in Homestuck

Yeah yeah I was gonna write about Jade--still gonna but I got to thinking about this instead and I can write this up quicker. In this beautiful day of 4/13, I want to let you all in on a secret:

Homestuck is good, y’all. Specifically, Homestuck’s romantic relationships are good, and there’s a specific motif running through all of the main relationships in the canon that makes them all better and more meaningful:

The Light Aspect.

The Light Aspect has specific connotations in Homestuck--it’s linked not just to literal Light, but to Information, Ideas, Understanding, Good-Fortune, and most relevantly to us, the concept of Enlightenment.

All of these connections are ones I’m planning to outline in soon upcoming videos in Homestuck, Explained, but the basic breakdown is that all of these concepts are linked under the Light banner through the main Gnostic Creation Myth. Gnosticism, for those unaware, is the source of Abraxas, Yaldabaoth, and the Seven Gates above each player’s houses in Sburb. It’s a prominent undercurrent to Homestuck’s themes, which I’ll be breaking down in detail.

The Gnostic creation myth goes like this: In the realm of nothingness, where all that exists is ideas, there existed pairs of concepts called Aeons meant to create reality by working together. Sophia, the Aeon of Wisdom, wished to “know that which could not be known” by the formless ideas, and so interacted with the Material World without her partner Aeon.

In doing so, she creates the Demiurge--also known as Yaldabaoth, this is described as a sightless God because he cannot perceive the realm of ideas that created him in the first place.

Seeing nothing around but himself in the Material world, Yaldabaoth declares himself God and sets about creating humanity and the contents of reality--explaining why pain and suffering exist: The physical world is a product of a being of evil.

Feeling sympathy for the plight of us mortals subjected to suffering, Sophia Descends from the plane of ideas into the physical realm, imbuing in us the power of her Light, also described as Pleroma, granting us the power to perceive the world of Ideas...and thus, climb endlessly upwards to achieve Enlightenment.

Homestuck’s design adds an extra stipulation to this quest for Enlightenment: That the path to Englightenment comes is paved by working and connecting to other people. The willingness to form bonds and change as a result of relationships is what makes Heroes Heroes in Homestuck, and renders Villains as Villains as well.

The only other thing you need to understand before we get into the details is this: The Aspect of Light is an idea that creates all sorts of things in Homestuck’s universe, not a static set of superpowers. The Aspects make up all of Homestuck’s reality, as we’re told by Alt!Calliope, and so any manifestation that can be understood under a given Aspect’s banner can in fact be considered a symbol for that Aspect.

This breakdown over with, let’s go over the biggest Homestuck relationships real quick: Those between Rose and Kanaya, Roxy and Calliope, Dirk and Jake, and Terezi and Vriska.

Jade and Davepeta will come later, since I need to write a whole bunch about Jade alone to make my point there. Dave and Karkat are largely about cultural forces, not metaphysical ones, so Light isn’t a strong motif for them...but their getting together is taken as a sign of good fortune, linking their health and the health of their timeline to Light.

Without further ado, then:

Rose and Kanaya

Rose is the easiest to start with because she is, for all intents and purposes, Sophia made flesh--and under a Gnostic reading, she also fills the role of a Jesus analog quite easily.

Rose is the Seer of Light: one who knows Light, or knows through Light. If you’ve ever wondered why Rose--even among the girls, who typically get less focus on their sexualities in Homestuck--uniquely never seems to even question or struggle with her attraction to women, well, Here’s why:

Rose has an innate sense that human culture’s scruples about sexuality are inherently unimportant, and she never feels the need to take it seriously for a second. She sees no Light in them, and so nothing worth considering. (Author’s Note: To be clear, this is just how I read this particular point. If this is really what the comic was going for, it still would’ve been nice for Rose to...you know...Talk about it >_>, and I think the criticisms wlw have had for the comic are on point about this. Also, I’m a dude, I’d defer to them regardless, and you should be listening to them about this primarily anyway.)

What Rose DOES find herself wrestling with is Skaia’s predestined self-actualization, and especially during the Beta session, with the inherent doom and damnation the Session gives her as fact.

These are intellectual challenges Rose cannot see through, and when she’s forced to accept them as fact she reacts with anger, regarding the world as having inherently failed her and her friends.

In a sense, this echoes her relationship with Mom--again, she cannot view the bigger picture of Mom as a child, and regards Mom’s arbitrary and erratic nature contentiously. Rose seeks the ability to understand things on an intellectual level, and lashes out when she’s unable to.

The point is that early Rose has a fundamentally uncomfortable relationship with material reality--and escapes and challenges that reality by relying on the power of her Ideas.

Once she creates the Green Sun and survives, some of that conflict is assuaged for her, and some of that might have to do with having survived all of Sburb’s ordeals after all giving her a more optimistic outlook, but it mostly has to do with...

Her relationship with Kanaya, who manifests the Light Rose finds herself seeking as a product of her physical nature. This gets into the root of their romance--Rose falls for Kanaya because her clever but literal and earthly nature keeps Rose grounded in reality, even as she seeks more and more intense ideas pertaining to her existential reality.

Once she starts dating Kanaya, Rose begins experimenting with physical reality, regarding it less like an enemy and more like a tool--her experiments with drinking don’t end well, but Kanaya helps re-ground her and she gets a better idea of what her Mom was really like. She also seems to take to deconstructing the practice of Alchemy as a hobby, both in terms of engineering and philosophically.

And when Rose is at a loss for what to do about a problem in her head, Kanaya is the one who offers a practical and actionable solution--even if Rose doesn’t end up executing it well.

Then there’s the fact that what Kanaya likes about Rose is specifically her clarity of vision, insight and ideas. When Kanaya is at her darkest and has lost all desire for relevance or existing in material reality, it’s Rose who lights a path for her and promises to guide the way--just as she did originally when Kanaya admired Rose from afar through her gamefaqs guide.

Rose achieves this immediately by charting a path of Light through which to guide her friends through endless Void, to the higher plane of ideas contained within the Alpha session and the peace that grappling with those ideas will provide. In essence, Rose acts as a Gnostic version of Jesus leading the dead out of Hell--a point I’ll DEFINITELY need to flesh out in dedicated form later.

In essence, Kanaya heals Rose’s relationship with Space--physical reality--while Rose helps Kanaya see past the mundane and into the world of Light--ideas. Together, their romantic narrative suggests that Enlightenment isn’t just about having really good ideas and becoming disattached from the physical, but about striking a balance between clarity of mental vision and a willingness to engage with that’s physically real.

Roxy and Calliope

Neither Roxy nor Calliope are Light players, but the concept still features heavily in their relationship.

Roxy’s angst surrounding her friends centers largely on feeling marginal and unconsidered in their romantic drama, even as she goes about trying to help them all.

She doesn’t have this struggle with Calliope, though--Calliope notably always greatly values and adores Roxy for what she does from the very beginning of their time together, even putting her in the spotlight in a sense by presenting her artistically, which Roxy reacts to much more strongly than Dirk.

She also overfocuses onto the idea of a relationship with Dirk, buying into the ideas of heteronormativity that Rose effortlessly discarded early on--these ideas are explicitly false information in Homestuck, giving them Voidy qualities. (This, by the way, complements Calliope buying into her species’ inability to experience red romance. Biological determinism is bullshit in Homestuck, hope you’re taking notes.)

Calliope also confides in Roxy her Ultimate Secret (withheld information--Void). This ultimately puts Roxy on the search that makes up the majority of her quest--leading her to finding Calliope for the first time in a spiral made of Light.

Where Calliope goes on to provide Roxy with an absolutely massive amount of True Information--Enlightening her as to her own fate, the kids’ goals, the ways Lord English has attacked them, and the need to find Alt!Calliope...not to mention setting Roxy on the path to eventually claiming the Ring of Life through John.

Calliope is an analog for the reader of fiction, who casts light onto the story they experience by having ideas about the reality within the fiction. The reader themselves is not included in this ideascape, however--and so remain in shadow, outside the reality of the story.

Roxy steals the Void out of Calliope’s role in the story, taking her out of the Void and into the Light-filled realm of the waking world. Thus allowing Calliope to reach the same conclusion Rose does--she does not have to be outside reality to enjoy the ideas inherent to it. Like Rose embraces the physical, Calliope is able to embrace herself as a valid part of her reality, consume the fruits of her own existence...and live.

Dirk and Jake

God knows I’ve written about Dirk and Jake enough lately, so I’m not going to linger here. The bottom line is Dirkjake is one of the most romantic and fulfilling relationships in this goddamn comic, and I’ll make you all see it if my fingers have to go numb from typing. In the interest of accomplishing this, a couple notes:

All I want to point out here is that just as Rose ties into Sophia, Dirk ties into Yaldabaoth and Jake into Abraxas--the three main deities of the Gnostic myth.

There’s the Denizens, obviously, but Dirk’s chumhandle--timaeusTestified--refers to Timaeus’ Testimony, a Greek text where the Demiurge(the same deity as Yaldabaoth by a different name) is described in detail.

Abraxas, meanwhile, is described as the Great Unseen, the hidden invisible God beyond Good and Evil who combines all opposites into one being. It’s also described as the lord of frogs and toads, casting a new light on Jake and Dirk’s consort kingdom.

The motifs tie into Dirk and Jake’s relationships to themselves and each other. Dirk stresses about his potential as an inherently evil being--primarily for an act of creation, as if he were a potential Yaldabaoth. A version of Dirk even literally becomes a Yaldabaoth by fusing with Lord English.

Dirk is profoundly occupied with his own inherent evil, as opposed to Rose who is occupied with the evil of the world. But like Rose, he finds an answer through romance--specifically, in Jake, a boy who believes in all possibilities and touches Dirk’s heart by believing in his potential to be helpful and good.

And just as Abraxas generates the Aeons to create reality on it’s behalf, so too Jake largely relies on Dirk to help him navigate any part of reality he doesn’t want to deal with. Jake wants life to be a fun, exciting adventure--and he doesn’t sweat the small stuff so long as Dirk is around to keep him safe.

This dynamic is, again, stressed through Light. When Jake kisses Dirk’s head, Dirk comes alive in a way no other corpsesmooch causes--his Heart filling up with overbearing Light-- as well as the lamp that represents Dirk’s life, the lamp in particular growing so bright it in fact cannot contain the force of Dirk’s emotion and simply shatters. (This moment is pretty much the only reason these lanterns exist, by the way--they only light up like thiss again when the kids God Tier--that is to say, Ascend.)

When Aranea lights Jake up, his only response is to summon his perfect, idealized Dirk, quoting his favorite movie (one that perfectly encapsulates the nature of their relationship as well as Jake’s arc), calling himself his boyfriend (post break-up), and coming to save him from the entities making him feel unsafe.

For both boys, Light results in coming closer together--Dirk rushes to Jake’s side, and Jake calls Dirk right to him. It’s a symbiotic arrangement that results in both achieving peace with their lives--Jake reassuring Dirk’s existential angst, Dirk making Jake’s adventures and life stress-free and enjoyable.

Terezi and Vriska

This one is a little complicated, since they haven’t technically ended up together in the Alpha (but like, you know, I believe in them?) but all of the Light symbolism is there, and the imagery is some of the most interesting and compelling.

Plenty of people have pointed out how as a Light player, Vriska steals the spotlight. But the Mind aspect is represented through neurons carrying streaks of thought represented as Light, and this evokes her relationship with Terezi as well--Vriska steals the spotlight in Terezi’s thoughts, too, Terezi considering her both the most important person in her life and the riddle she most needs to solve to reach Understanding.

To Terezi, understanding Vriska is necessary to understanding herself is necessary to understanding reality, so it’s no surprise she ends up caught off balance and unable to reach real conclusions or catharsis whether Vriska is alive or dead--in either case, Terezi simply does not consider making the one choice that might give her true insight: Being honest with herself and Vriska about how she feels about her. Being true to her Heart.

Until, of course, she does. The moment Terezi is finally honest about what she desires--that she wants Vriska, that she wants to remember her alternate self, that she wants the truth about what Vriska really thinks of her...she gets it. Her Seer of Mind powers manifest in full, giving her access to her Game Over self’s memories after her death, bringing her face to face with...

Vriska. The Mind symbol in [S] Remem8er literally fades into Vriska.

And not JUST a Vriska, but a Vriska uniquely positioned to give her the truth--a Vriska who’s had time and space to put down her swords and masks, a Vriska who’s learned how to love and then been abandoned, a Vriska who’s been forced to reconsider what’s important, and a Vriska who’s thoughts ultimately lead her to...

Terezi again, and to both of them meeting honestly on a bright red quadrant, no less (in case you were wondering whether this is all romantic: the answer’s yes). This is a Vriska who is uniquely positioned to make a different choice with Terezi, and simply be honest about her feelings.

And what do they do together once they exchange those feelings?

Gaze into the light together. Finally able to understand each other and themselves, Terezi and Vriska are finally able to understand reality, as well. Again, reaching Enlightenment and inner peace is linked to connecting to those you care about.

And Alpha Terezi is privy to all this. She gets to see the truth she wanted so badly. So it’s no surprise she decides Vriska is worth going back into the Void for--she already knows how she feels.

The only question, then, is if and how Vriska herself will realize it. I suppose it’s also possible (Vriska) and (Terezi) are still alive, and some kind of merger will take place--many people think they died in that bubble, but I think it’s ambiguous for a reason. In any case I do think SOME version of Vriska and SOME version of Terezi will end up together and live. Or at least...I hope so.

I’m really excited for the fucking epilogue.

Anyway everyone in homestuck is lgbt, dirkjake and vrisrezi are canon, all these ships are great and canon treats them great and I dearly hope to god we can someday just celebrate them all. Hopefully this post will give you new stuff to love about each one.

Happy 4/13, guys. I love you. Even those of you wrong about dirkjake.

This series of meta posts is a passion project, but also a side project to my youtube series aimed at welcoming and explaining Homestuck to new, incoming Hiveswap fans. If you find yourself trying to make it easier for a Hiveswap fan to understand what Homestuck is about and how it connects to the game, I hope you think of me.

If you like my writing and have a buck to spare, you could also really help me out by enabling me to focus on putting more of this content out there through pledging on Patreon. Doing so will also give you access to my private community of enthusiasts trying to advance new and interesting readings of this wonderful property.

See you again soon, everyone. Until then,

Keep rising.

#Homestuck #My MSPA Analysis #Vrisrezi #Dirkjake #Rosemary #Roxycallie #Classpects #Light Aspect

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davekat-sucks · 3 years

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Greetings, I'm curious as to what plot threads left behind before the end of the Homestuck that you think would have been more interesting(if continued)/done better.

One of them would be about the travel to the Alpha timeline. I don't want the kids to be separated. Why can't they all be together to finally reunite, hang with trolls, and solve all the other problems that may happen during the wait? Like trying to help Rose's depression over the loss of her mom. John trying to sort his feelings out as he learns that Terezi killed Vriska. And how to deal with Gamzee, who is kicking off to help Lord English. Karkat should at least be able to snap himself to try and be an actual leader. If it is possible for the dead trolls to be revived, I would have liked to see them interact the kids too. Maybe even have conversations that we want to see like Dave and Sollux talking to each other. There will be a big conflict about human culture vs troll culture. Like Dave doesn't want to deal with quadrant bullshit and Kanaya is interested in having a monogamous relationship with Rose. The whole cast will be divided on should quadrants stay in the new world or be shafted to the side. Can extend to the other trolls that had believed in Alternia's customs to realize it was horrible and fucked up, that they need to move on for a better life. If you don't want the dead trolls be on the meteor, then have them properly revived in the Alpha timeline for the Alpha Kids. Not as sprites, but as themselves. They can be with certain respective kids for aspect or similar interests. Like Eridan trying to explain to Jake about Hope powers and bothering/flirting with Roxy by starting the conversation about wizards. Nepeta tries to help Dirk's relationship with the others. Feferi getting Jake to realize that all his friends don't really care for him and only want his dick. And Equius having a bit of issues with Jane, displeased how the next heir in line was acting to her friends. If the Dream Bubbles have to be revisited, then DON'T have any dancestors BS. Actually get FEFERI, the one who made the Dream Bubbles, try to be active and do what Meenah did. If you have to include the dancestors, only show off Meenah and Aranea, everyone else is shafted because if you don't make them do anything, why bother including them at all besides making one time joke of Internet groups and flanderizing existing characters. If you want to continue everything from Act 6 to Openbound, then at least don't shove Aranea as the next villain. She actually represents the fans that do want to see the characters grow, be better, the worldbuilding cleaned up, and live out better lives. Making her pull that plan and then offing her, is just a disservice to the people that had read the series. Collide should have been like the kids facing either Bec Noir or Lord English themselves as the trolls fight off against The Condesce. It would fit all the buildup they had from their respective session and for the troll's case, finally deal with the ancestors' legacy for them all. Let Wayward Vagabond actually talk to the trolls/kids, so he won't be treated as a pet. Let him try to introduce democracy towards the trolls. And let said Mayor be a Mayor in Earth C. No Kingdoms BS. Most of all, let Spades Slick finally get a good conclusion against Lord English when The Felt had crashed into his casino! That's all the reason Spade Slick came into LE's mansion in the first place!

#Homestuck #Homestuck fandom #Beta Kids #Alpha Kids #Dream Bubbles #Beta Trolls #Alpha Trolls #Wayward Vagabond #Spades Slick #Midnight Crew #Lord English #Bec Noir #Jack Noir #her imperious condescension

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homestuckexamination · 6 years

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What is Time in Homestuck? What is its function, its purpose, what are timelines, what defines the Alpha and doomed timelines. How do timeloops work?

Time in Homestuck takes from a couple of theories about the workings of Time and Parallel Timelines. So, Time itself doesn’t have any Function, much like in real life, instead, Space and Time are treated as the two main building frames of a physical reality, to the point where the Universe Frog requires a Space and Time players to actually even be possible to be created.

Going in detail though, according to Homestuck’s Interpretation, there’s an Alpha Timeline that marks a path that must be followed, but there are alternate realities, sometimes required by the demands of the Alpha Timeline itself, where divergent Choices and Actions from the various characters have led to a deviation from this path that needs to be followed. A Time Loop is nothing more than ensuring no Paradoxes are created while following this Alpha. For example, according to the Alpha Timeline, Lil Cal ends up in Jack Noir’s possession, and eventually is shot through a meteor portal into Alternia. This is a stipulation that must be followed, so in the Timeline where John dies because Terezi sent him to see Typheus early? We learn with John’s ghost, that Typheus didn’t actually just insta-murder him, he gave him a Choice, to Die for the benefit of the Timeline. The thing that doomed the Timeline wasn’t John dying- It was Dave prototyping Lil Cal. Davesprite needed to exist, because without Dave preventing Lil Cal from being prototyped, Lil Cal would become a sprite, and thus never get to Alternia. This is the kind of Paradoxes Stable Timeloops want to avoid, and the reason this Timeline leaves behind a Doomed Rose. We see in a couple of occasions, Daves dying when a Time Loop is broken- When Dave screws up Time-Travelling, he creates an offshot Dave that doesn’t become ‘future Dave’, instead it’s its own iteration of Dave unrelated to the Alpha Timeline, and as such, Doomed to die. Davesprite manages to become un-Doomed by Prototyping himself into Davesprite, and thus becoming an integral part of the Alpha Timeline, rather than a Doomed Version.

Of course this still leaves the question of what the Alpha Timeline itself is. After all, we see dead God Tier Trolls, implying that actually becoming god-like is somehow not Alpha, and thus rendering the explanation of the Alpha Timeline being the ‘best’ or ‘most beneficial’ path impossible. No, in fact, the entirety of the Alpha Timeline is filled with Death and Suffering and awful things and characters being erased off the story.

This is because the Alpha Timeline is, in reality, a Time Loop that favors the Lord of Time, Caliborn. All the Alpha Timeline does is ensure Lord English is created and does what he does in the story, after all, he IS the Lord of Time, and he Commands Time itself. Paradox Space bends to his will.

[S] MSPA Reader: Mental Breakdown is a quick example of one of the Alpha Timeline’s most important devices- Lil Cal. A Juju which contains the Essence of Lord English, and needs to follow an EXTREMELY specific path to reach where it needs to reach, dividing in two at one point to become an Entry in Caliborn’s Land, through which he spreads his influence, and in which he eventually becomes trapped, and an Exit in the Lil Cal Dave has, which eventually ends in Gamzee’s Possession, and is ultimately used to convert Jack Noir into a Proxy for Lord English.

Everything in Alpha Timeline is delicately crafted to eventually lead to Caliborn’s Rise. Lil Cal is not just the Entry and the Exit, the Vessel for His Soul, it’s also the only reason why Caliborn manages to achieve full, unconditional Immortality. When he reaches Yaldabaoth’s Boon, he uses the Juju Breaker Crowbar to obtain Inconditional Immortality. Crowbar which he’s had since before he actually met ‘Crowbar’ from the Felt. Crowbar which was gifted to him by Gamzee of all people, the Troll who raised Calliope and Caliborn. Gamzee needed to be there to raise the twins, and he offered the tool that would eventually grant him Immortality. And how did both Gamzee and the Crowbar get to Caliborn? Through the Black Hole created after killing the Jack Noir possessed by Lord English through Lil Cal. Black hole which ALSO absorbed a majority of LOTAK, including its core, where the Denizen Yaldabaoth himself was, making it seem like everything relevant to Caliborn’s Session arrived there in the first place only thanks to Lil Cal.

Similarly, even the God Damn Retcon favors Lord English, even though it seems like a Canon-Breaking tool, even though it seems like something meant to bypass the Alpha Timeline in the first place, it’s actually a necessary tool for Lord English’ creation- Without the Retcon Powers, John would’ve never reached Caliborn’s Masterpiece, becoming stuck in the House Juju with the other three Betas. He wouldn’t have led the Kids that would, in turn, defeat Caliborn and suck his Soul, ARquius’ Soul and half of Gamzee’s into Lil Cal to create the amalgam known as Lord English. And without the Beta Kids stuck in the House, it would’ve never been filled in, and thus become the double-edged sword that would eventually cast Lord English into the Breach.

But of course even the Retcon favors Lord English- After all, he kills the Author. Caliborn interacts with Hussie through the Command Prompt, and physically smacks the website around on several occasions, as well as glitches the cartridge containing the data to continue the story. Doc Scratch and Vriska seem to be the only other characters in the comic to even be aware of the existence of Hussie as the Narrator- With Scratch being part Lord English, and Vriska literally getting angry at Hussie for switching the narrative just as she was about to reveal the House Juju, and tearing it back from him to show everyone what was in the Juju Chest. A Villain that messes with the Narrative itself would definitely still benefit from a tool meant to break the narrative. And in the same way, when the Villain of the Story has control over not just Reality, but the direction of the Narrative, the only two that can oppose it are a Character who Knows they are in a Story and Wants to be the Protagonist, and a Protagonist who Can Alter the Narrative and just wants to be Happy.

As such, Homestuck takes the idea of ‘parallel timelines’, and throws us a scenario in which an evil entity has basically overwritten Free Will through imposing himself in a very specific path, so if I had to give a short answer to the question of what “Time” and “The Alpha Timeline” is? I’d have to answer, The Alpha Timeline is Homestuck in itself, both the story and the struggle of the characters as they navigate through it.

( From this point downwards, these are my THOUGHTS and opinions, and may not reflect what’s strictly Canon or what may happen in the future )

This ties in to my thoughts on why I think Act 7 is good, contrary to what many in the Fandom seem to believe. We’re shown Caliborn’s rise to immortality, the beginning of his journey towards becoming Lord English, and eventually becoming the big villain of the story, contrasted with Vriska inserting herself in the role of the Heroine, even though everything was already set in the story for this exact same culmination and all she did was take the spotlight by opening the Juju Chest, and the Release of the Kids from the Alpha Timeline to live in Earth-C, free of the influence of Lord English, of the grasp he’s had on their choices and their existence.

Already at the very beginning, John himself states it clearly.

It is your thirteenth birthday, and as with all twelve preceding it, something feels missing from your life. The game presently eluding you is only the latest sleight of hand in the repertoire of an unseen riddler, one to engender a sense not of mirth, but of lack. His coarse schemes are those less of a prankster than a common pickpocket. His riddle is Absence itself. It is a mystery dispersing altogether, like the moon’s faint reflection, with even one pebble of inquiry dropped in its black well. It is the most diabolical riddle of all.

When the Kids cross the threshold of the Door to the new Universe, the story ends canonically, because they’ve escaped the Time Loop known as the Alpha Timeline, they’re beyond English’ Realm. They are no longer Stuck, and they’re free to make their choices without fearing the creation of an offshot Timeline or worrying about what may happen in the future.

It’s my belief that the fact we see Caliborn with the Ring of Life Calliope has, that two Nannasprites exist without one dying, and a few other details such as Caliborn stating seeing himself surprised at the Kids appearing to face him using John’s Retcon Powers, means that this is not following the Alpha Timeline at all by the ending. John’s ‘I’ll do it’ has sparked many theories about this being the conflict that sparks John to want to go back to fight Caliborn, but it has always seemed nonsensical to me. John is depressed, Terezi is looking for Vriska, but for most of the part, they’re happy. They’re content with having gone through the hardships of the Game, and now being able to just live their lives. I could maybe see John using a fight with Caliborn to mask his emotions, but I can’t see him convincing Rose, happily married to Kanaya, that they should go back to beat up the stupid asshole that keeps Trolling him through Snapchat, using his highly dangerous Retcon Powers.

To me, it always felt that this was the result of a Timeline we didn’t see, but may see in the Epilogue, and even though there are ways to make it work, it ties perfectly well to this theme of breaking out of the Alpha Timeline, that by the end of the comic, we wouldn’t even be following the Timeline that spawns Lord English, and rather, the one the John we’re following, seeing master these Retcon Powers, creates following Terezi’s Instructions.

Ironically enough, this Timeline ends as an empty victory for both John and Terezi. John, with his adventure over, and having never seen inclined to even think what he may want to do after it’s over, is now left alone with his thoughts, the trauma he’s went through, and missing his father, while Terezi, who in the Game Over Timeline thought all she needed to be happy was Vriska, realizes that even that is more of a patch for some deeper self-steem issues, and yet continues to try to chase after her around the crumbling Paradox Space for no avail for years.

It’s my belief, when the Epilogue comes out, that we will see a distinction between the Timeline in which John reaches Earth-C, and the one in which they all go to Caliborn’s Masterpiece, as well as have Terezi return to Earth, not with Vriska, but with Davepeta, Sollux and Aradia, who are still potentially alive and out there. But that’s mostly because I don’t think Vriska should survive the encounter with Lord English.

Vriska herself, in this case, climatically becomes what she’s always wanted to be, the protagonist, only by her desire to be as such. She treats the Game of SBURB like a Game, and similarly, she treats Homestuck like a Story, a Story in which she wants to be seen as the Heroine. Not for Noble or Heroic reasons, but merely for the hell of it. She becomes the perfect Counterpoint to Lord English- The man who set the Alpha Timeline, whose existence jeopardizes the entirety of Paradox Space, the unseen, mysterious hand behind every event. Lord English becomes the Villain of the story, and Vriska takes advantage of it. A story needs a Villain and a Protagonist, and with John more focused in his Friends than the Big Bad, she steals the role for herself, which would make seeing her never actually return, all the more fitting. Act 7 is the Finale. It’s the End of the Alpha Timeline, the End of the Story that is Homestuck. So of course, once the curtains are drawn, both Villain and Protagonist are out of the picture entirely.

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homestuckexamination · 6 years

Text

Homestuck: Time

Since I realized how outrageously long that post I made about Time was, I decided to make a Read More version:

anonymous asked:

What is Time in Homestuck? What is its function, its purpose, what are timelines, what defines the Alpha and doomed timelines. How do timeloops work?

( From this point downwards, these are my THOUGHTS and opinions, and may not reflect what’s strictly Canon or what may happen in the future )

Already at the very beginning, John himself states it clearly.

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