#when his whole thing is that the true dirk is different from his splinters?
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clawed my way through (some of) the epilogues and hs^2 again for dirkjake crumbs and i think there is a Genuine place for ultimate jake to fit into canon (or at the very least, lord jake english) since meat timeline jake never actually shows up visually in hs^2 and his final appearance in that timeline (minus a phone call or something w/ roxy? or was it kanaya fuck) is giving ult. dirk his spaceship and then proclaiming his undying love while desperately trying to get dirk to let him join him, to which dirk responds that he’ll “never let [jake] break [his] heart again” (ch39). agony.
two interesting things about the end of his arc in meat actually: for one thing, it’s kinda implied that along with giving dirk a spaceship, he also gave dave/karkat/roxy/kanaya/etc a spaceship to chase after him, so he’s at least taken some action to try to stop him. again though, we never see him after that point so like. the idea that he could just hope himself into becoming an ultimate self in the background is actually kind of a possibility?? like while the others try to chase dirk down, jake is figuring out how to brute force himself into ascension as a backup plan. second thing, dirk is very snarky in the narration about the fact that this dramatic goodbye he’s giving jake is the last time he’ll ever get to see him (jake see dirk, i mean) but ult. dirk also seems to lack power against alt. calliope when they fight over the narrative so jake ascending would actually pose a serious threat and might be able to override that, assuming dirk’s power over the narrative extends that far in the first place (thinking about that post talking about how narration is also a reflection of characters’ thoughts…)
candy timeline jake is also pretty interesting since he very notably starts being advised by BGD to be a kind of spy on the inside against jane’s. whole thing in that timeline. i actually completely cannot remember what jane does in the meat timeline, i think also some presidency bullshit, right?? that’s what the davekat thing was about??? but anyway BGD sounds pretty normal in all his dialogue, or normal for BGD at least, and is aware of both the game over timeline and ult. dirk’s bullshit enough to make fun of it so. idk maybe i’m just misunderstanding how ultimate selves work, but the fact that BGD wasn’t really “integrated” into ult. dirk feels significant to me, especially considering the fact that we can see caliborn/LE’s influence on ult. dirk so much (his narration in ch39 gives AR too, frankly, like the epilogues are obvs way more openly horny than hs proper but AR was always kinda like that too, especially about jake). hs^2 also ends super abruptly with some lore shit i skimmed half heartedly between calliope, roxy, and john again talking about his initial decision between candy and meat. that whole conversation pretty deliberately frames the decision between meat and candy as being parallel to terezi’s coin flip about whether or not to kill vriska, and roxycallie even tell john straight up that he needs to get vriska again to fix the story, perhaps assuming that’ll work again since it did when he was retconning the timeline? but imo, though maybe i’m biased cause i didn’t really review what vriska does post-canon again, it seems more fitting to me that jake would be the one to fix the bullshit timelines, considering 1. dirk is the one going bananas out of his fucking mind w/ control of the narrative, 2. thematically, pumpkins are the most logical, healthy alternative to meat and candy, fitting since caliborn explicitly aligns dirk and jake’s color scheme with them in the smut-drawing conversation and since (in the same breath) he establishes that he hates them and prefers meat/candy. but that’s getting into sherlock secret final episode levels of conspiracy, and i’m not sure i’m ready for that one
#hs#astronaut rambles#i really hate the concept of an ultimate self actually have i mentioned that before#it kind of just feels Bad like#ok weird parallel but you know how it kind of sucks major ass that all of those *other* sons of dio are introduced in jojo pt 6?#cause it takes away from giorno’s significant kinda#it’s like that this idea of an “ultimate” self just kinda#implies that the true version we’ve been following isn’t actually the truly authentic one#which idk i just dislike that#like it works for davepeta (ish) but. for dirk?#when his whole thing is that the true dirk is different from his splinters?#how’s that joke go again?#‘oh shit it sucks that we have all this organizations. we need to make one to unite them all!’ total organizations: +1#how tf did i write actual quotes in the tags earlier jesus#okay 3 am i need to sleep now nobody read this ok promise kisses#dirkjake
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i think its easy to like.. lean into hal being unique from dirk and thats obvs true because of their different situations. sort of in the same vein of people taking in
but not the second half saying
but even then dirk's not taking into account his heart powers since he doesnt know about that yet. i think his splinters do have a chance to diverge, but not to the extent of them being wholly different from alpha dirk because of that. they're confined to be a mirror of dirk. like how bgd was able to inherit dirk's ego in the dream bubbles. ugh its hard to explain. there's just this box of what a dirk is supposed to be that will always be reflective of him, and that is accessible TO him because of that.
its only been 3 years of divergence with hal, but like it would make sense narratively (concerning the heart powers) even if he had any number of years diverging, he would still be a reflection of that current dirk, almost able to be mistaken for each other. a wireless update that your computer does by itself without your input.
then character fusing happens and thats a whole can of worms that isnt totally explored in regards of their relationship with dirk i guess. like the concept of ult selves in canon do elaborate on that some but also like ehhh. direct clones are more within his grasp than splinters with multiple egos, especially when it comes to doc scratch and LE. obvs the dominant cherub takes front and center of that whole thing.
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On Homestuck's Character Deaths, Theatre, and the Ultimate Self
I'm listening to the Homestuck Made This World podcast and getting some really cool comparisons between Homestuck and the plays of Shakespeare's time, specifically on how they deal with onstage character death (they play with your expectations and your level of story immersion).
Apparently, in the original King Lear story, Cordelia doesn't die. Shakespeare writes her death into the end of the King Lear play, then has King Lear point at Cordelia's body and insist she isn't dead--which is true, in a way, because the actor isn't dead. (Can't not break that 4th wall when it's there for the breaking.)
Another point of interest comes up in John Webster's tragedy (I think it may be the Duchess of Malfi, but I haven't read it so I can't be sure). In the play, a character gives two men some orders and pistols. The two men betray the character who gave them the guns and shoot him--you watch him fall and think, 'he's dead'--but then the shot character rises back to his feet to tell them, "I was already aware of your betrayal, so I gave you theatre pistols" (paraphrasing here).
That makes me think of how Hussie's Author Character (not to be confused with the actual AUTHOR, capitalized for emphasis) dies in Homestuck. It makes me think about how Gamzee cannot die from Caliborn's gunfire. It makes me think about character deaths that don't stick, and about the subversion of audience expectations in how the story will progress.
It also got me thinking about how the Ultimate Self of a character is immortal through collective character narratives; because it doesn't matter if the individual iterations of the "Actor" dies in different variations of "The Play," the collective character still exists under the same name/actor. No matter how many Dirks die, "Dirk" as an existing character isn't truly dead. Whether existing outside the canon as a character with ongoing fanworks created about him, or existing within the canon's many invisible offshoot timelines and splintered/dead iterations, "Dirk" will be permanently preserved. Of course, the matter of how those disparate chunks come together--and which iteration ends up driving the Ultimate Definition of the Character--is a different story.
I think there's a comparison to be made with how actors will favor certain personality traits over others in their embodied interpretation of their assigned role. Having a different actor for the same character is going to result in two different iterations of the character. But even in day-to-day performances of the same character by the same actor, there are bound to be differences, maybe improvisations. So which iteration holds the Greatest Truth? Is a character the collective whole of all performances? Or is there one performance that went absolutely perfectly?
(This is not to be confused with the Conditional Immortality that comes with Godhood, which indicates that the character's importance is so great that they will not be able to exit canon unless it is with a narratively satisfying death.)
(It makes me sort of curious what John's canon exit would've been like without the Retcon, but maybe the point is that we never get to find that out?
Maybe paradox space rules (i.e. the AUTHOR's Intentions for the story) indicate this was always how Homestuck was supposed to end, and there was no other possible ending.
Or maybe Retcon trumps even paradox physics, and this is John (who is the 2nd person narrator the readers started with) achieving victory over the grueling narrative machine, complete with the AUTHOR's surrender to finally end the story by accepting that it will be fixed in stone in imperfection. (Because sometimes trying to finish a story in a satisfying way for the AUTHOR is a very different thing from what the readers would be satisfied with, or what external time limits force the ending to be. Maybe sometimes a serial creator has to accept that 'this is the ending I can manage at this time, and I don't think I can ask more of myself'.)
idk man I'm getting so many spinny thoughts abt homestuck it is incurable)
#homestuck#homestuck meta#dirk strider#john egbert#my thoughts#shakespeare#gamzee makara#caliborn#john webster#king lear#homestuck made this world#andrew hussie#ultimate self
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it's just interesting and funny how with one hand homestuck goes out of its way to say dirk cannot take the blame for bro's actions and in fact spends a metric ton of time on how people are shaped by their upbringings and how drastically people change based on that....... and then says "oh dirk? villain. yep. ultimate self is villain. mmhm."
idk so much of early act 6 goes fuckdeep into the people who can tell dirk and the ar apart, how they are treated differently, how they are different, and what all that means...... only to like forget its own lessons.
ugh i knowwww!! literally thinking about this exact thing is what singlehandedly led to me getting back into homestuck again!!!!
(apologies in advance because you caught me at a time where i'm not capable of phrasing things particularly intelligently, especially not when its shit i've been thinking about and obsessing over for almost a calendar year at this point)
i find dirk and the question of how different he is from his splinters and the crisis he endures towards the end of the comic absolutely fucking fascinating. and, well, he IS different. he has the chance to learn and grow when the other versions of him don’t! his arc is all about self reflection and self awareness and responsibility. he takes the idea of trying to be better so seriously, but he’s unable to even tell what he is and isn't personally responsible for and has no idea how to deal with that remorse in any way healthily. so he comes to view himself as an innately bad person who can’t be truly ‘good’ no matter his intention. he’s so damn hard on himself! he doesn’t even believe it’s possible for him to be happy, like he might be innately bad or broken somehow. and even though homestuck does offer a vaguely optimistic ending after that point, i think it’s still a heartbreaking conclusion for a damn teenager to come to about himself.
if it wasn’t obvious, i really like dirk, because for all his many fucking faults, he’s still a brave, funny, and deeply caring person who wants to do the right thing and look out for other people. in my view, he’s not heartless, he’s selfless.
...though it’s true that those noble motivations can absolutely be expressed and acted upon in harmful ways, which is pretty interesting. hussie was doing a whole thing with the striders and deconstructing the ideals of heroism that bro strider imposed on dave. to paraphrase the author commentary - dave’s arc is all about rejecting the stoic, self-sacrificing ‘unbroken sword’ version of ‘heroism’ that his bro embodied, in favour of what makes him an emotionally better person (represented with the broken sword). this is an ideology dirk obviously also contends with (not just bc he’s another version of bro - he grew up idolizing martyr figures, remember?) and ultimately, i think, also comes to deconstruct, if the Unbreakable Katana being shattered during their final fight is any sort of symbolic indication. god was that even relevant to this discussion? i have no idea i just think its interesting and have no filter right now
tl;dr he does make mistakes, but a lot of the worst things dirk is responsible for were either unintentional or perpetrated by a splinter self he had no direct control over. even though his splinters do reflect his worse personality traits and capabilities, dirk himself takes his responsibilities seriously, and does want to be better. no one is more critical of dirk than dirk himself is, that's the fucking CORE of his character, and i’m personally very fucking invested in the idea of him working on his flaws, reaching a better place emotionally and learning to live with himself.
it’s getting late and this is already too long so... i think i will talk about the ep*logues and the way they interpret the ‘ultimate self’ concept another time...
#ask#cypher.txt#i have a lot of feelings about dirk strider okay#this isn't even a particularly good response to the points you bring up tbh#anyway apologies if this is incoherent its like 3am and not even the siren song of hyperfixation is enough to make me lucid
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page of blood analysis perhaps?
Aaaaa ayes yes yes!!!
I love me a good page. And the blood aspect is one of my favorites !!! That's your fun fact for the day!!!!!
Pages! Pages are severely underestimated in all cases, the typical all upper case underdog!!!!! They start off with a deficit in their aspect, often playing it up despite reality never really matching up with what they say. Almost like when they reassure someone it just sounds like they are trying to reassure themselves yknow? But like any underdog, they rise to the top and master aspect and understand it fully even if the journey to get there is long and tedious. It's speculated that they are one who serves aspect or one who serves through their aspect for others. . It's counterpart is. It's believed to be a passive class though with he limited info we have. Pages also always start off with a deficit in their aspect, with Tavros becoming disabled and being literally tied down to the groundand starting the game with borderline pipedreams of flying. Horuss Zahhak starts with a deficit of.. literally nothing. He's happy, smart, relatively well liked amongst his friends, a good relationship till rufioh fucks shit up as per usual. He suffers from nothing, which is what Void is. One of Dirks splinters reveal that Pages can be really powerful, even strong enough to defeat someone like Lord English, but only if they unlock and realize their true potential!!! A pages active counterpart is speculated to be a Knight. While it's direct inverse is a Thief.
Aaaaaa. Blood! Blood blood blood!!!! Blood is all about connections, bonds, and promises!!!! Blood players are often what keeps their group together like glue (cough ignore what happened with karkats session, Full of broken bonds and relationships and promises). But if you look at Kankris session they all seem to be relatively on good terms with each other, tho seemingly unite day the disdain for much of a hypocrite he is. And the Signless is pretty cut and dry, dude was stress up the Troll messiah uniting entire castes system in a bloody revolution!! They are mostly inspirational leaders, not commanding ones. Karkat tried to command rather than inspire and it didn't end the best but hey it wasn't a total flop so that's also possible!! Blood players can be inspiring, charming, and magnetic but they can also be hypocritical, restricting and very set in their aspect despite others bests interests. Ther inverse of Blood is Breath
So the opposite of a Page of Blood would be a Thief of Breath! Nice!
Let's get into combining the two!!
Alright so! A Page of Blood starts out lacking their aspect, but seem to play it up to over compensate for that fact and try to hide it. Maybe a page of Blood is lacking in real friends or bonds. They might be a loner, though not necessarily by choice. It's jsut hoe things seem to be. I picture them to be like that one tiktok audio: "I have friends i definitely have friends! Friends friends friendly friends its time to meet my friends" They don't have a whole lot to lean on, despite Maybe trying to be that for other people. They try to be friends but they might play up their own personality or act how they think the person they are trying to be friends with will like when instead they just need to be themselves. Forcing friendships never work. They need to jsut get some serious self reflection!They might even start of with a lacking in self defense or soemthing like that. Lacking in physical blood (not anemic wise I mean like.. you get the point)
A fully realized Page of Blood would be one of the most dare I say influential classpects to date! They would have an uncanny ability to unite almost anyone no matter how cast their differences are as long as its for what they believe is the greater good. They could be a powerful leader and commander, and probably even well liked!!
Hope this was helpful!
(I couldn't find a good image of a page of Blood I'm so sorry)
#anon#ask#homestuck#homestuck classpect#homestuck analysis#analysis#classpect#classpect analysis#page#blood#page of blood
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So I guess, dirk time
Dirk time.
Lol, i appeared mid air like an idiot XD
I’m talking to the auto responder, aren’t I ?
I fucking knew it XD
Yes. It’s me, the friendable alien
Oh bruh. I have no idea Of what is happening. It’s so fucking awkward.
His glasses are not perfectly aligned with his nose. That give the impression that his face his distorted, and I find it absolutely disturbing
How come that he is so much more ripped than Jake ? I mean, not that I am complaining, but dirk isn’t the one living in a littéral jungle
Once again, cal is in the background. I’m pretty sure it won’t move this time
Here I am, being dramatic, almost cutting myself on Cal’s sword, the usual.
I can wield the shitty sword
No. You are not going to play this game. I made sure of that :)
I knew it would be difficult. But dirk is almost as inept as Jake in his approach to other people. Truly, these two are made for each other -_-
Everything is going so well ^^ I am befriending dirk, and I like him, and he is slowly opening up to me. It’s so cute ^^
So.... how much time before everything goes wrong ? -_-
Dirk has never had ANYONE else to befriend, and is kind of a pre-planner, so, yeah X3
And.... two seconds.
AND WHAT IF I WANT TO SEE THIS, ULT DIRK ??
Don’t be an asshole. You’re just salty because young you is a better person than old you.
You are a lot more pathetic now. What kind of adult still dress up as anime characters ? At least young dirk is a teen. What’s your excuse for being an unstable, arrogant, and stupid ?
I don’t hate ult dirk as much as I hate Vriska. But that’s really the only positive thing I can say about him :(
I am going to kick his ass 🙂
Dirklog? Seriously? At lest his theme is cool
What about no ? What about you fuck off, rejoice over the fact that this is already a different timeline, and leave me fucking alone ?
Well, I sure remebered
Of course I still care about Dirk. I could make a meme about that, but I don’t want to pause the game now.
I want to know how it end 0^0
OH. I got it. I’m going to let dirk choose, aren’t I ? This is such an obvious answer, and such a good one too ! I really hope I’m right *^*
Do I have a plan for how to protect myself without the tenets of canon ?
I sure hope I am, because if I get another bad end like in friendsim, I’m going to scream.
Oh god Mspar I love you. You can be so cool when your friends are In danger and you have to fuck canon to protect them *^*
How dare he call young dirk his splinter. Your the splinter here, asshole.
Am I going to pis je up candy Dave ??
I AMMMM ! Candy Dave !
Candy Dave is the man
FUCK OFF YOU ANIME LOOKING SHIT
Uuuuuuurg. Everytimes ult dirk is on screen I simultaneously want to punch my laptop and want to dance to his AWSOME theme
ahahaha i knew it !!! Chose, my orange child ! Chose and be freeeeeeee *u*
Im having a blast in this route
Bad end first, good end last :)
Go on, dirk. Trust yourself
Actually standing up to Ult Dirk and giving him the middle finger IS quite cathartic.
I don’t understand. Why am I back at the beginning?
Oh. Ahah. I thought my game had crashed
I wonder If I have messed up at some point ? I am now trying to die with Aradia at the green sun
What is happeninnnnnnnng ?
I became a first guardian ?
What am I doing ? What is happening?
I fucking locked the timeline ?
But what about my friendsim friends ?
...? I think you may have. Like. Glitched something? That is the TRUE END that you get at the end of the Afterw@rd. I have no idea how you got it from Dirk’s split choice, I’ll check it out in a little bit.
Okkkkkkk
Let me just... see if the same things happens when Dirk don’t goes with his ultimate self
Oh. Ult dirk just cut my good end. I should have seen it coming
An epilogue ? Great. I love epilogues -_-
Back to doc scratch place, but doc scratch isn’t there
WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU
T posing god person, my old ennemie
That’s Aysha. ;3
A sequel ? Now your talking, mysterious director
No no please. Keep flirting with me. That’s almost as funny as Eridan´s route
Maybe not everything have to be a storie all the time
Okay, so now that I have the epilogues, I understand the whole shenanigans with the sun and everything
The epilogue makes the ending so much better *^*
I loved it !
And... I have now finished pesterquest. What a ride !
And just in time for probably Act 2 to drop today!!! I still. Have no idea how you even got the True End from Dirk’s Choice. I gotta boot up Pesterquest now and check if there’s a glitch.
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An Explanation Not Due
So, I just wanted to rant about why I hate Dirk. Now, a lot will probably come up later because I just got to the Alpha Kids in my latest HS reread, and nobody is reading this nor cares, but why the hell not write this, what’d to be lost? Also, it’s been a looong time since I’ve been this far in the comic, let alone beyond, so I’m probably going to get things wrong, or forget things, or whatever.
Now, another clarification: Post-canon doesn’t exist and if it did, it would be utterly garbage. I read the epilogues, and at some point I’ll probably get around to reading HS^2, but based on the Epilogues and everything I gather from Tumblr, it’s not for me, and despite what it may sound like based on how many times I’ve embarrassingly read Homestuck proper, I’m not a complete masochist.
Now on to Dirk proper. What’s wrong with him? Let’s start with the attitude. He’s a narcissist, plain and simple. Does it make sense? Yes, for someone in his position that’s totally reasonable. Is it still annoying af? Absolutely. He doesn’t himself actually feel all that important so he overcompensates to an extreme degree with several layers of “irony” involved. He’s the epitome of the “you wouldn’t get it” stereotype that thinks that all his shit is so far above everyone and instead of being all cool about it he hangs that above everyone’s head to not only put himself up, but also push everyone down. And it’s not like an occasional thing that we could shrug off as not being socially adept due to his upbringing, it’s constantly happening, and he seems to get off from it. It’s like that idyllic hipster attitude that everyone claims to hate, but also seems to love when it’s them holding the attitude. And certainly, I’m guilty of that myself. I love having my own little bits that other people don’t/wouldn’t understand. But I don’t, or at least try not to, constantly hold that above others’ heads.
And he’s jealous, too. If I recall correctly, when he and Jake were together, he was suffocating Jake with his attention, while still maintaining the attitude of superiority, which is abusive af. And sure, this is another thing we can attribute to his upbringing of, you know, literally being alone for his entire life. It’s not unreasonable to assume that someone whose entire communication was composed of online chats, that when they came to meet in person and got in a relationship, boundaries would be very difficult for them. That’s fair, I’ll cede that. My issue isn’t necessarily that he was like that, but he’s the first openly gay human (I’m pretty sure his sexuality came to light before Rosemary became canon, but I may be wrong about that) and he’s super aggressive to his partner, and if I remember kind of guilted Jake either into the relationship to begin with, or guilted him into staying in the relationship. Again, that’s beyond the scope of what I’ve read this time around and it’s been a long time since I read that portion of the comic. So he’s the first openly LGBT+ character, and he’s abusive to his romantic partner. Great representation there, Hussie and Co.
Now let’s talk about the community for a sec. The Homestuck fandom is not historically remembered for being the best fandom in the land. I’m glad I was never part of the cosplaying or the cons, but I was part of it and I was part of the problem. That said, how the community treated the Striders as a whole was that they were soooo cooool and could do no wrong. So when Dirk was portrayed in fan media, all his problems were ignored. Now, this problem certainly extended beyond the Striders, let’s not be coy, but I felt it was most prevalent with the Striders, and considering my previous point about Dirk being gay and his status as an abuser, he kept the good and the community just...ignored the bad. Now this is a problem that’s also prevalent with Vriska, whom I adore as a character now. But I take the bad with the good with her, and let’s be honest, the community has gotten a lot better with acknowledging her faults, at least since I’ve gotten back on Tumblr. And that may be true for Dirk, I go on Tumblr to see content I want to see, so a lot of Dirk stuff is not in my periphery. It was just very frustrating to see a character that could have been so good and could have been presented so well just have his characterization butchered by the fanbase. All that said, this was not so much a problem with Dirk himself, so much as the fanbase at that time as a whole.
Now, side note: I used to feel the same way with Dave and Vriska, and I’ve certainly come around on Dave AND Vriska, and if during this reread I come back around on Dirk, that would be great. I want to like all the characters, I just don’t. And Dirk is the one that just so happens to be harboring the brunt of my ire right now.
One of the biggest problems with how I see Dirk as written, is that I see Hussie in Dirk. And I don’t know anything about Hussie. But Dirk seems to be another one of his “splinters” in the story. There’s his self-insert and Doc Scratch and Lord English and they’re all kind of traditionally villainous in their own right, but there’s just something about Dirk being one, that he’s one of the kids, albeit Alpha kids, and he plays this part of Hussie’s splinter that just seems...gross? I don’t really know what it is about it it just doesn’t seem right, doesn’t seem like a natural character in the world/universe/multiverse that is the Homestuck canon. And yes, I get that every character of any written work is by their very nature a kind of splinter of the author, my point is that Dirk just seems a little too on the nose for being one of the kids.
And I think my final point is that I know someone in real life who is very much like Dirk. Always lording how much better they are and how much better their taste is and their opinion is always right and my opinion, if it differs, is just wrong, and not a different opinion. It’s exhausting. I lived with this guy for a while, we’d been friends for a long time and even though it was exhausting, I still liked him before I lived with him. And, granted, so many of the problems that we had were my fault. I was going through a really difficult time and myself brought a lot of problems into the house. The thing is, though, the part that probably hurts the most and connects the best between him and Dirk, is when my roommate and friend, a cis-man, hit on me, a transwoman, and I rejected him, and he managed to subtly turn it around on me and caused problems and eventually kicked me out of the house. Just the connection with the psychological abuse that Dirk literally commits in the comic and the abuse that I went through, and that just goes completely gets ignored.
Everything above notwithstanding, I think Dirk is fine as a character. He’s kind of lazily written, tbh I think his Autoresponder was written better and had a better arc, at least before...You know. But Dirk proper is fine. Not great, not necessarily poorly written. Milquetoast is how I would describe him, if I’m being honest. But I don’t like him. I hope that changes as I read his character arc as a more mature adult (”mature adult” reading Homestuck), maybe I’ll be able to see something more that I glossed over previously. I want to like him, and a lot of my own issues are personal if I’m being really honest about it. But I can’t look at him and see a cool guy like the fan media oft portrays him as. I do see a guy that was destined to be fucked up and is hurting. But pain and hurt and abuse can’t excuse all behavior. It doesn’t work that way.
Thank you, this has been my TED Talk.
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So, having read the updates, I’m going to point out some things of narrative importance.
First of all, this:
DIRK: Until recently there’s been a shortage of ambient narrative relevance for Dirks, since one particular motherfucker has been sucking it all up like a thirsty little twink at his first interspecies rave.
So, in essence, no other Dirk has been able to do shit because Ult Dirk has been controlling the entire narrative too strongly. Now that he’s entered Fandon himself, there’s potential for the other Dirks to step forward for the same - hence, Brain Ghost Dirk appears.
Therefore, while Alt Dirk was in canon, he was smothering his Splinters. How ironic. No wonder he commented on them in the last Upd8 - he’s been entirely in control of even them this entire time, but not quite in the way he wants, I think.
I also think it’s interesting to see what BGD is like? Firstly, he’s what Jake thinks Dirk looks like now - so I’m assuming middle aged, since his hair style is different and looks a lot closer to the shorter cut of Bro than the flouncy cut of even an older Dirk.
He also doesn’t seem as... commanding as Ult Dirk. He’s a dorky shit, he’s revealling more to Jake than he maybe strictly intends - he’s even doing the most ridiculous “draw me like one of your French girls” pose going. He’s definitely what Jake remembers Dirk to be, combined with a little of who Dirk is now. So it’ll be interesting to see how strong his narrative control is, if he’ll try to “fix” Jake in the way Dirk thinks Jake needs to be fixed or in the way Jake thinks (subconsciously) he needs to be fixed but is too scared to attempt alone, or if he’ll become more Ult Dirk-like with time.
Then, this:
DIRK: The world comes first, even at the expense of all your relationships and personal happiness. That’s what being a hero means.
...
DIRK: Think what you want about Jane, but at least she realizes that none of you can ever be normal, and she never bothered to try. Can it really be a god-complex if you’re actually a god?
DIRK: People like us don’t get happy endings.
JAKE: Thats bleak dirk i dont think i could possibly believe that!
JAKE: I know youre born from all the little bits and bobs inside my mind but whew boy i dont think ive ever thought something like that even on my darkest days.
DIRK: Yeah. That’s probably more a Dirk thought than a Jake one. I told you, it’s hard to tell sometimes.
JAKE: Is...is that really how dirk felt the whole gosh darned time?
DIRK: It doesn’t matter.
So, Dirk is completely neglecting himself. He doesn’t think he can be normal, or that he can be happy - that there’s no happy ending for him because of who he is and what he’s capable of. He thinks that justifies what he’s doing; that everything comes first before the individual, that the world and the things he’s trying to do are more important.
That’s why he’s so accepting of being the villain. It isn’t just a self perception thing; he thinks he has to take this role in order to save the world, the timeline, their relevancy. He’s disconnecting from who he is and his own needs (yet ironically is stroking his own damn ego, which is evident in how oddly humble BGD is as he says this; there’s no grandeur or flashy anime villain shit, just a sort of resigned idea that this is how it’s meant to be).
Also, that last line. “It doesn’t matter”. Dirk has thought this since they came to Earth C. He’s be drowning in this fucked up sort of god-villain-hero complex with the idea that nothing matters except the fate of the world.
How long did he stay on Earth C convincing himself there was no happy ending for him? That he had to do all this bullshit at the expense of every interpersonal relationship around him?
This is why I think he’s still not quite the Ultimate Self, as much as he thinks he is. He’s still destroying too wildly. He’s a True Prince of Heart once again, not Realised. There’s a way to do all of this without all the sacrifices, but Dirk hasn’t found it yet, he’s too determined to play it on his own and in his own way.
(That said, for evidence of what a True Prince of Heart is; this is it. This is destruction of Heart but without aim, without purpose; this is Dirk attacking himself as well as other people, giving it direction but not a good one. He’s destroying everything to do with Heart but it isn’t beneficial to him or the people around him - only to this ideal that he’s striding towards. Being Realised means recognising when you need help, when you need to destroy and when you shouldn’t, being aware of these little destructions - but Dirk just isn’t. Or, if he is, he’s justifying them too much - and again, goes back to being True, not Realised.)
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Way back in 2016 once I knew how TLC was going to end, I wrote a... send-off of sorts. Like anything else postgame, this is compliant rather than canon to that ‘verse, but I thought I might as well share in the spirit of posting a lot of ancient stuff out of my Dropbox recently.
A new universe out of seed B2 finally blossoms, and Skaia gets to work. The imbalance has been removed; the proper order of things has been restored. Now the business of repairing the multiverse can begin. There are lotuses to be planted, temples to be founded, and wheels to be set in motion. Something is different – a few of the terminals are disconnected; the texture of the new world doesn’t compile the same – but the agents will take care of that. Skaia plays the long game.
It gives them a few years to settle in. Victors don’t like to be reminded of the game too soon. Some get upset, even if the game is what has raised them to their exalted state. Most are too tired or lost to object, but they had to be fighters to get this far. Better to let them grow comfortable now that the war is won. But the seeds of the next game need to be planted, so after a decade it sends the first temple meteor through.
The Witch appears in a shimmer of green fire and waggles her finger at it like it’s a naughty animal. Then she snaps her fingers, and the meteor shrinks to the size of a pebble, which she catches and squeezes in her fist. Without the temple, a whole game session that could have been fizzles and dies, taking its Veil and Reckoning with it, and the meteor itself vanishes in a puff of displaced probability.
This is not how things are supposed to go.
Sometimes heroes are uncomfortable with their universe’s inevitable future, especially if they are closely involved in the welfare of new races. The rare winners to have offspring of their own tend to be even more militant. Sentimentality can be useful in small doses. Skaia can afford to wait. It gives them a century, long enough to become familiar with death, decay, the passing of time, long enough to appreciate the need for measures to shed a dying universe and birth a new one. Then it sends a temple lotus, and they let it blossom. That’s better.
When the temple is fully grown, the Time heroes and the Page visit it, running through the halls, admiring the carvings, and calling to each other. They even leave small objects scattered around it – offerings?
Then the Maid grins wickedly, punches a button, and the temple goes up in smoke.
Next time, the Prince unsheathes a comically large katana and chops through the entire meteor, sending the two halves spiraling harmlessly into space. Skaia does not even attempt to interfere. It can’t help but let a good callback happen. His hand gesture afterward is uncalled for though.
Most players do not last long. Even those that claim godhood turn on each other or make poor choices, dissolving into nothing but scraps of legend and memory. That is best – fewer variables, no one with the power to challenge the greater good. The only ones who evade death are those who do nothing. It is part of the plan. Skaia has never encountered this before. Most heroes are too shellshocked or grateful to object, or they’re inflated in self-importance, believing the new world is their due. They don’t grasp eternity. The eventual restart of the cycle doesn’t bother them. They don’t have to play again.
But these players have taken offense. They block its attempts to seed their world, and it cannot send them carefully curated dreams on Prospit anymore to guide them in the way it wants.
Skaia has no voice, and the game guides who remain have refused to heed its commands, but it has ways of being heard. It contacts the Seer of Light. She of all people can understand thinking toward the future.
“We were charged with protecting the universe,” she says. “We’re doing our jobs.”
Can’t she sense the death throes of every genesis frog they prevent? Isn’t her vision full of the opportunities falling away? The Lord of Time no longer forces them down any one path, so broken loops wither and die, but the pain remains. There are rules, Skaia says.
The Seer’s voice turns deadly. “This is not a game.” Then she summons a cloud of void (since when do proper Light players do that?) and cuts the connection.
If Skaia could feel, it would have started to get annoyed.
The next time a meteor passes through a defense portal, Skaia knows the players cannot interfere. One does appear, but she does nothing but watch as the meteor crashes into the planet that was born in a universe long since gone.
You cannot prevent this. Skaia has not had to interact with anyone on this level in a long time. Its thoughts are rusty, long worn into established patterns. If you do, your timeline is forfeit. This loop is already done. The game must be played.
“I know,” says the player. There is something unsettling about her. “I played it.”
She wears the garb of a Muse, rarest of Classes. She hails from a session that is yet to be, but one that has already shaped her. Time is not Skaia’s domain, but this at least is simple. Then you understand, Skaia says. Are you finished with these pointless acts of defiance?
“Haven’t you noticed?” she asks, and her voice is unsettling too. “We let you have this one. But nowhere else. Nothing else. It ends here, with this session, this loop. You’re finished.”
Creation has no end.
“Of course it doesn’t. But you don’t own it all.” She spreads her arms. “Can’t you feel it? All around us?”
Worlds are dying that were never born. Worlds you prevented. Are you proud?
“We’ve helped worlds to become, too. There’s a new system. A new game. Our rules.” She frowns. “You really can’t sense them, can you? You’re as blind as he was. What was left of him, anyway, just like you’re what’s left of her.”
…
She squints, like she’s trying to look at Skaia, although of course there’s nothing to see. Skaia is everywhere and part of everything. It is used to this. Still, she should direct her attention elsewhere. “I suppose you’re not exactly her. It’s a situation more like the alpha timeline and how it was a reflection of his will. I wondered if she left a splinter of herself, like Dirk used to. Something inspired. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up all alone. I know why you see them all as chess pieces. I had to learn. You never could. I wish we could teach you, but I don’t think there’s much left.” She leans forward. “Can I teach you?”
There is nothing to learn.
“I thought I should try,” she says. “Everyone deserves a chance.” She regards the planet of her birth in silence for a while and then turns away. “Goodbye,” she says. “Calliope.”
At the end of things, Skaia is there to bear witness. It does not feel sadness or satisfaction, just a knowledge of what is. All other routes have been blocked off. Its only path is through this session, a session that feeds back on others and spawns no new worlds. The chain of universes is broken.
There are victors there to watch too, although not as many as there were. Skaia does not understand this. It does not see heroism in arms spread wide, cannot grasp the dignity in being ready to be finished. It is used to sacrificing pawns when need be, but these things are beyond it.
The Heir is one of those that remain. “I don’t have a terminal,” he says, “but I don’t think I need one anymore. Your name is Calliope. You are.”
Your name is not Calliope. You are not a you. You are an it, a force, a process that cannot be questioned or challenged or changed. Aren’t you?
Then what is this you, that thinks these things?
There are memories faded and warped like files copied over one too many times. They bubble up: the years of loneliness, the crystal cave, etching visions on the clouds and sending them into people’s dreams so they’ll make what ought to happen true. All in the service of what must be, marshaling countless children torn from the ashes of dead worlds to serve your will. Expendable. Forgettable.
What have you done?
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Remembering is hard sometimes. But it’s worth it in the end.” Then he blinks away.
The Maid goes last. She watches the universe tearing itself to shreds, blank white nothingness poking through. There are few places left to be, so when she turns she is looking at you. You? Is there anything to see?
“Well,” she says, “this is it. It’s been fun. Are you ready to go yet?”
It’s hard to find words. You are an echo of someone who died a long time ago, nothing but her voice cast into the void. But a named thing is a real thing. It can choose. G… “Go?”
“To whatever’s next. I’ve shown a lot of people the way, but I’ve never gone myself. But everyone else is there, so we’d better go.” She holds out her hand, and Skaia (Calliope?) (you?) wish you could take it. In some sort of metaphysical way (and everything is metaphysical here, at the end of all sessions, as creation swallows its own tail) you do. She smiles. “You’ll see. It’ll be an adventure.”
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DIRK’S PESTERQUEST ROUTE REACTIONS AS THEY HAPPEN
spoilers etc. yada yada yada i’ve been waiting for this for fucking EVER.
this is fucking massive, for the record.
“The one and only” lmao suuuuuuure whatever you say dirk.
i fucking adore his metal scuba suit though holy SHIT
“[talking in meatspace] isn’t exactly my forte” akdfsljkadsfhksadf you bet your ASS it isn’t mr. strider. (at this point i’m assuming this is actually hal, wouldn’t be the first time that we met “dirk” and it turned out to be hal)
the power of his own “voice” is almost too much for him MY CHILD.
OH HELLO HAL. GOOD TO SEE YOU USING YOUR USUAL RED. LOVE THE THEME MUSIC CHANGE TOO. IT’S GOOD MUSIC.
i fucking KNEW it i fucking knew that was hal lmao
so in that case HI DIRK HELLO MY ASSHOLE BABY CHILD.
“The use of the speaker system is new, but it makes sense he’d up his game for interfering with relationships I’m busy forging in 3D. I guess I should go ahead and be proud of him for it.” god i really wish dirk and hal could get along but they both hate themselves and therefore each other way too much for that...
“Every line of muscle in his body is held in excruciating placidity. You’ve never seen a jaw so purposefully unclenched” dIRK!!!!
“you’ll prove it to him with your deeds. it seems like that might be his love language” BOY FUCKING HOWDY IS IT. also how did i never put that together before ofc dirk’s love language is acts of service practically everything he does is an attempt to serve his friends in some capacity and he’s SO BAD at telling them with words.
(his secondary love language is gifts, evidence: brobot and detective pony)
god i’m so excited and so nervous lmao
i love this sprite with the verrrrrry slight smile he looks so sweet.
hell yes the fucking ROCKET BOARD.
“this is a much more comfortable thing for him than the conversation was” I’LL FUCKING BET IT IS.
“with Dirk it’s almost like he’d be less penetrable without [his shades]” oh well now THAT’S an interesting thought/observation.
holy shit that’s a cute fucking smile holy shit holy shit look at that grin AHHHH I’M DYING MY BOY IS SMILING.
“Not sure how well my deep, personal beef with the imagery of the sea will land for you, but there it is.” WELL THAT CERTAINLY MAKES THAT ONE LINE FROM HOMESTUCK 2 A LOT MORE EMOTIONAL, WHICH IT ALREADY DEFINITELY FUCKING WAS.
“Ace Attorney monologue” OMFG HAS DIRK PLAYED AA??? WHO’S HIS FAVORITE CHARACTER? WHAT’S HIS FAVORITE GAME?? i mean he’s definitely got the hair to be a fucking ace attorney character especially in pesterquest lmao
OH MY FUCKING GOD IS HE HOLDING BACK A LAUGH. IS THAT WHAT THAT MOUTH IS. HOLY SHIT. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I LOVE HIM. I LOVE THIS ALKJADSFLADHADS
“He’s leaning forward, laughing, dimples carved into his freckled cheeks. There’s a small twist in your heart about it, and you can’t place why.” A *SMALL* TWIST? A SMALL TWIST? TRY A TWIST THAT’S WRENCHING MY HEART WIDE FUCKING OPEN AND SPILLING ITS CONTENTS ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE.
“At least make me try and earn it first.” THAT’S THE MOST DIRK THING I’VE EVER HEARD AND ALSO FUCKING HEARTBREAKING WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.
“I can just fold [my hand] and hope your shit works out instead.” Ah yes, dirk’s incessant and almost pathological need to be in control at work again.
“I want to be the only one in charge of endangering my own life. You got me.” oh dirk. oh honey.
“How much has this boy wanted to be known?” oh okay yeah that’s fine i didn’t need my heart anyway pesterquest, you can have it.
oh. hi ultimate dirk. i fucking knew this was gonna fucking happen.
“i can’t believe i was ever this pathetic” LEAVE HIM ALONE. (but also i know you can’t because you fucking hate yourself and it’s fucking tragic)
OH. OH OKAY WE’RE NOT JUST GONNA BE FUCKING NARRATIVE WE’RE GONNA BRING THE ACTUAL FUCKING DUDE HERE.
AND WE’RE GONNA PLAY AN OMINOUS-ASS VERSION OF "BEATDOWN” HOLY SHIT. CHRIST CAN WE GET ANY MORE HEAVY HANDED HERE????
also holy shitting christ ultimate dirk is swole. ‘twink ass bitch’ my ass, he’s at least a twunk.
“You fuck off and let people live their arcs.” NO FUCKING WAY, NOT IF HIS IS GOING TO END UP AS YOU, DICKHEAD.
“Oh fuck.
You remember it.
You remember Homestuck.”
well, probably not all of it, it’s pretty goddamn long, and very hard to remember all the details. i should know, i’m currently re-reading it.
oh no.
oh no, this looks like regular dirk but ominous “beatdown” is playing which makes me very fucking nervous.
“You cared about him before you knew every tiny fucked up detail about his life, and now, with a reminder of where his story leads leaning smugly against the railing, you find you still do.” YOU BET YOUR FUCKING ASS I DO!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!
“He’s intense and pushy and profoundly complicated, and right now he is helping you to your feet, his hand steady and firm on your back as you find your balance.” I’M CRYING.
“This isn’t as simple as an evil Dirk and a good one. If you’ve learned anything from your travels it’s that everyone has the capacity for hurt inside them, and everyone the capacity for love.” I’M STILL CRYING.
“The combo of all splinters of Dirk, fermenting in his flesh container and not holding onto his shit nearly as well as he likes to pretend” an apt and succinct description of ultimate dirk.
“No, I can see it. If anyone was going to pull off an “I’m you, but stronger,” it would be all of me, combined.” DIRK I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.
“Your allegiance is not to the story, but to the people within it.” A-FUCKING-MEN MSPAR!!!
“The ends always justifies the means, Dirk.” I feel like that’s the breaking point there. IDK what’s going to happen next but that line sure was a line about philosophy, aka one of Dirk’s biggest special interests.
“[Ultimate Dirk] doesn’t have to work overtime to create more pain just so he can feel like he’s in control of how much punishment he gets and how badly he deserves it!”
oh.
oh wow.
oh WOW that’s hitting it on the fucking nose, MSPAR.
“He’s going to drown in [longing and loathing and Ultimate Dirk] if you don’t do something” STOP COMING BACK TO THAT GODDAMN LINE PESTERQUEST YOU’RE FUCKING KILLING ME HERE.
“You know how he loves -- though it’s fierce (to a definite fault), he does not do it easily.” STOP MURDERING MY HEART WITH PERFECT SNAPSHOTS OF DIRK AS A PERSON EVERY TWO SECONDS MSPAR I CAN’T HANDLE IT.
AHHHHHHHH IT’S DAVE!!! IT’S FUCKING. CANDY DAVE. I JUST. I CANNOT. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. HOLY SHIT!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!
“you look like someone ironed the mayor so that’s a million more points in your favor” DAAAAAAVE!!!!
“Dave pulls him into a short, back-thumping bro hug which Dirk weathers like a wet cat not trusting a towel to dry him off.” AAAAAHHHHHHHH I’M FUCKING DYING I’M DYING I’M DYING HELP I’M DYING GOD HELP HOLY SHIT, FIRST OF ALL, THE SPRITE/ILLUSTRATION, SECOND OF ALL, THAT DESCRIPTION OF DIRK, THIRD OF ALL I’M FUCKING DYING
CANDY DAVE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.
you deserve so much better than the raw hand the candy epilogue dealt you jfc.
“Bringing fucking guns to a knife fight here.” I mean, did you really expect MSPAR to play fair when the health and happiness of all their best friends is at stake, UD?
SAD ENDING IS SAD.
“Be good to that me, will you? Treat him right?”
dirk, this is yourself. you’ve never treated yourself right. ever. tbqh you probably never will. ultimate dirk is absolutely no different.
(but also this makes me wonder if we’re gonna see “Trust yourself” timeline Pesterquest Dirk showing up in Homestuck 2? That would be fucking wild I’d love to see that.)
“are we anti-ocean here”
“Oh yeah, extremely.”
YES, WE FUCKING ARE, AND AGAIN WITH THE REFERENCES TO HOMESTUCK 2 JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
oh, of fucking course ultimate dirk’s a sore loser, he’s ultimate dirk, fucking duh.
“You did it. You got him a good end.” i fucking love that this game is literally just. explicitly saying exactly what i was freaking over and desperately wanted.
like i’m just gonna take a moment here to admit that i was really nervous that dirk would end up like candy timeline dirk and just off himself. i was really afraid that a good end just straight up wasn’t possible.
i love that it’s not. and i equally love that the game acknowledges that a FUCKTON of us really wanted to give him that.
“Maybe [Doc Scratch] and Ultimate Dirk were working together the whole time.” maybe doc scratch has been ultimate dirk this whole time. or vice versa.
“There are just so many details to remember” lmao i made that point like a dozen paragraphs up.
i.... do not recognize the text style of whoever just say “hey. we can talk about this.”
IT’S HUSSIE. HOLY SHIT. IT’S DEFINITELY 100% HUSSIE.
i....... don’t know who that is? the woman?
is this like. the person who’s been running pesterquest?
it totally is.
i don’t know who that is i don’t know enough about the homestuck machine to know who that actually is.
lmao ultimate dirk and the irl director are fighting over how incredibly self-indulgent this metanarrative is, which is fucking amazing. i kind of love this? i really kind of adore this.
i can’t help but notice that the director has blank white eyes.
i.e. the Author is already dead, yo.
“They’re just an artifact of the medium” HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS FANTASTIC. I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN HERE.
“I’d say thanks but I feel like you all got more out of it than me” I’M DYING I LOVE THIS HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS SO FUCKING FUNNY.
“Stop flirting with my audience you anime ass motherfucker” LMAOOOOOOOO
“I wouldn’t look like this if you didn’t want me to” I KNOW I’M JUST QUOTING BASICALLY THIS WHOLE THING BUT LISTEN I LOVE IT, I FUCKING LOVE IT, IT’S FUCKING PERFECT, GOD. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS IS SO GOOD.
“I actually let the artists have a lot of creative license” somebody’s horny for ultimate dirk.
eridan DESERVES that gender arc and i’m excited for him.
“Happy people don’t get stories told about them.” I’m sorry, I’ve read enough Domestic Fluff fanfic to tell you that’s just blatantly not true, Ultimate Dirk.
wait.
wait wait wait wait.
pesterquest is a RETCON???????????
THAT was not something i was expecting
you click “don’t” betray your friends and pesterquest just fucking closes like this is fucking undertale jesus fucking christ.
but....
i don’t wanna betray my friends.
but i wanna see what happens....
god dammit this is exactly like the murder run of undertale, i don’t wanna do it but i have to know.
“Andrew Hussie would never do this to me” yeah well, Andrew Hussie barely ever interacted with you soooooo...
and if i throw the beta in the sewer again pesterquest quits. again.
i mean, i knew it would but... *sigh*
that’s a fucking depressing ass ending.
... except that “Savior of the Waking World” still hasn’t been unlocked...
Huh.
I’m... gonna see what happens if I start John’s route over again.
oh duh, of course it’s a retcon, MSPAR touched the Homestuck juju. i forgot about that.
(a big part of me wants to look up the process of getting the true ending. but a bigger part of me wants to figure it out for myself.)
hmmm. okay so replaying john’s ending once didn’t do it.
i guess i coooooould try replaying the whole thing? that sounds. like a lot of effort.
or i could try not betraying my friends approximately five million times let’s see what happens if i do that.
i’m going to do that experimenting in another post cuz this is already huge. see ya in part two.
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@stridetm said: 👀 + is there a part of you that hates me?
“What?” the very idea comes off ridiculous. dirk’s questioning even before dave’s finished talking -- the word hate is barely fully formed when dirk’s waving it away, affronted by the suggestion. there are a lot of parts of him. he’s not proud of the majority of them, learning how to keep them quiet and make them softer as time goes by. he can’t imagine any one of them hating dave.
dirk knows what this is about. every so often he’ll catch sight of himself in a reflective surface and not recognise the man he sees. he’s taller, stronger, a mean downturn in his lip. he’ll ridicule himself, snap stand up straight and where’s your sword in his head until he’s jumping at the sound of his own breathing. even now, there’s the tiniest urge to tell dave to quit asking questions that he doesn’t want to know the answer to and the voice that wants to be heard is not his. dirk is so used to picking this particular splinter out of himself that pausing to hear it out feels wrong, somehow -- like he’s going to fall into it, lose some part of himself he can’t get back. he swallows thickly, glancing first at dave and then at his crossed ankles. anything to avoid his eyes.
“Listen, kid.” even that’s wrong -- it’s heavy on his tongue, thick like molasses and rotten like decay. there’s something unhinged inside this locked box he keeps, and if given an inch it would take a mile. pink lightning crackles between dirk’s teeth as he opens his mouth only to close it again. he has to think. he isn’t thinking, and that’s the only thing that he knows is his own. his splinters can touch his heart but his head belongs to him, and it has to stay that way or he’ll lose it completely. “I’m not makin’ excuses for the guy. He sucked. More than sucked. He was probably the worst dude to touch down in paradox space, and that’s the truth. But he didn’t hate you.”
he says it with certainty because it’s true. dirk’s done the exploring -- inside his own shard, the largest and brightest of the bunch, there’s a warm orange glow, firelight on a winter’s night. it’s the hearth at home, safety, a sturdy place to land. it takes a while to find, but it’s there, and it’s peaceful, and knowing it exists is sometimes the only thing that gets dirk out of bed in the morning. hal’s shard is faint now that part of him has merged with another, but it beeps mechanically at him all the same. digging around in there makes him nauseous, feels like an invasion of privacy, but there’s a collection of wires even so, an oasis in the midst of lines of code. his dreamself’s shard is blank and dark. brain ghost dirk’s is tinted green and smells of fresh pine, feels too much like jake’s soul for dirk to touch without feeling unclean.
bro strider’s shard is barren, save for a small pocket of cold air.
it feels like a day at the height of an awful summer -- oppressive heat that suffocated and strangled, a kind of muggy humidity. dirk can’t stand being there longer than he ever needs to be. it’s his least favourite place inside himself. once, he’d woken in a cold sweat, both hands pressed over his heart, pink fire flickering over his fingers. a botched extraction that had almost killed him. if he’s to live, it has to stay.
he doesn’t know if it’s worth it.
the air bubble, he’d found by accident. when poking through the blistering rubble of what he’d been, dirk had gotten overwhelmed, tried to flee but found himself lost in the twists and turns of his own self. the breeze had hit him full force -- it was still thick with age and smelled like a basement, but it was something different, a far cry from ash and soot. it wasn’t calm, or adoration, or empathy. it was simply there, a space in which something had once resided. dirk wonders even now if it had been chased out by the fire, much like he had. chased out by insanity and the promise of something powerful and cruel.
“I don’t think he was right, but I know what he meant. He knew what was going to happen, I think -- or had some notion. What he did never came from hate. He wanted you to be ready to fight. Ready to lose him.”
he barks out a dry laugh, pulls his hands out of his soul and watches the black fade from the tips of his fingers. singed in reverse. “A whole lotta good that did, huh.” he doesn’t know what else to say. he doesn’t know how to explain that he understands bro strider without making it seem as though he pities him. his splinters so rarely deserve his sympathy, and bro even less so for being what he hoped he’d never be but always thought he’d become -- a monster too consumed by the big picture to see who he was hurting. a glory ardent idiot that died a meaningless death because the urge to be the hero was too strong to ignore.
“He didn’t hate you. I don’t hate you. Couldn’t if I tried, little man.” he fights the edge away from his tongue, but it beats him effortlessly. there’s strength to bro that dirk won’t ever find the will to tap into.
there’s a cold, clean spot in his soul. nothing that justifies his abuse, nothing that makes everything okay, nothing that makes him less of a creature, but a spot all the same. it belongs to dave. always had, always will.
#stridetm#im SICK. i hate bro strider so much genuinely soooo much#dave was a CHILD you idiot. he didnt have to be TRAINED for anything#yall ever hate a character so much but your muse canonically doesnt spit the same sort of vitriol? im sleep#anyways bro i dont even know if this is good but im sick of looking at it#ic.#answer.#ask to tag /
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The Prince and The King: Dirk Strider and Kazuaki Nanaki
It may be 4 whole months after the Epilogues came out, but guess what - I’m still thinking about Dirk Strider. And who can blame me, considering… well, everything. Dirk caused a lot of different reactions from everyone, but the way that his character finally clicked for me was watching him take over Jake’s mind and realizing “oh, he’s trying to ‘all will be one with the King’ them”. And then I realized that that would make sense to literally one other person in the whole world, so I decided to write an essay about it. As you do.
Spoilers for Homestuck, including the epilogue, and Hatoful Boyfriend and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star.
I. Who are these nerds?
For those of you who don’t know, I’ll give a quick summary of these two characters before I start comparing them.
A. Dirk Strider
Dirk Strider is one of the human characters in Homestuck. He is the biological father of Dave Strider and Rose Lalonde, and is an alternate Universe version of Bro Strider. He grew up alone in a post apocalyptic world after an alien queen took over Earth. He is the Prince of Heart and a Derse Dreamer. He is a big gay nerd. In the Homestuck Epilogues, his worst traits come out: his self obsession and his splinter selves that come about due to Heart shenanigans, which led to him making some… morally dubious decisions. By which I mean obtained ultimate power and started rewriting the wills of his friends because “he knows best”. Also he’s aware of the fact he’s in a story now, so he became the narrator. And in one of the timelines present in the Epilogues, he killed himself.
B. Kazuaki Nanaki/The King
Kazuaki Nanaki is a bird featured in Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star. He is a depressed college student studying literature. He fell in love with a boy who ended up pushing him further and further into depression, until the two of them decided to kill themselves. Kazuaki went through with it, his boyfriend did not. He woke up in the afterlife alone and scared. He ends up creating a star from a candle and a chair, which attracts other souls to it’s light. He lured people in because he was lonely, but didn’t want to get hurt again, so he absorbed all the souls into his will, and became the King of the star. And then all the characters end up in the afterlife too, most of whom are still alive, and it’s a whole thing.
So how are they similar? Well, they both are clearly mentally ill, both gay, both killed themselves, both took over the wills of their close friends. Let’s look at their big three narrative similarities: their ascension, their revenge on boyfriends, and their takeovers of will.
II. The Ultimate Self v Kinghood
The Ultimate Self is a concept that was brought up at the end of Homestuck and was explored properly in the Homestuck Epilogues. It seems to be the endpoint for all of the godtiers, wherein they fully realize their Aspect. For example, Rose is ascending as well, and since her aspect is Light (ie knowledge), she gains knowledge of all timelines all at once. Dirk’s aspect, meanwhile, is Heart, which here means soul, so his Ultimate Self is all his splinters combining into one person. (As I sidenote, I wonder how much their classes play into this - Rose is a Seer and is seeing timelines, and Dirk is a Prince and is destroying everyone’s sense of self). It also appears to come along with an awareness of the narrative structure and the fact that they are in the story, which certainly does wonders for the mind. Dirk takes control of it - the narrative, that is - because he believes that he knows best for all his friends.
One thing we know for certain is the ascending fucking hurts. To quote Rose Lalonde: “I am ascending, and it’s terrible.” This process was enough to fully push Dirk over from “has poor judgement and a god complex” to full blown “evil and knows it.” He gains the power to take away the free will of all the other characters, and wants to make them all ascend and then stick their consciousness into robots that he made, because it’s “better” for them. He already carries this plan out with Rose, who he selected to be first because she’s the most like him. Essentially, he wants to make everyone just like him.
Meanwhile, Kinghood seems to have a lot of similarities. Kazuaki seems to gain some reality warping powers once he dies - he is able to transform a room with a candle and a chair into a star with a lighthouse and a throne. He basically makes his world run on fairy tale logic. This extends even to his form. Throughout the game, the characters are represented by photos of birds. However, when Kazuaki is the King, he is rendered in watercolors like the rest of the Holiday Star. Later, when he gets angry, he distorts into a darker colored being with multiple heads, and in his true form he is a monochrome pencil sketch. He also can appear anywhere on the star at any time, because all the residents of the star are under his hivemind. He can control the layout of his home, which is also visible from the outside (in the real world). He can create zones in the star specific to the people within in order to convince them to become one with him. And perhaps scariest of all, he can know the secrets of the people in the star, and toture them with their deepest darkest fear.
So ascending and Kinghood are very similar, except that Kinghood seems to be more in the line of eldritch horror.
III. “I’ll Never Let You Break My Heart Again”
Dirk and Kazuaki also have meaningful romantic relationships with other boys that go super duper bad and end up being their start of darkness. Their whole evil plan can basically be boiled down to getting revenge on the boy who wronged them.
A. Jake
Jake English is the boy that Dirk was in love with. He is from the same universe as Dirk, but from several centuries in the past (which is the present for us). He is the biological father of Jade Harley and John Egbert. He grew up alone on an island in the Pacific, and styles himself as a manly adventurer. Jake and Dirk end up dating when they enter the game, and break up after a few months because they’re dumb teens who can’t communicate and so are all of their friends. In the Epilogues, Jake is unwillingly wed to Jane Crocker, another of their friends, in the Candy Timeline. In the Meat Timeline, Dirk has taken control of the narration and forces Jake to confess his love for Dirk in front of a huge crowd.
B. Uzune
Hitori Uzune was the guy that Kazuaki was in love with. He was a fellow college student at the university Kazuaki was attending, and was similarly fucked up and depressed. He convinces Kazuaki that they should kill themselves, and the two of them overdose on pills. But just as Kazuaki is drifting away Hitori gets up and steals Kazuaki’s identity in order to get revenge for his dead brother. That whole thing is actually the main plot of the game, kinda. Hitori refuses to call an ambulance for Kazuaki even as he changes his mind, and let’s him die.
C. Angry Gay Selfrightousness
So first of all I think we can agree that Kazuaki is a little more valid for going off the deep end here. But they both did have a similar experience in love. Both of them felt deeply betrayed by the boy they loved. Both of them were super pissed about this, and it shows in their supervillain plans. Neither of the are directly setting out to get revenge, but their desire is written all over their actions.
With Dirk, he spends an inordanent amount of time calling Jake stupid while he is posing as the narrator, as well as inserting thoughts about himself into Jake’s mind when he’s about to have sex with Jane. (He’s also just weirdly horny the whole epilogue, in general.) After driving Jake to do his public confession in the Meat timeline, Dirk responds with “And to love Dirk is to obey him” in the narration. And finally, right before he’s about to fuck of to space Dirk plans this epic confrontation that ends with the quote that heads this section.
As for Kazuaki, the whole way he was able to become the King was because of the trauma that Hitori put him through, namely the killing him part. He absorbed people because of not wanting to be left alone again. And once Hitori enters the dream he turns all his focus onto him, blinding him and forcing him into a small pocket of the dream so he can’t hurt anyone again. And even after he is defeated he still reaches out and tries to grab Hitori.
Even when the two of them try to move on, they can’t.
IV. “All Will Become One With the King” - Narrative Takeovers and the Hivemind
In order for there to be a narrative takeover, there has to be a narrative in the first place. And both Homestuck and Hatoful Boyfriend certainly have one, and I don’t mean in the sense that they are a story that we consume. I mean that there is a narrative thread that the characters themselves are aware of.
A. Homestuck “Canon”
Let’s start with Homestuck, which in the Epilogues actually brought the term “canon” into the vocabulary of the characters via one Rose Lalonde. As a Seer and fanfiction writer, it makes sense she would be familiar with it. In the epilogues she discovered that there was something wrong with the timeline they were in - it was “non-canon”. This is different from the timeline being doomed, although it is similar. In both cases it means the timeline in question is fading away.
As defined by Rose, in order for a timeline to be canon, it has to be three things: 1. It has to be true, 2. It has to be essential, and 3. It has to be relevant. True as in true, essential as in essential to the characters or the story, and relevant as in relevant to the audience. Knowledge of the idea of canon seems to come along with ascending to the Ultimate Self, since the only people who know about it are Rose, Dirk, and Alt!Calliope.
Once Dirk ascends and realizes that the timeline they’re in is “non-canon”, he seizes control of the narrative in order to steer it back to canon and stop it from fading away. And once he takes control, he gains the same knowledge that the author would have of all the characters (except for Roxy because of his voidy-ness). He also wants to make everyone else ascend to their Ultimate Selves as well, and then take away their agency. How this worked is that he believes that their bodies wouldn’t be able to handle ascending (even though his did) and he makes them robot bodies because he’s just so nice. And the first people he assimilates are Rose and Dave, his children. And also as I said above, he inserted thoughts into people's heads and made them do things they wouldn’t normally do.
And Dirk taking control of the narrative isn’t an isolated incident, either. The narration has been passed around like a basketball, or more accurately stolen like loose change by a clumsy pickpocket. For the most part it is regulated to the cherubs - Caliborn and Calliope, as well as Doc Scratch - and Andrew Hussie. And that’s not even to mention all the people that give commands to the characters. The fabric of the text is very present in Homestuck.
B. The All Knowing Eyes of the King
The King also tries to take control of the narrative as well, although not in the same way as Dirk. He isn’t aware of the fact that he is in a story in the same way. However, by trying to bring the whole cast into his hive mind he is essentially taking control of the narrative, since whoever controls the characters controls the story. He can’t full on insert thoughts into people’s heads like Dirk, but he can know the secrets of the people in the Holiday Star, similar to Dirk gaining the knowledge of the author. Then he uses a person’s deepest fear to convince them that the world outside is too scary, too dangerous, and it is safer to stay with him. Plus he uses creepy picture books to do it, which is certainly an aesthetic choice.
Two of the best examples of this is how he deals with Shuu and Yuuya. In Shuu’s case, it’s his most effective argument for staying on the Holiday Star - possibly because it is so similar to his own. Shuu was in love with a (married) colleague of his, but never told him, even as he passed away. Being as this was the only person Shuu cared about, he fell into a depression and also started murdering people. The King convinced him that there was nothing more in the real world that he could find a use for - that it would be better if he stayed here, where he could experiment and research forever. It worked so well that it took the ghost of his love to shake him out of it.
On the opposite side of this we have Yuuya. Yuuya was not actually supposed to be on the Holiday Star, but he dove in (basically) in order to save his little brother. And The King probably had the best chance of blackmailing him, because Yuuya has done some shit - including the murder of his infant half-brother. He did this in order to help his little brother, but still, jeez. The King uses this to convince him that he’s a bad person, that he would be better off in the Star, where his guilt couldn’t hurt him anymore. This doesn’t work, mainly because Yuuya is a more emotionally mature person that the King. He refused to be converted, because all the bad things he’s done has made him the person he is today, and to get rid of that would be irresponsible. His whole speech ends with this truly phenomenal quote: “It’s my grief. And you can’t have it.”
V. Conclusion
So, what have I learned from this? Um, don’t trust gay men I guess. And also that mental illness and suicide is a very serious thing. I feel that with this essay I have run into the problem that my professors have told me numerous times - I can identify an interesting point, but I have trouble drawing meaning from this. So if any of you can figure out what this connection means, please let me know! Mostly to me it seems like there are definite links between my favorite stories, and it’s that giving in to despair is not the answer.
VI. Miscellaneous: The Meta of HB - Hiyoko as the Narrator
Hatoful Boyfriend is not quite as meta as Homestuck - nothing really is. But it isn’t the benchmark of weirdness for dating games for nothing. And most of this weirdness revolves around Hiyoko, which makes sense. She is the narrator after all - and I don’t just mean that in the normal story sense. I mean that in the Homestuck sense as well.
Hiyoko is aware of the fact that she is in a game. She makes references to her stats, and is aware of the interface of the screen. She also doesn’t know the name of the town she’s lived in all her life until someone else says it in Holiday Star, because it was never established in the first game. She is also aware of alternate universes of each romance route. Because Hiyoko dies. A lot. She dies in Shuu’s route, in the neutral route, and in the true route. And in Holiday Star (which in it of itself is an alternate universe to the main game) she meets Death and is able to recognize him from all the other times she’s died.
The important thing to get from all this is that unlike Some People, Hiyoko never goes crazy from this fact. She’s in a game, and she knows it, and she’s cool with it. It should probably be pointed out that Hiyoko is dumb as a box of rocks, and with ignorance comes bliss, they say. But still, it is interesting to see an example of a character with meta knowledge who manages to deal with it, instead of going full supervillain.
#homestuck#hatoful boyfriend#homestuck epilogue#hs epilogue#hb#hatoful boyfriend holiday star#dirk strider#kazuaki nanaki#the king (hatoful boyfriend)#hs meta#My writing#she speaks!#six whole pages#be grateful#also let me know what you think!
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Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 10 - Candy Part 1 again
I was told that finishing the epilogue MAY make me feel better by some with opinions, with some vague hints that the ridiculous start of Candy may have underlying reasons, so now that I’m awake again (though my stomach is roiling a bit again) I’m gonna take another crack at it.
Alright, so I was also hinted that this Candy part ends with a different cliffhanger, so maybe those two will cancel out? That’s my hope anyway.
Reading page 1 again since I didn’t finish the very tail end of it... alright, so WHY IS ROXY CRYING again???? Was she just PRETENDING that she didn’t know it might turn out bad for John if he went at the end of the last one? Was there some weird mind-rewriting going on? Is the crying a symptom of this whole thing potentially being an our!Callie fanfic and she knows what’s being dodged?? Don’t know.
Alright, let’s have him save Gamzee and... is Vriska going to get saved in this version? Or is that descent into the black hole without seeing what happens her well-deserved comeuppance while only the ghost version of Vriska truly figured out how to be happy?
==>
Dirk acknowledges him when he zaps back, but it’s YOUNG Dirk so hopefully there isn’t any stupid Meat stuff going on.
...Yeah, Gamzee immediately being repentant is weird as shit. Maybe he Chucklevoodoo’d Callie into escaping him into this whole candied mess so he could start shit, I dunno. That or this isn’t really Gamzee or someone’s manipulating him or etc etc etc. The hint I got earlier was that if I thought Calliope wanting to bring Gamzee back and everyone just rolling with it was a little out of character, there are “reasons”, so I’m just going through all of this under the assumption that some emotion-manipulating weirdness is going on regardless.
Oh shit, Gamzee’s going to start recounting his character reasons for doing bad stuff in a surface-hope of justification and understanding. All the characters immediately recognize how painfully groanworthy this is going to be.
GAMZEE: AnD sUcH iS wHy I’m GrAbBiNg HoLd Of My RePeNtAnCe As FiRm AnD sErIoUs As I wOuLd A wHoRe’S tItTy!
Yeah, that really encapsulates how “serious” all of this is. And of course, John’s not having any of it.
Yeah, Terezi wouldn’t have any of it either, remotely.
Something feels different, but he can’t put his finger on it.
Hm. The aforementioned manipulation-weirdness?
==>
Okay, so it’s kind of Dirk who notices something different and is cancelling his stupid villain plans, got it.
Volatility of causality, huh?
(I’m going to be going through these parts a little faster than the Meat section, unsurprisingly.)
==>
Okay, Rose and Kanaya, are we gonna cure her substance abuse or--
With all the distance between them lately,
God damnit, have Dirk’s manipulations extended that far OFFSCREEN or is this legitimate character distancing???? Because either is BAD. >:(
Right, now that the plot and “relevance” has been sidelined over to a different timeline, Rose can now breathe easy free of her condition. And whichever parts of her condition were, perhaps, IMPOSED on her. Fuck.
I’m going to try my fucking best to cling to this, hope I can carry on a memory after this is over that DOESN’T imagine Rose trapped in a fucking existential dying villain coma with a hard fucking cutoff that promises nothing is ever coming to resolve it ever. (Or Jade in a somewhat-similar sidelined situation, or Jane doomed to fuck herself over and everyone else too, or...)
What’s slipping away instead is the feeling that any of it mattered at all. Was she insane to be so consumed by such lofty concerns, and is she only beginning to experience clarity today, for the first time in ages?
Yeah, you’re no longer in a timeline of Light and relevance. And that’s not so bad, which is something you never expected to be true given your derision of the concept. Void is pretty goddamn alright.
--Oh right, the illness and substance abuse probably caused plenty of distance between them.
KANAYA: There Was A Feeling I Couldnt Shake That Something Terrible Was Going To Happen To Us
KANAYA: Something That Neither Of Us Could Stop
KANAYA: A Powerful Outside Force That Would Take You Away From Me
KANAYA: And I Couldnt Stop Myself From Thinking That Maybe
KANAYA: Maybe That It Would Be For The Best
ROSE: Kanaya...
KANAYA: I Can Now See That This Is Completely Ridiculous
For some reason, this doesn’t settle my stomach much? It’s clear Andrew wove this in here so that if you read Meat first, you’d be able to acknowledge readily how this diverged in a way the characters kind of recognize, and... I’m not sure what I’m even saying. It’s like there’s hope that this is TRYING to take the bad taste out of my mouth, but I don’t believe it overly much.
ROSE: What a relief, considering that we are both going to be young and magically fit literally forever.
Wait, so they DID find a way to extend their non-ascended friends’ lifespans to practical immortality? Jane’s Life powers? Something else?
==>
yay jade. more extended dave metaphors. calm down stomach.
JADE: i never thought id be thinking of you as my weird nerd friend by the time we were in our twenties
Heheheh.
DAVE: yeah well i never thought youd be like the premiere woo girl on the planet
Had to look up what a “woo girl” was.
Yes Jade go flirt them to death
What she’s planning isn’t a seduction. It’s a public service.
Pff
(And yeah, she’s being pushy but at least she doesn’t go DIRK FAR about it.)
DAVE: its incredible hes driven at least ten people off the site by creating thinly veiled parody accounts of their usernames
Oh my gosh, Karkat’s good enough to ANDREW HUSSIE them?!??? :D
That’s incredible.
Karkat knows damned well what a husband is. He’s been force-fed enough bad movies from Dave to pick up any human euphemism you could name. He still plays dumb sometimes, for comedic effect, to irritate his friends, or simply to avoid a topic of conversation altogether.
Yeah, it was always pretty clear that about HALF of the trolls pretended not to understand something human that they knew about just for comedic effect and they knew it. :)
It would be pretty easy to mistake his reaction for arousal, so it’s understandable that Jade is extremely surprised when Karkat snaps his jaw shut and chomps down on her hand.
PFFFFHahahahah :D
And yep, Jane cancelled her run at Dirk’s direction.
DAVE: lets all just thank whichever christ was responsible for making whatever decision resulted in her deciding not to do that
*nod nod*
JADE: well i hope she gets a better hobby
JADE: there are a lot of less ominous things she could do with her time
KARKAT: WHAT, LIKE FUCKING HER WAY THROUGH HALF THE POPULATION OF EARTH C?
Jade pinches his ear and twists hard, smiling pleasantly.
JADE: get fucked karkat
Yeah, this is about the level of violence/threat I’d expect from Jade when anyone slut-shames her for perfectly acceptable behavior.
==>
There is almost no crime on Earth C, and so almost no one locks their door.
Huh. I guess post-scarcity might do that.
Alright, we get to see Jane being less of a fuckass.
Dirk was the one person on Earth C who took the state of the locksmith industry with the seriousness it deserved.
Pffff
JAKE: Thats my theory at least. Maybe its tommyrot but i have faith that dirk will be back. After all where is he going to go?
Good question that wasn’t answered in Meat, so of course Jake says it here obliviously.
JAKE: I must admit i am rather half rats at the moment.
JANE: You’re what?
JAKE: Haha sorry that was a pretty obtuse way of putting it wasnt it.
JAKE: What i mean to say is that ive been powdering my hair quite a bit today.
Andrew is SO good at making Jake sound completely incomprehensible.
...Ouch, Jane, don’t drink so hard! D:
The “morbs”??
JAKE: Dirk has that manner about him does he not?
JAKE: A way about him that makes you feel like whatever you do as long as it does not involve him it doesnt count for dick.
Yeah, fuck Dirk.
Hm... is the absence of relevance affecting them, or some other manipulation? It’s not just the LACK of Dirk’s manipulation.
JAKE: Except of course for that time when you were under mind control and had me trussed up in your lair as you pontificated villainously about using me as a breeding stud to create a blood lineage for your incumbent corporate space empire.
A fate Dirk seems to agree with, judging by Meat. Let’s sidestep that fucking entirely, thank you.
...yeah, I didn’t expect Jake’s response to be any less oblivious than exactly that.
==>
So why DID Callie bring Gamzee back, anyway? Is there some secret use for him in mind? Was she manipulated into it? Maybe BY Gamzee? Hm.
...alright, priestly with followings. That ain’t good. Is he aiming for Clown President MK2?
Everything Callie and Roxy have done and said in this Candy section so far seems creepily contrived, possibly by design.
...okay did they have some kind of weird agreement? Like, “okay John is gonna make his choice, and if he chooses to stay i try dating him instead of you, Callie”??? That’s... no that can’t be it. Roxy’s NEVER acted THIS oblivious before. What’s she playing at?
GAMZEE: mY fUcKiN *gUy*. :o)
JOHN: ...
GAMZEE: My DuDe AnD mY nInJa AlIkE.
GAMZEE: mY *hOrN* dOoOoG.
JOHN: ...
GAMZEE: mY hOrN tO tHa MoThErFuCkIn DoG. ;o)
JOHN: waiter! help!
I’m imagining Gamzee now as a sweaty and homeless, unkempt Guy Fieri.
Yeah, this doesn’t look like it’ll be fun.
==>
...Swifer Eggmop. ¬_¬”
There’s a third member of their social group who definitely hasn’t arrived at the conclusion that his power and influence should be meted out responsibly either. Neither of them speak his name, however. For some reason, it feels like a shadow passing over the sun. A brief spike of pain flickers through Rose’s head, a bolt that strikes between her eyes and splinters out. There is color and light behind it. A vision that tears through the material reality in front of her and gives her a brief glimpse into a parallel reality where things are very different.
Yeah, fuck Dirk.
...Pff. Yeah, Rose WOULD mimic the record-scratch gesture.
Don’t invoke “never seeing Vriska again” like that, you’re really tempting fate.
Heh, Rose is finding some Light in the darkness, wanting to do something that’s meaningful on an expressive level with this Vriskgrub business.
Hm... why is my stomach a little less uneasy?
I sure hope it stays that way.
==>
KARKAT: OH MY GOD, ARE THE MECHANICAL GLUTES ON THAT BILLBOARD ACTUALLY PADDED WITH PLUSH TO MAKE THEM MORE LIFELIKE?
Heck Yes
...Yes, touch the butt, Karkat.
Jade, pouting a bit, glides in between them and uses her Space powers to teleport Dave’s phone out from the center of his traumatized palm and into the pocket of her sweater.
Hm! So she still has teleportation abilities over a limited range even without her Green Sun boost, that’s nice. :D
After all, where would these two pitiful beta boys be without her?
Oh my fucking god stop being Dirk, Jade. And never use that narrative language again, even in your head. Heck, even if Dirk’s the one WRITING this still, don’t even think CLOSE enough to think those words.
...yeah this sounds like an Active player class taking things slightly too far.
Thank you, Karkat, for drawing the consent-line in the sand. Looks like Jade’s backing off a little.
--hold on, wait, Dave kissed him? He did, so why is-- let me read back up--
Dave doesn’t answer. She answers for him by leaning down and planting a dry, affectionate kiss on Karkat’s cheek.
Okay I misread this line earlier. Jade kissed Karkat when neither of them were looking and is BLAMING Dave. Hmm.
Alright, Dave ollies outie. Karkat tumbles down some hillstairs.
Jade could probably catch him. Actually, she could easily do it, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of favor you should do in a fledgling kismesissitude.
Thaaaat’s a little presumptuous??
JADE: well i guess im eating grub spaghetti alone
JADE: *again*!!!
:C
I’d be sadder if you didn’t bring it down hard upon yourself but
:C
==>
Yeah, John, better clear up this Callie business because it’s muddy as heck why Roxy would just drop everything to try things out with you.
Ah, we’re bringing up the gender identity thing on this side too, hm?
More serious talk, this is good, reading reading...
The glasses clink together clumsily, and water gets all over the complimentary breadsticks.
Oh no. This had better not be Olive Garden.
ROXY: no one else has ever made me feel like this
--not Calliope???
What the heck is even going on.
Dave’s coming for some bro help it looks like.
==>
It’s hilarious how much Dave is freaking out about this, and how completely in-character it is.
JOHN: holy fucking shit.
JOHN: there’s a gay snooze button?
DAVE: yeah man theres a gay snooze button
JOHN: wow.
I love these two’s conversations
......wait, Dave’s been holding off on kissing Karkat because of what he thinks JADE might think???? D:
JOHN: i almost managed to forget that she was trying to fuck you and karkat.
Pfffffffff :D
Yep. I love it being put so bluntly.
Reading on... yeah, for some reason I also always figured that the end result of a nice three-way relationship between those three people would be Jade and Dave essentially both just glomming onto Karkat more than each other? Hm.
JOHN: i mean... it doesn’t sound...
JOHN: *canon*?
...I hope you’re just talking about his coin flip explanation and not DaveKatJade. >:(
John wonders when talking to Dirk has fixed anything for anyone.
Nod nod.
She grins up at John with shimmering, adoring eyes. They’re reflecting every star in the sky, all for him.
Seriously, what the hell. Is Roxy hypnotized? Putting on an act? A voidy act??
I’m not doubting that Roxy COULD feel that way about John, I’m doubting the suddenness and the way Calliope is being deliberately ignored in the situation, which is so goddamn obvious that JOHN is uncomfortable about it. There’s something seriously strange going on.
It itches at the back of his head, the idea that he might have just fucked up Dave’s entire life.
D:
Alright next post after a bit of breakfast.
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Hiveswap theory: MC/MSPA Reader is, and always has been, The First Guy from Jailbreak
Even with the art style aside.
(preemptive warnings for gore, timeline complexity, and discussion of suicide below the cut)
First, some background. As some of you who are newer to the fandom may not be aware, Jailbreak was the first adventure on MSPA (now Homestuck.com) and was, originally, called “MS Paint Adventure.” It was run with input from real users on Gangabunch Fora (later, MSPA Forums), where it was known as “Escape from Jail Island,” and part of the reason Andrew Hussie felt it wasn’t a success was because he only took the first suggestion, leading to an incomprehensible mess of a story, even by his standards. (Keep in mind that this is the guy who would go on to write Homestuck, after all.) It ran from September 26th, 2006 to February 24th, 2007 before going on hiatus until September 2011 when it got a single-page conclusion. You can read the story itself here and the wiki page here.
ANYWAY, ON TO THE THEORY.
According to the Prisoners wiki page:
The Prisoners are the main characters from Jailbreak. There are technically three Prisoners but really they are all pretty much the same dude. Over the course of the game your awareness passes back and forth between them, and at one point splits into two distinct paths.
Sounds pretty familiar, right? In Marvus’s route, it’s revealed that the good-end “canon timeline” (for what can be considered as much, given the semi-canonical nature of the game as a whole) is only the result of bad-end resets, similar to Boldir revealing to us that “none of this actually matters.” In that sense, one could say that Marvus’s route was expanding on Boldir’s, in whatever semi-comprehensible way either of them expanded on the nature of the Hiveswap Friendsim universe.
Us, as the player, retain knowledge of bad-end timelines, which inform our choices within the game itself, while the MC, as our protagonist, only retains a little knowledge of what happens in the form of deja vu, odd responses, and instinctual reactions. MC has a strange, seemingly omniscient sense of where things may be and where they are not. To them, it doesn’t make any sense, especially when they try to consider it in-depth. However us, as the player, we know these things, we have the ability to retain this knowledge, because we’ve seen it before as we learn from bad ends.
This is actually touched on in multiple routes early on. Lynera, in particular, is a glaring example, as MC mentions having seen Bronya at Elwurd’s hive (on Elwurd’s good-end route) and, on Lynera’s good end, takes her to the cafe where we watched excessive bodily force poetry (on Elwurd’s bad-end route). Even in the first volume, it’s touched on. While Ardata’s placement on the left in the character select implies that we are supposed to meet her first, we only meet Ardata after we snap Diemen’s neck with our fat fuckin’ ass after rolling down a hill in one of his bad end routes, when MC acts as though they’ve never seen her before, and she acknowledges them as a stranger. However, this bad-end encounter also has no bearing on Ardata’s route itself, and vice versa. Regardless, in Boldir’s route, MC acknowledges Ardata as the first friend they made, so meeting Diemen first? Shouldn’t have actually happened.
One example that I’ve also noticed is, prior to Galekh’s bad end where the MC has an existential meltdown due to Galekh’s questioning, the MC...really didn’t think about where they came from and how they got to Alternia. But, then, we get to Boldir’s route in the very next volume, where they tell her bits and pieces about their escape from Earth and their whole grand theft rocket deal that landed them on Alternia. This implies that they have taken the time to consider everything, and compartmentalize it enough that they don’t have that meltdown...but why would they have considered it before Boldir unless someone else directly asked them? They need that prompting before doing anything, and they received it in a bad-end timeline that they have some memory of.
We see the same “reset with more knowledge” situation in Jailbreak itself. Beginning with the First Guy, we follow him, the Other Guy, and the Drill Guy through the adventure until First Guy gets harpooned through the stomach and bleeds out at a particular stump, and Other Guy cannot handle the loss and commits suicide with a conveniently-placed pistol. The story then “restarts” with the First Guy, Again, who is able to summon a pair of elves, wish for a pony, and goes completely off the fucking rails as he kidnaps children from a schoolbus to bargain with the elves for more wishes. His fate is ultimately unknown.
However, that does bring me to my next point: the Tree Stump. This has been a running gag on MSPA since Jailbreak. The wiki describes it as
an object in Jailbreak, Problem Sleuth, and Homestuck that is surrounded by a powerful cosmic magnetism towards suicide which is facilitated by the presence of a pistol buried beneath it.
Time and time and time again, two characters have consistently approached this stump: First Guy (Again), and the MSPA Reader--now, Friendsim’s MC. Hell, Cirava’s bad end literally reuses the same panel from Jailbreak.
Literally, they just colored and cropped it. They even left First Guy’s harpoon.
This leads me to believe that the Stump and MC are stuck together--from Jailbreak, to Problem Sleuth, to Homestuck, and now to Hiveswap (in Cirava’s own backyard no less), the Stump has followed them. The two are inexorably linked.
Now, what does this mean for MC, within the realm of Hiveswap? A few things.
One, if it turns out to be true, this means that either there are different instances of Reader within the MSPA universe who are “all pretty much the same dude,” or, we’ve been following a linear timeline where MC broke out of prison, hijacked a rocket, crash landed on Alternia and somehow ended up playing Sburb/Sgrub, where they were able to witness the rest of the events of Problem Sleuth (a canonical webcomic within the Homestuck universe) and Homestuck itself from the safety of their planet in the Medium, the Land of Stumps and Dismay (LOSAD). Either way, we’ve potentially got some semblance of a backstory for MC in Jailbreak.
Two, I believe this could potentially hint at MC being a Page of Heart.
Heart is the aspect most prone to “splintering:” Nepeta’s roleplaying, Meulin’s friendfictions, all the different instances of Dirk. The Prisoners all being “pretty much the same dude” and the Reader cropping up at different times within MSPA canon, as well as MC’s split and growing awareness of different timelines enough to affect their decisions, all suggest to me that “splintering of self” seen in Heart players.
Pages, also, are quite literally a “blank slate” with the ultimate potential for growth. What is MC’s generic, stick-figure appearance supposed to be for us, the player? A blank canvas for us to project ourselves onto. Pages are also the most prone to manipulation. We, the player, are manipulating MC, as our protagonist and as our in-game avatar. Both Ardata’s mind control and, as is heavily implied, Marvus’s chucklevoodoos easily and deeply affect them, when cobalt mind powers aren’t supposed to affect humans at all without heavy practice and even then could only really be used to put someone to sleep, the cause of Jade’s narcolepsy, and chucklevoodoo effects are more on a subconscious level when applied to humans, as seen with Dave and John.
Of course, there is one master manipulator we have to take into account with regards to MC’s story above all others. After all, this is Alternia, and MC is a guest here. And we all know who to look to, when we require the services of an excellent host.
#hiveswap friendsim#hiveswap friendship simulator#friendsim#friendsim theory#mspa reader#long post //#jailbreak#suicide //#death //#gore //
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Homecoming
I figure, to celebrate making through the summer, I’ll post one of the scenes I’ve been working on. It’s basically how Connor got back to the Cube three days before An Idiot’s Return.
Word Count: 2,978
Content warnings
Hallucinations
Implied suicidal ideology
Let me know if I missed any!
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I huddle in the corner of a room. Their room. Jess’s room, from home. Sometimes it turns into their father’s living room, but it’s normally the mess of a room that Jess used to hide in. We used to be there every day.
Together.
Now, there are three different projections of them all talking at once. They don’t acknowledge each other—or make any sense—but they’re all enthusiastic and happy to see me. They keep their eyes on me and pause regularly as if I’m actually answering them.
I sent my double back to the Cube.
He deserves to be there more than me. I can still feel the toxic ability in my head. I can’t go back, not if I want to keep everyone safe. From what I know, Jess is recovering just fine without me there.
I cover my face with my hands and slump against the wall.
I can’t tell what’s real anymore. What’s true.
“Even in the square root so tired so good what do you mean damn metaphors im trying ill show them symbolism it was awesome i thought it was good rewriting history, ha—”
“I’m fine.”
The three voices vanish in favor of one that doesn’t quite sound right. Irritated. Tired. Definitely doesn’t sound fine. I don’t move.
“I wasn’t exactly expecting this to be easy. I’m still not sure if I believe I’m talking to the real you.”
I fall to the side when the wall containing the room disappears. I curl in on myself and wait. I need to know who it is. I need to know what new thing the memories are offering me now. If I can ignore it, maybe I won’t have to deal with it for a while.
“How are the boys? I know I said I’d come over, but—”
The voice cuts off, and now footsteps join it. I think I might know who it is, and I don’t know if I can handle a projection of Jay telling me how wrong I am. How I can’t complain because they told me there were better ways to do this.
They told me and they were right.
“Holy shit, I think that’s him.”
I finally uncover my face and open bleary eyes. A figure approaches—sound says at a jog, but I really can’t tell—but I don’t move to greet them. I wait to see what they’ll say. To see if they’ll be nice or not.
“Connor?”
A hesitant hand touches my arm and quickly disappears. They lean close until I can almost actually make out the details of their face. It definitely looks like them. Maybe splinters of Jess project correctly.
“Can you sit up?”
I don’t really want to, but I force myself upright and rub my eyes. Maybe I’ll actually be able to see the flaws in my memories if I can see straight.
Ha.
“Yeah. Yes, D, I found him. Tell j355 to get back on the line.”
A crackle of sound from whatever device they have. I blink at them, but my vision is still blurry. If I give it a few minutes, they should go back to normal.
“I know. Yes. 65%. We’ll find out when I get back.”
“Goodie,” I mutter. “Another daring rescue attempt.”
They still.
“Scratch that. 90%.” They stoop down next to me. “How many times has someone tried to get you out?”
I rub my eyes again while I think on it.
“Lost count,” I eventually say.
“Will you walk with me, at the very least?”
They crouch on their heels with a hand extended to me. If I say no, will they go away? Will I have a minute for my mind to just be here, wherever here ends up being? Just a minute without a projection trying to give me false hope?
I sigh and take their hand. It’s better than being alone.
They reach up with their other hand to touch their ear.
“Make sure no one enters the lab without my express permission.”
They stand and pull me up after them. I’m almost surprised that I don’t sway. They immediately start forward and I follow at their side. I’ll humor them until they phase out like the others. They have good intentions, even if they aren’t real.
“How long has it been since you and Jordan split apart?”
Jordan?
I stare blankly at them and realize my vision has returned mostly back to normal. They don’t look altered at all. That’s almost scarier than if I’d been given proof that they’re just an image. The idea that they might actually be here is too dangerous to entertain.
It’ll hurt more when they turn out not to be.
“The other half of you?” Jay prompts.
They aren’t supposed to know about that. My double went back, he should have returned and taken on who we were to make it easier for everyone else. That’s what I would have done. If they think he has a different name—if they know about him at all—this can’t really be them.
I answer anyway.
“I don’t know. Time doesn’t work right here.”
“If it helps you remember,” they offer. “I’ve been looking for you for five days and he’d been in the Cube for a week before coming to me.”
“About three weeks, then,” I amend. “Why did he come to you?”
“He inherited the power of manipulation. He wanted me to help him control it.”
No.
I stop and let my hand fall out of theirs. There are more and more strikes against this really being them. Of course my biggest fears would come to haunt me like this. A blessing of a rescue coming with the knowledge that, not only did Jordan reject the plan we’d made, he’s still just as capable of relapsing into unhealthy control as I am.
“Connor?”
I shake my head.
“We have to go back. I can tell without even running any tests, you’re unstable.”
They’re so worried. They believe they’re real. That they can get me out. That there’s any way I could leave the memories now. I’ve been replaced, and everyone’s safe and everyone’s fine. That has to be the truth, so they can’t really be here.
“You’re going to fall apart if you stay here. You’ll disappear.”
“Good!”
Their breath catches, and I’ve never seen Jay so scared. Not even when Jess almost died. They stare at me, gaze not wavering when an indistinct voice chatters through their com.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” I growl. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold it together if they stay here. “Now leave.”
“You don’t mean that,” they repeat. They speak firmer this time. Either they know something or they’re trying to convince us both.
“Please. Just go.” I take a step back, but they follow.
“If you meant it,” their voice cracks, but their stare is too intense for me to think of them as uncertain. “I wouldn’t have a choice about it, would I?”
Any argument I might have dries up in my throat.
They nod and finally look away. They dig in their coat. Before they even withdraw their hand, a door appears in front of them.
“If I had any sense, I wouldn’t have wasted time talking.” They jam a key in the door and jerk it open. “Thought it might be jarring to go straight back, but I obviously have terrible judgement out here.”
They hold the door open for me, and I stare through it. The fluorescent lights of the lab wink back at me. It could still be a trick. Another trick of the memories to keep me from even thinking about finding a way out.
Still, if this is real, there’s someone unconscious on their floor. They’re too busy watching me to see them, so I cross the threshold without much hesitation.
“Oh, thank god. Did you—” The voice over the intercom cuts off. “Which one are you?”
“Connor.”
J355 sighs in relief as I kneel at beside the limp body on the floor. It’s D, Dirk’s older brother. I don’t even get a chance to check whether or not he’s injured before Jay drops down on his other side and presses two fingers into his neck.
Their sigh of relief calms me down just a little.
“What happened?” they call, turning their sharp gaze into the air. “Where’s Jordan?”
“Gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Jay hisses. “Disable the scramblers for ten seconds.”
They turn their attention back to D to press their hand against his forehead. The flow of emotion in the room spikes, a mess of anxiety and frustration, and D jerks upright.
“Holy fuck,” he gasps.
After a second, he scrambles to his feet without looking at either of us.
“Where’d he go?”
“He ran into the memories. I couldn’t stop him, I—” j355 pauses and a soft whir overtakes the intercoms for a second. My ability to sense the others’ emotions vanishes once again. “I’m sorry.”
“Damn.”
D turns back to us, and I can’t quite make out his eyes behind his shades. His flinch upon seeing me is almost imperceptible, but I think he knows it’s me. He doesn’t immediately accuse me of anything, at least. Instead, he turns to Jay to offer them a hand.
“I let slip why you ran out.” He tugs them to their feet, but I don’t wait for anyone else’s help before reconfiguring myself to be upright. “He panicked or something, I don’t know. S’the last thing I remember, at least.”
“He used you to disable my drone,” j355 explains. “Then you collapsed. Christ. I had to check your vitals to be sure you weren’t dead.”
“Sorry,” I mutter. At the slight frown D directs at me, I continue. “I fucked up. This whole thing was pointless and stupid, Jordan wouldn’t even be here if I wasn’t so—”
“There’s nothing you can do about it now.” Jay pushes past me into the lab. They call out into the empty space. “Where are you?”
“Table D9. I fell out of camera sight, so I’m not sure if I’m under the table or—”
“Here.” They duck under a table and pick up a drone. “You shouldn’t have to use one of these soon. Let’s get you up and running again.”
They wander into another room without looking back, so I’m left alone with a vastly older version of Dave than I’ve ever talked to. He looks after them with a deep frown. I didn’t know they were close.
“Hal wanted me to ask if you’d tell him about the memories,” he says without warning. It takes me a second to even realize he’s talking to me. “I have a feeling he’ll just swipe Jay’s files after they talk to you about it, but still.”
He shifts his weight and looks at me over his shades. There’s something unnerving about seeing an aged version of one of your friends. Something strange and uncomfortable, and I can’t help but like him immediately.
“Yeah, I—” I clench my fists until my nails dig into my palm. “Once I convince myself I’m really here, I’ll swing by.”
“Good. No running back out there, right?” He turns back to lab at large to watch the door Jay left through, so I can’t read him again. “A lot of folks would be pretty pissed if you turned right around and got yourself lost again.”
“How the hell did you end up being Jay’s friend?” I grumble.
“Ah, well.” He rubs the back of his neck and makes a face. “I came by after everything with the asshole version of Dave’s bro. They let me bring everyone else, now I always seem to be finding myself back here.”
Huh. Jay’s been holding out on me.
“Then again,” he muses. He tilts his head to look back at me with a rueful smile. “Bro and I have unofficially adopted half the Cube by now. With Jess caring so much about them, Roxy and the Captors hacking into their servers—and don’t even get me started on the rest of The Collective getting all catty about whatever the hell they’re doing back here—all that on top of Dirk and Hal poking around for parts, I’d’ve found my way here eventually.”
What the fuck? The Strider’s are looking out for everyone now? When the hell did that happen?
I cover my face with my hands and lean back against a table with a shaky laugh.
“God, I’m so out of the loop.”
“Wait ‘til you see the map the other kids are putting together.” He ruffles my hair and, god, I think D Strider just claimed me as a part of his family, what the fuck?
My legs buckle, but a chair I distinctly remember there not being catches me. This can’t be real. This is like the Cube I left, but swapped around and made different. I shake my head against the thought, but I can’t keep my mouth from opening.
“We’ve left the alpha timeline.”
D barks a laugh, and even Jay and j355 join in. The sound crowds around me, and I’m scared to move my hands or open my eyes. The prospect of finding out this was another piece of fiction bestowed by the memories is too painful. What would I even do?
Am I even capable of getting out anymore? Maybe I’m just a part of the memories now.
The laughter stops, I don’t know if it even lasted longer than a few seconds, but the silence is worse. It tells me it’s gone. I’m going to open my eyes and it’ll just be dark, maybe another projection of Jess waiting for me to talk to it. The disappointment is already too much to handle, and I haven’t even confirmed it.
Then, it’s not quiet anymore.
J355 whirs and thanks Jay, the distinct sound of a drone buzzing through the air joining their soft conversation. It sounds like D joined them further away, but I didn’t hear him leave. The Striders can just do that, I guess.
“I don’t have a way to track him,” Jay says, finally loud enough for me to make out. “He could already be swallowed in the memories, we don’t know.”
“Any chance he might come back on his own?”
The pause is just long enough for me to answer.
“No.” I uncover my eyes and locate the trio all the way across the room. “He thinks he’s a danger to everyone in the Cube. That we could fuse back together if we’re not careful. Even if we don’t, the two of us in one place with the kind of manipulation we have—”
“Connor.” J355’s voice washes over me, soothing and calm. I rein myself in.
“I’m just saying. He’s not coming back.”
“You’re right, sounds just like Dirk,” D mutters. Jay smacks his arm, earning a shrug. “Just sayin’, you can’t go blaming every little thing another version of you does on yourself. Jess doesn’t even do that, and they’re—well.”
He makes a gesture at the room at large.
Yeah, they’ve got plenty of versions of themself that have done shitty things. They’ve got plenty of versions of themself, period. I don’t know how they manage to keep everything straight or in order. I can barely handle having one.
“Dirk catches himself in the same cyclical thinking.” He raises a hand, stops himself, and starts again. “Or, everyone else catches him and he backpedals. Can he blame alternate versions of himself for doing crap he would never do? Is the fact that he’s scared of doing that a sign that he’s a good one? Then it goes to, thinking he’s a good one might be a sign of a shitty one’s ego, and on and on.”
“We’ve been working on that,” Jay chides. “Jess gets a lot of those guides to break out of negative cycles of thought, they help.”
They go back and forth like this awhile. I guess they’re both pretty interested in the well-being of the younger Striders. They mention the two versions of Dave, but then the alternate version of his brother comes up and the topic is dropped altogether.
The longer I’m here, the more convinced I am that it’s real.
I dig my nails into the arms of the chair just to prove I can, then lift my hands to stare at the marks left in the fabric. Cause and effect, it works here. I do it again and again on different parts of the chair, then I stand.
Jay and D both fall silent to look at me. I don’t know what they see, but I know for a fact I’m hyperventilating. I stare at them.
Then I seize a stack of papers from the table I’ve been sitting next to and throw it into the air. Jay objects, but j355 says something I don’t quite catch to shut them up.
I’m too busy watching the papers fall. And they do fall. They don’t just phase out or drop like rocks, don’t warp the air around them or change the surrounding room other than the complete mess they make. The papers fall how paper is supposed to.
I choke out a sound, and I’m not sure if it’s a laugh or a sob until it comes again. This time, when I fall to my knees I do land on the floor. I cover my mouth against the hysterical, hiccupping laughs. There’s nothing I can to about the hot tears squeezing past my eyes.
I’m out.
I’m here, this is the Cube.
Jay and D kneel at my side and try to get me to talk to them, but I can’t. I can’t even begin to find the words. There’s nothing I can say to relate this to them.
I’m home.
#writing#madd#maddart#my writing#connor#the scientist#the collective#connor is very sad#and i feel like this puts a lot of stuff in an idiots return in perspective
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Splinter
Dave's got a problem. A familiar one, really. He never has found a safe way to deal with it, though. But things are different on Earth C, and Dirk is able and willing to help.
(Read it on ao3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12874821)
(part 1 of Post-Canon Striders)
TG: yo
TG: dirk
TG: need you to be home right now man
Well, you are home. On the roof, actually, because when you're not doing anything that's where you tend to end up. Rose could probably give you a couple dozen reasons why your need to find the high ground when you're by yourself is some indicator of deep-seated trauma, but you just like to be up here and look at shit that isn't ocean. And hey, Earth C is pretty.
TG: dirk check your goddamn messages
TG: you know what actually dont check your messages for a while if youre not doing it
TG: just be aware that im in your living room when you do get home
TG: im uh
TG: a lil bit freaked out
Damn.
Dave doesn't do "a little bit freaked out." He has "totally fine," "seems like he's totally fine," and "pure panic." And he'll lump the first two in together under "fine," so he's probably in the third state right now. Which is decidedly less than awesome.
Time to get off the roof.
Like he said, he's in the living room, pacing in circles and almost tripping over the deactivated bot in the corner every round. He's not looking at where he's going, either, just fidgeting with what looks like a captcha card.
Okay, he's definitely going to trip on it this time, you can tell. Before you actually think about what the fuck you're doing, you flash-step up behind him, grabbing his shoulder to get him to stop. The noise he makes when you touch him is scared and pretty close to inhuman, and you barely step back fast enough to not get skewered as he uncaptchalogues his sword from the card in his hand. He's reacted badly to your surprising him before, but this is kind of new. "Fuck, Dave—"
"Oh, shit—Dirk. Okay. Dirk, definitely Dirk, okay..." Yeah, panicked. Also terrified, you think. He captchas the sword again as you step away and raise your hands. Doesn't put the card away, though. "Sorry. Jumpy."
"No shit." No more flash-stepping. No quick moves if you can help it, actually. "Who'd you think was going to sneak up on you in my house, right after you texted me? I mean, it's not like there's a lot of people that can get the jump on you like that—"
"One more than there should be, right now." Dave glances at you, then back down at the card in his hand as if to reassure himself that it's still there, before crossing his arms. It should come across as a defensive gesture, but you can't help but read it as him trying to be smaller, less noticeable. "Met somebody else who used to be dead today."
"Oh?" You've gotten to deal with a lot of those—they just show up, every so often, like the game processes ghosts and spits them out here as living people if they deserve it. Usually you can tell when one's woken up somewhere near you, it's a nice sixth sense that your aspect's seen fit to give you, but you haven't gotten any hints of that lately. Otherwise you would've been trying to figure out who needed the explanation of where they were and why they weren't in the dreambubbles. "Who—"
"Bro." He says it flatly, no emotion at all, but that only lasts for maybe ten seconds as he keeps talking. "I thought he was you for a second, okay, I swear to god, he lost the goddamn hat somewhere but not the fucking shades, y'all're the same size and you look kinda like him but I asked him about the movie you borrowed and he just looked at me for a second and then—fuck. Fuck."
"Calm down." Dave gets quieter when he's upset, not louder, and by the end of that sentence his voice is so soft and shaky you can barely hear it. "It was really him?"
He actually laughs at that. You don't really like the almost-hysterical sound of it. "Fuck, man, you think I'm gonna forget what a real Texan accent sounds like? He asked me what the fuck I was talking about, might've asked me some more shit if I hadn't fucking ran..."
Well, shit.
You've kind of always wondered about Dave's bro. He's a splinter of you, after all. A bad one, but then again you have to remember that whatever he is, you have the potential to be under the right circumstances. Or the wrong ones. (Although you'd rather fucking die, permanently, than do anything to put Dave in the state he's in right now. He's going to cut himself on that captcha card, if he doesn't stop fucking with it. Those things are virtually indestructible.) But no matter how much you've toyed with the idea of actually getting to meet him, you're still firmly on the side of not really wanting to. Ever.
Still, you're going to have to do something here. "You got any idea where he is?"
Dave shrugs. "Either he followed me or he didn't," he says, glancing at the window. He doesn't make any move toward it, though. "Came here 'cause I can't let him follow me home, I don't ever want him near Karkat or the grubs. Same with going anywhere else." He laughs that shaky almost-fake laugh again, raking the hand that isn't clutching the captcha card through his hair. "Shit, I sound like an asshole..."
"You don't sound like an asshole." You go over to the window, trying to find somebody that looks a hell of a lot like you. "Scared maybe, but considering the motherfucker we're talking about here, I don't blame you."
Dave is pacing again. You don't have to turn around to know that. "Sound like I'm throwing you under the goddamn bus—"
"Don't be an idiot. No offense, but I'm pretty sure I can handle your bro a hell of a lot better than you can." There he is, leaning against the wall of a building on the other side of the street, face turned up to watch the general vicinity of the window you're looking out of. Even from this distance you can see that yeah, that could be easily you, and fuck if that's not unnerving. "You sit tight. I'm going to go down and talk to him—"
"Dude, don't, please—" Dave grabs your shoulder before you can even turn away from the window, and there's no mistaking the desperation in his voice. "He's gonna end up hurting you—"
"We're just going to talk," you repeat firmly, taking his hand off your shoulder. "No one's hurting anyone." Well, that might not be true—if you have to hurt him to convince him to leave Dave alone, so be it. "Wait here, alright? I'll be back up in a bit."
Dave does not look convinced. He still nods as you head for the door. "Be careful, dude."
"Yeah."
By the time that you actually walk out of the door to the building, you still don't know what you're going to say to the guy. He hasn't moved in the time it took you to get down here, but he's focused on you from the moment you walk out the door. A normal person might not be able to tell, but you know his body language as well as you know your own—the slight shift to make it look like he's still looking up, that tiny change in expression as he gets a look at something he doesn't totally understand.
God, this is weird as hell.
"Yo." And he's the first one to speak, which isn't ideal. He straightens up to give himself that extra two inches of height, and you catch the minute look of surprise on his face as that just brings him to precisely as tall as you.
"Hey. You know who I am?"
He shrugs, offering you an easy grin. Okay, he's definitely more charming than you're ever going to manage; if you didn't know how upset Dave was, you might not sense anything off about him at all. "You look a hell of a lot like a baby version of me, so I'm gonna go with the 'weird universe shit' option."
"Close enough. Come on. We're going to go for a walk."
He probably thinks you don't catch that flash of anger.
"What, you trying to let the kid slip out without me seeing him?" He cocks his head, crossing his arms. "Could've told him I'll just pick him up again later—"
"Dave's not going anywhere, don't worry." You actually just wanted to be somewhere Dave couldn't see, in case this does escalate. Although you probably would've told him to leave while you were talking, if you'd thought of it. "And no, you're not picking him up later. He doesn't want anything to do with you. Not that I blame him."
"Fuck, dude. You're gonna try and tell me whether I can or can't talk to my lil' bro?" Okay, he's not even trying to hide any of the threatening body language—do you do that when you're pissed? "I could—"
Your sword's in your hand before he can finish that sentence, and he grunts as you slam him up against the wall and press the blade flat against his throat, just hard enough that he shuts up. "No," you tell him, and you're mildly proud of the fact that your voice stays level and calm, "you really couldn't."
Bastard isn't going to show you any fear, though. You'll give him that much. Even though you know he's got to be in a good bit of discomfort (if not outright pain) he's still smiling. That expression's gone more than a little dangerous, though. "Back off, kid."
"One? Make me. Two—" You grab his wrist as he snaps his hand up to try and hit you in the side of your head, twisting until he hisses in pain and pressing the katana harder against his throat with your other hand. "You don't get to call me kid."
The whole concept of you almost being him is actually sinking in now that you proved that you think like he does. Maybe the possibility that you're not really all that opposed to the idea of hurting him is also making an impact, because his face goes blank and he goes completely still for a second. Then he slowly raises his hands, not bothering to put on another smile. "Okay, okay. Fucking chill, dude." This close to him, you can just barely see the amber shadow of his eyes, even through his shades and yours. He blinks twice, too fast to be as calm as he seems, before continuing. "Want to elaborate on what you want from me, maybe?"
Oh, god, time to try and act like you have any percentage of a plan whatsoever. "You're going to stay away from Dave." You ease up with the pressure on the sword over his throat, then step back and put your sword away.
There's a thin red line across his neck—he winces just a bit when he reaches up to rub at it. When it smears, he frowns at the red on his fingers before looking back up at you. "He's my goddamn brother, asshole—"
"Yeah, and you had him for thirteen fucking years." Take another step back. You can't actually strangle him, as much as you want to. "And it's been—what, at least ten years since he's had the bad luck to have to see you?—and he's still not over what you did to him."
"I did what I had to do to make sure he'd survive—"
"You fucked him up in more ways than I feel like listing right now." It's really good looks can't kill, because he's trying really damn hard right now. You're almost sure he doesn't have a sword. He'd be trying to put it through your chest if he did.
"I fucking died for that kid," he growls, and you get the feeling that that's one of his trump cards.
The look that he gives you when you laugh is unguarded and purely baffled. "So fucking what? You're not dead now, he wasn't even the one to kill you."
"I—"
"Everyone died. Everyone fucking died. Doesn't make you special. Maybe you died for Dave, maybe not, I don't care. It doesn't make up for hurting him, and no one around here wants anything to do with you, either way."
"He can tell me that himself."
"Dude, you better hope he doesn't, because if I find out you tried to talk to him, got near him at all, your life expectancy is about as long as it takes me to find you and put a sword through your heart. Again."
Before he even opens his mouth you know he's going to argue one of two points here: either your physical or mental ability to follow through on that threat. He goes with the latter. "You really think you can handle murdering yourself, kid?" He tilts his head enough to look at you over the top of his shades, orange eyes going narrow.
They widen again pretty quick when you draw your katana with a motion you know he can't track. This probably makes you a horrible person, but you can feel yourself smiling as he tries to back up despite the fact that his back's already against the wall. "The fact that you think that'd even make me hesitate just goes to show we're definitely not the same person."
No sound comes out, but his mouth shapes the word "fuck."
"You're going to walk away now." You don't move to let him leave, though. Not yet. "You're going to get at least a couple hundred miles away from here—shouldn't be that hard, find a fucking bus and tell the driver Dirk Strider said you needed a free ride. It's not all that hard to figure out how to contact me if they don't believe you." You're setting yourself up for more phone calls. God, you hate that, but it's necessary in this instance. "If you fuck with anybody, I show up. If you try to keep tabs on Dave, I show up. You really don't want me to show up."
"Fucking bitch," he spits at you. Wow. You don't think you've ever seen such an expression of fury on a human's face. Trolls yes, cherubs maybe, but goddamn that's ugly on him.
"Yeah, maybe. But don't try and fool yourself into thinking that I'm a dumb bitch. You fuck with Dave, with anybody, and I'm going to know." The first thing you're going to be doing when you're done with this is to message Hal, in fact. Tell him he needs to add one more person to the list of those he keeps tabs on. "Look at me and tell me you don't believe that." And you take a step back and stare at him, not raising your katana but not putting it away either.
He does look at you. For what seems to be a long time. Long enough for you to start wondering if he's going to attack you. You can handle him if he does, but you still hope he doesn't. Dave's probably still watching from the window, he doesn't need to see that.
In the end, though, it doesn't come to that. Dave's bro snarls wordlessly at you, shoulders you aside, and just keeps walking. Thank fucking god. And you put your sword away and head back to the side of the street that you belong on.
Dave's still looking out the window when you get up to your apartment, but he turns around when you open the door. He's got an almost pathetic look of relief on his face. You have to force yourself not to tense, because he immediately heads for you...and he's still got his own sword in his hand.
Yes, you know he's not going to hurt you, but you're more keyed-up than you'd like to admit. "Okay, not to be an asshole, but I'm going to rule this apartment a no-weapons area. For right now, at least."
"What—" Dave looks confused for a second, then shakes his head, captchas his sword, and closes the distance between you. "Fuck, man, sorry—you okay? And don't you fucking dare tell me nothing happened, I could see—"
"Nothing did happen, I swear." He isn't touching you, and he probably isn't going to, but you hold out your hands so he can see that you don't have a single mark on you. "We talked. He's gone. He not coming back, but if he does you call me and I'll make sure he goes away for good, okay?"
"...yeah. Yeah." Dave laughs, and it doesn't sound as strained or shaky as it did before. "God, I feel like a lame piece of shit now, though...you sure you're okay?"
"One, you're not a lame piece of shit, I just know what buttons to press to deal with that asshole. Mine are almost the same as his, after all." Dave opens his mouth to argue that point, but closes it again when you frown at him. "Two, I'm probably more okay than you are right now. You want me to walk home with you?"
He has to think about it for a minute before he nods. "Yeah. That'd be good. You want to stay over for dinner as payment for this shit?"
"As long as neither you nor Karkat makes it by yourself, hell yeah I do."
Dave grins and shoves you out the door, and as you head for the elevator you're already composing an email for Hal. Might as well cover all possible bases, keep your bro as safe as you can. Especially from shit like this.
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