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rosemary-is-in-pesterquest · 3 years

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okay I gotta get something off my chest about Eridan's pesterquest route cuz I never see anyone get annoyed about it and it drives me nuts. y'know how he talks about liking wearing feminine clothing and talks about gender identity stuff? it's been forever since I've revisited this, but basically, I thought it was super weird the first time I played that route cuz it kind of like... mischaracterizes Alternian society?

like, hear me out cuz this shit gets a little odd. first of all, gender arguably meant very little to the trolls in terms of social restrictions or roles and expectations, and I think that's because of the broader theme of the trolls having different issues than the humans. see, it was always sort of a part joke, part worldbuilding, part social commentary sort of thing, that some things that were a big deal to humans weren't a big deal to trolls, and vise versa. for example, sexuality is basically a non-existent issue for trolls, and due to the way reproduction and genetic diversity works in their species, it's basically impossible for them to care about incest as we know it, and gender doesn't seem to matter as much to them socially when it comes to dating. meanwhile, the humans don't understand anything about the hemospectrum, and the complicated web of issues faced by those lower or higher on that spectrum. we see everyone struggle with their position, from Feferi putting in the work of staving off genocide by keeping her lusus fed, to Equius's trouble reconciling his natural inclination to behave subserviently with his class's expectation that he subjugate those lower on the spectrum, to Vriska's own struggle to survive by ruthless means... high bloods don't necessarily have things easier. but those lower on the hemospectrum are subjected to a lot of cruel systemic threats, which are often the direct result of the expectations that high bloods face. it's all pretty complicated, and the human kids are at a total loss... they have no clue about any of this.

so with that being the case... the things that Eridan was saying about his gender identity just seemed like they were issues imported from human society, rather than issues that would actually manifest that way on Alternia. on Alternia, it's doubtful that anyone would give a shit about gender identity, to the point where I doubt there'd really be much discussion around it. Alternia is kind of a rude and ornery place by nature... part of the joke is that Altenians may be literal aliens called trolls, but their society also produces a population of rude and ornery people that communicate primarily online... making them also internet trolls in the expected sense. therefore, if they find something that they can pick on you for, they will do it. Vriska clearly displays that this is a no-holds-barred kind of bullying, when she harasses Tavros for having a disability that she caused... and that makes cultural sense because Alternia has such a heavy focus on resilience, and physical strength. they're very survival oriented, so making fun of someone for a perceived physical flaw is very in character, no matter how horrible it is. but nobody makes fun of anyone over, say, sexuality. because it is literally unremarkable, and it would not get under anyone's skin to mention it. it's not even out of benevolence that nobody touches that topic... it's literally not on anyone's radar, because it doesn't matter. and I think gender identity is the same way. the only mention of gender I even remember from the trolls in homestuck, was Karkat telling Tavros that he should stop playing games that are for girls... but what Karkat meant was "stop playing games where you're likely to get murdered" because the girls he was talking about were TEREZI AND VRISKA. the game is called FATAL live action role playing, and Vriska explicitly uses the game to KILL PEOPLE. and that's literally the only thing I can remember about the trolls mentioning gender amongst each other. outside of that, it seemed similarly off of their radar, and a lot of the troll girls are so excellent as characters because they aren't subject to the narrative making them adhere to human "girl expectations".

and all of this makes it a lot more transparent that what the writing in Eridan's pesterquest route was really trying to do, was retcon the whole "March Eridan" meme of old, into something more progressive than it actually was. originally, the joke was just "boy in awkward looking drag = funny joke" and/or people finding it hot, which is like... standard fare for that era of fandom, but your mileage may vary on how irritating you find it. they could've just left that whole thing in the past, or just mentioned that he had the outfit in his wardrobe as a cheeky little wink/nudge to people who know what it's getting at... but no. they had to have him go on some lengthy monologue about gender identity, which Eridan in actual homestuck probably wouldn't have thought about for 2 seconds... and then they follow it up with the whole Sollux conflict?!??!!!

I'm sorry, Eridan barely knew Sollux existed and probably would never have given him the time of day before he got involved with Feferi. and Sollux and Feferi similarly had absolutely nothing to do with each other until he saved her as they were entering the medium. he literally died for her, but prior to that, I'm pretty sure they didn't know each other at all. and, and, AND. Sollux mainly needed Feferi as a rebound to help him fill the void left behind when he lost Aradia! Aradia has not died in pesterquest! Sollux has a bit of a thing for girls with chipper demeanors who act as a counterbalance to his negative outlook. but tbh, Aradia is a better fit for him because she acknowledges macabre and depressing things, but doesn't let it get her down. Sollux's troubles are acknowledged with a genuinely warm response, rather than glossed over with a coat of sunny optimism. Feferi tries to help Sollux, but it isn't perfect... and then Eridan crashes into the middle of it all expecting even more wild shit from Feferi, who honestly just can't catch a break.

so basically, if Aradia hasn't died, then Sollux has no reason to be interested in Feferi. and if Sollux isn't interested in Feferi, then Eridan has no reason to give a shit about Sollux. and when you add that to the gender thing... Eridan's whole route totally unravels. I'm not saying I don't support the idea of Eridan being GNC or trans in some way... I'm saying he probably doesn't have an oppression narrative because of it on Alternia. the whole point of the difference between Alternia and Earth standards, is to lampoon the importance of both of their issues, by showing a contrasting society that just doesn't have the hangups that the other side considers to be SO fundamental and SO important. it's like whoever wrote that route didn't understand this at all.

OOOO THIS WAS A VERY INTERESTING READ

#eridan's pq having him be oppressed for being gnc was indeed very weird

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homespork-review · 5 years

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Spork Introduction

CHEL: Hi! I go by Chel, they or she pronouns, and I’m the one spearheading this project. I still like at least a fair percentage of Homestuck, but after the ending disappointed me a great deal, I got bitter, and when Hussie pissed me off further by Godwinning himself, I decided to do something about it. I’m no longer angry about it, but I felt I’d benefit from picking out what I hate from what I love so I can focus on the latter without annoyance getting in the way, and also to benefit my own writing efforts.

BRIGHT: Howdy! I’m Bright, and I got into Homestuck fairly recently. After ploughing through the archive and digesting for a while, I realised that I was thoroughly annoyed by how something enjoyable had fallen apart so comprehensively. I am looking forward to the time-honoured practice of ripping the story apart to identify its weak points and shout at them.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hello, I’m Failure Artist (call me FA for short), she/her/herself pronouns, and I’m so old-school they burned the school down. I was introduced to Homestuck via Something Awful’s Webcomic thread. I checked the old mspadventures.com site and the latest update was [S] John: Bite Apple. After watching that bizarre piece of animation, I had to know what the hell happened before then. I found I enjoyed the wit of the comic though I didn’t really care much about the plot. It was only when Act 5 came around that I became a serious fan. I currently have 122 Homestuck works on Archive of Our Own. I have a lot of free time, you see. I am very disappointed in how Homestuck ended. Possibly there was no completely satisfactory way it could end but it still could have been better. I feel like Hussie was a juggler who threw a lot of balls into the air and ignored them as they fell to the ground and some fans think not catching them was a master move since you’d expect he’d try to catch at least one. Sadly, lots of the problems with the ending are embedded deep within the canon.

TIER: Hi hi. I am Tier, a very late newcomer to the wonderful world of Homestuck (2018 reader!) and average fan overall. I love this webcomic to bits, but the low points are deep and I enjoy seeking out what the heck went wrong. Not particularly analytical myself, hope that's cool!

CHEL: Cool by us! We’ve already done plenty of analysing before we started, as you may realise from my Tumblr’s “homestuck ending hate” tag (at @chelonianmobile).

FAILURE ARTIST: But let’s put that aside for a moment and talk about the good stuff.

Homestuck is incredibly innovative. It is the first true webcomic. It’s not just a print comic posted online. It uses not just still images and words but also animation, music, and interactive games.

Homestuck is the latest adventure in the series MS Paint Adventures. MS Paint Adventures started as a forum adventure. In forum adventures, the OP acts as a sort of Dungeon Master and other forum members give them prompts. Andrew Hussie’s previous works under MS Paint Adventures were Jailbreak (which is little more than Hussie dicking with the prompters in scatological ways), Bard’s Quest (Choose-your-own-adventure), and the actually-completed Problem Sleuth. Problem Sleuth lacks the music and animation and despite the weird physics shenanigans is a simpler story than Homestuck. The characters aren’t even two dimensional.

Homestuck (and the previous MS Paint Adventures minus Bard’s Quest) are set up like adventure games. Adventure games are where the player is a protagonist in a story and are usually focused on puzzle-solving though sometimes there’s combat. In the beginning, these games were purely text. The player would type what they wanted to do and the game would spout back text describing it - assuming the computer parser understood you.

CHEL: Oh god, I HATED that. I wasn’t around for the heyday but I’ve played a couple and

Pale Luna

was barely an exaggeration (horror warning).

FAILURE ARTIST: As graphics improved, adventure games started using them, but the commands were still in text. Only later was the point-and-click interface created and players didn’t have to guess what exact sentence the computer wanted them to type. Homestuck and the other MS Paint Adventures play with that frustration while paying tribute to the genre. The game within the comic uses RPG elements but the comic itself is set up like those good ol’ adventure games. In the beginning, Homestuck was guided by commands from forum members. Even after he closed the suggestion box, he used memes and fanon created by readers.

CHEL: How good an idea this was varies, as we’ll be showing.

We probably don’t need to describe Homestuck much more. Everyone here who hasn’t read it will doubtless have heard of it. Almost everyone with a Tumblr will have seen fanart, almost anyone at a convention will have seen cosplay. Shoutouts have been made to it in professional works such as the cartoon Steven Universe, and the Avengers fandom latched onto “caw caw motherfuckers” as a catchphrase for Hawkeye to the point that it’s now often forgotten it didn’t originate from there.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Homestuck fandom term “sadstuck” for depressing stories/headcanons somehow leaked into other fandoms. Using second-person is actually cool now and not just for awkward reader fics. Astrology will never be the same again.

CHEL: Now, in the interests of fairness, we will say that when Homestuck is good, it’s amazing, and it’s good often. The characters at least start out appealing and are all immediately distinguishable; even with the typing quirks stripped, it’s easy to tell who said what. The magic system is one of the coolest I’ve ever seen, who doesn’t love classpecting themselves and their faves? Hussie also shows a lot of talent for the complex meta and time travel weirdness, and it is fascinating to watch a timeline thread unfurl. And whatever else one says, it’s a fascinating story that’s captivated millions. I think it is deserving of its title as a modern classic.

However, as the years have passed, we have ended up noticing problems, big and small, and they nagged at us until we decided it had to be dissected. Our intention here isn’t to tear apart something we loathe entirely. It’s to take a complex work and pick out what works from what doesn’t. As I said, when Homestuck is good, it’s very very good. But when it’s bad, we get problems of every scale from various offensive comments to dragging pace to characters ignoring problems and solutions right under their noses to an absolute collapse of every theme and statement the comic stood for before.

The comic is ludicrously long; eight thousand pages, or thereabouts, to be specific. Officially one of the longest works of fiction in the English language, in fact. Naturally, we can’t riff that word by word in any timeframe short of decades, and we can’t include every picture, even if that was permitted under copyright law. Instead, as comics have been done here before, we’ll recap most of the time, and include sections of dialogue and pictures when particularly relevant to a point.

Here are the counts we’ll be using, possibly to be added to later if we find we forgot anything. Most of these counts will only start to climb post-Act 5, but we’ll be keeping track of them from the beginning. Most of them could have been fixed with a decent editor, which is sadly a hazard of webcomics, but still frustrating to read.

TIER: Note: we started this endeavor months before the thought of a "technically not but still we'll count it" set of canon epilogues were a twinkle in the eyes of the fandom. That is, by the way, a whole 'nother can of worms that will be dealt with at a later date if that ever comes around. We're judging Homestuck the Webcomic as a whole, so no after the credits stuff is to be noted for whatever reason.

ALL THE LUCK - Vriska Serket constantly gets a pass or gets favored over every other character. This count is added to every time she pulls some shenanigans with which others wouldn’t get away. ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY? - Sometimes it’s not entirely clear whether a thing is supposed to be taken seriously or not. We don’t require hand-holding through every joke, but when, for example, we’re supposed to take one instance of violence seriously while a similar case is supposed to be funny, this count goes up. CALL CPA PLEASE - Instances of creepy sexual behaviour (and perhaps particularly gratuitous acts of violence) from the thirteen-year-old cast. Now, mileage may vary on this one. We won’t pretend that thirteen-year-olds are perfect pure angels, especially thirteen-year-olds growing up in what is openly supposed to be a nightmarish dystopia. However, when full pages focus on said behaviour, there comes a point of it being very uncomfortable to read. Clarification: does not refer to cases where the adults do something heinous, this is strictly when the kids do. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS - When an offensive joke or comment is made, particularly when not justified by the personality of the character involved, or presented in the narration as being okay. GET ON WITH IT! - When the pace drags. ‘Nuff said. Hazard of the format, but it makes archive bingeing very annoying. GORE GALORE - For unnecessary and/or excessive torture porn which is treated less seriously because it features troll characters, and therefore less “realistic” blood colours. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC - When the comic does something mentioned in How Not To Write A Novel, and it isn’t justified by the webcomic format. HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING - Characters repeatedly neglect to do something about or even react to terrible happenings, either because they don’t care even if they should or they forget they have the capacity. Not necessarily anything to do with their magical powers, either - characters ignore personal problems that are right under their noses, too. IN HATE WITH MY CREATION - For reasons that are unclear, Hussie chose to create characters he apparently hated writing, or at least ignored in favour of others. Every time he’s clearly disrespecting one of his own characters, this goes up, whether it’s by nerfing their powers or changing their personalities. RELATIONSHIP GOALS? - Romantic relationships in particular get fumbled quite often. Ship Teasing is used with skill, but that skill tends to be lost when the characters actually hook up. Fumbled friendships and family relations can also come under this heading. SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER - When characters other than Vriska get away with something morally questionable. Covers everything from sexual harassment to not trying to save people from the apocalypse. SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS - Later on in Homestuck’s run, Hussie tried to make up for the offensive humour and casual -isms counted by Clockwork Problematykks above. How successful he was at this varied. This count goes up whenever an attempt at progressivism is waved in front of the reader but doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. WHAT IS HAPPENING?? - When the already confusing plot kicks it up a notch. Admittedly this is as much a selling point of the comic as it is an issue, but either way, we’re going to keep track. Points will be added to when it gets confusing, and taken away when a previous confusing thing is explained adequately. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM - What is shown about Alternia repeatedly contradicts what we’re told about how different it is from Earth. For example, trolls still use heteronormative terms even after it’s established they reproduce bisexually, and the demonstration of the class structure doesn’t always add up. This count goes up every time that happens. It also goes up every time something happens which strongly implies Hussie was envisioning the human kids as white, despite his later claims that they were always supposed to be “aracial”, and every time their economic statuses don’t add up either.

#homespork #homestuck #review #literary critique #sporking #let's read #reread #homestuck meta

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mythgendered · 5 years

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this art done by my lovely naem circa 2013 <3

so, uh... hopin’ y’all don’t mind a dash spam too much but, hey, it’s 4/13 and I think I’m allowed to be a little indulgent and nostalgic

it’s been 10 dang whole years of Homestuck, i’ve spent almost seven of those dang years here on tumblr, and most of those dang years were spent on my needlessly convoluted ask blog-turned-fanventure, unstUck/uracilumbrage

i...can’t say in good faith that it’s a good comic -- almost all of it was written as i went, and sometimes i would straight up skip ahead when i got bored, which is hardly good for storytelling! it also doesn’t help that i was writing it as homestuck proper was still ongoing, and i was trying to cut into some Deep Lore shit that hadn’t been fully fleshed out in canon. i got some decent guesses in, though, so i feel pretty good about that!

but yeah, it’s kind of a mess, especially when it starts spilling out into the role play side, which for some reason i wanted to tie into my comic’s canon? oh god, some stuff is straight up Lost now, due to blogs deleting or changing urls. at least most of the story is coherent!

but i’m rambling, and also dunking on myself. at the end of the day, i can’t say i had anything but the most amount of fun doing this lil fanventure. it’s sloppy, and i spent way too many years on it, and i ultimately never finished it (whoops!), but...it was just so much fun to work on my own little story! doing my own flavor of Homestuck, and letting the cherubs do their thing. and it connected me with so many people!

so many cool peeps and good friends who i still know and love to this day. to say nothing of my lovely girlfriend, who was so wonderful and supportive and gosh i still blush when i remember the lil fan messages she sent before we started talking formally ;u;

and i guess! that’s what i’m here clogging your dash with. not just to plug my defunct comic -- though if you wanna check it out i’m not gonna say no -- but to just...share my little corner of the Homestuck Experience on this most four of thirteens. back when i was in college, chipping away at panels inbetween role playing with some of the best people i know, listening to all the HS albums and waiting intensely for the next upd8.

(Oh, and rewatching [s] Caliborn: Enter a lot. a lot. you guys have no idea how many times i rewatched and screencapped that flash for panel and/or role play purposes. so many times you guys.)

so much of the good in my life over the past near-decade came about thanks to Homestuck, and i don’t think i can ever fully express how much it means to me.

i hope you don’t mind me going on about myself for this long! but like i said i’m indulgent and nostalgic rn. when I think back on Peak Homestuck days, this is what i remember: waiting on upd8s in one tab, hammering out my own panels in another, all while meeting and getting to know some truly wonderful people.

happy Homestuck day, y’all. i’m glad we all got to experience this gr8 comic that brought so much love to our hearts <3

(and if you’ll indulge me more, i’m sliding some more out of context panels and rp pics under the read more to complete my nostalgia trip. there’s a lot, and almost all of it is incomprehensible rp jokes! but it’s the stuff that made me smile, and what i think of when i fondly regard my homestuck phase)

thank u for these ash im so so sorry i never actually ended the comic and got to post these kxzhsdghf

(thank u forever nursey i got so much mileage mangling ur gorgeous talksprites)

(thank u forever nursey and ash)

(ily naem)

and if you stuck around, behold: one of my first ever hs fanarts! it hurts to look at!

and if you’re here, thanks much for indulging me, haha. have a good and i love you <3

#homestuck #caliborn #calliope #fanventure #4/13 #gif warning #gif warning under the cut too #HIDEOuS TRASH LORD #darling mUse #epilepsy warning under the readmore #just in case!!#happy homestuck y'all #my art

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betweengenesisfrogs · 7 years

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OFF THE CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #2: RETCON HEIR OR RETCON ARTIST? OR: CHARACTER AND SPECTACLE FAIL TO COLLIDE

DISCLAIMER

IMPORTANT THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

A lot of people will tell you the Retcon ruined Homestuck, or that it was a lazy way of solving problems Hussie pulled out of his ass at the last minute or something like that.

Nah.

It seems pretty clear to me that the retcon was planned from the start of Act 6, and in fact, in many ways was a huge part of the point of Act 6.

I remember a lot of proto-Saltstuck posts from way back in earlier Act 6. Like, say, right before Game Over. They were something along the lines of “Look, I was into Homestuck previously, but now all Hussie’s doing is delaying things and testing our patience. Everything is just going to shit, and nothing good is ever going to happen. Rose is never going to meet her mom, Dave is never going to sort his shit out with his bro, anytime anything nice like John meeting his friends happens Hussie just cuts away, Hussie is the reason we can’t have nice things, Homestuck will never again be nice things, etc.”

I was really worried about this, too! I was terrified that we would never get catharsis, never get meaningful character arcs, and so much more. This is going to be bullshit forever, I thought.

But when you get to something like Game Over, it becomes clear that feeling was by deliberate design. Up to that point, Hussie was telling the story of how things got fucked up in a pretty major way. He didn’t show John meeting his friends because that wasn’t the point of what was going on at the moment.

Similarly, with the whole idea of the retcon: you don’t think the fact of John’s having retcon powers was the Chekoviest of Chekhov’s Guns? (He has many. Imagine Chekov flexing. Aww yisss.) You don’t think he spent some time showing us how those powers worked, how they were distinct from Dave’s time powers, because he ultimately planned to use them at a pretty pivotal moment in the story? Act 6 is the story of the retcon. It is written around the retcon.

Read from beginning to end, Act 6 isn’t just ennui and bullshit, like it seemed at the time. That was largely because of the delays we experienced in its telling. But read archaically, it makes a pretty darn reasonable story. It’s the story of how our heroes, after a big moment of victory, went into a decline that fucked things up for them. But they were able to regroup using a weapon that had been heavily foreshadowed earlier, and win the day.

I think the idea of the retcon is integral to the story and in fact a pretty good one. I even think the nature of the retcon (bringing back Vriska) was a pretty good one, although your mileage may vary and I might get into that later.

The trouble, in my opinion, is that Hussie kind of fumbled the ball after that.

The problem with the post-retcon world John creates is that while some characters do get some fantastic story arcs out of the before-and-after, most needed a lot more time in the oven, which is the source of the odd, barren feeling most of us walked away with. Post-retcon HS is rushed, which feels like a weird thing to say about something as huge as HS with so much dialogue and an entire freaking hand-drawn animation at the end, but there you have it. It’s rushed on a certain conceptual level. The reasons for its being rushed are obvious: Hussie had a ton of shit on his plate, and I think it’s really unfair to blame him for that, or act like he didn’t care. Because from the sound of it, he cared a hell of a fuckin’ lot. Despite everything, he got it done. Honestly, his work ethic is something I really admire and respect.

But it is rushed. What’s the main problem?

In a word: while the many dialogues between the retconned characters were enough to establish (for the most part) who these new versions of our favorite people were, we didn’t see them grow afterward. We didn’t see them challenged, we didn’t see them change further! They didn’t have time to demonstrate who they were and what was important about the ways in which the retcon had changed them! If we’d seen those changes, I believe the end of Homestuck would have been much better received. Collide and Act 7 were great in a visual and spectacle sense (seriously, I could watch that shit a million times), but they offered nothing new to the characters, for the most part.

It pains me to say it, but they were very video gamey, in the worst sense, in the sense that the Hobbit movies suffer from: victory is about having a cool fight with the boss and winning, rather than about how you grow as a person. In essence they amounted to John and everybody doing a really cool dance before going off to the new universe.

With some notable exceptions! I keep bringing up Dave. Most people would agree that Dave’s arc was hella great. In part that’s because a lot of time was spent on it before Collide, but it’s also because its culmination was in Collide itself! What better way for Dave to affirm his new understanding of who he was and his growth past Bro’s way of looking at the world than to symbolically cut off the head of his abuser? What better way for Dirk to show he’d grown than to engage in that act of trust? What better way to show that these kids are gonna be all right than to show them learning how to work together?

Trouble is, not many others could boast of having such a culmination in Collide. Maybe Roxy, in that she gets to take down the Batterwitch in this big cathartic moment for her, and fight alongside her mom, but that’s a bit limited in its scope. Calliope, Vriska and Caliborn have some character-significant moments in Act 7 (which I want to talk about later.) But most of it is just boss fighting. No wonder we expected a lot more from Act 7, cool as the animation was.

There’s an argument to be made, I think, that we need to Mind the Gap. A big part of what made Act 6 feel aimless and stretched is the fact that there were so many hiatuses. (Another reason to lament Hiveswap basically sucking out Hussie’s soul.) One big gap, the Omegapause, came between the many retconned retconversations among the kids and the final battles of Collide. Maybe most of the character growth for most characters came in those conversations, rather than the animations.

That’s true to some degree, I think, especially for certain characters (Rose and Roxy especially) but I still say we needed more time. Time before Collide, to say, what were these characters trying to do, other than to win the game? What did our new heroes want? And time after Collide, to say: how did they feel about what they’d accomplished?

Ultimately, despite the spectacle of the final boss fight, we still didn’t know what most of our heroes were fighting it for.

The irony, of course, is that the difference between big heroic, video-game style actions and actual meaningful personal growth is one of the major themes of HS, and it’s easy to wonder if Hussie gave us this kind of ending precisely to engage with that difference.

I lean towards no. Or at least, if he did, he wasn’t able to persuade his audience of it in a coherent way. To do something like that, he would have needed a lot more from his characters. We would have needed to see them thinking about this difference—say, some more skepticism from John about why they were fighting these final bosses.

We could have told the story of twelve kids who needed to fight a final boss, not out of a desire for that fight, but only because of the standards of an arbitrary video game. But the thing is, we would have needed them to acknowledge that was what they were doing.

That said, as I noted, there are a lot of places in the ending where the difference between video gamey/heroic actions vs personal growth comes up, so maybe we can see HS as a work striving toward a conversation around this theme that only sometimes achieves it. Collide being the big crack in its priceless vase full of grandmotherly ashes.

Stay tuned. I definitely want to return to this topic later on.

#off the cuff homestuck thoughts extravaganza 2017

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