#🤔🤔 i just really like the idea but i don't have the Abilities necessary to explore it the way i wsnt

[tfdtreasurer]

im a pitch erikan shipper and i find it so interesting that u like them more in the pale quadrant ... i'd love 2 hear what makes them compatible there

Pitch EriKan

I'll start this out just with a quick word on pitch EriKan because it's mentioned and introduces some concepts necessary to understand going in: I don't mind the idea of them pitch, but it'd have to be for a very specific purpose. I actually tend to think that the quadrant system and kismesissitude especially should have been reevaluated as a social system, especially with the opportunity afforded by Homestuck's whole new universe thing. That being said, I have also occasionally played around with the idea that a tumultuous kismesissitude between Kanaya and Eridan does end up breaking apart Kanaya and Rose. At least temporarily. Like a weird fucked up auspisticism that only Eridan is capable of, by throwing a spanner into the works that allows the whole thing to be repaired for its benefit. Because I'll go ahead and say it: Rose and Kanaya don't have a healthy relationship in canon, related to fundamental flaws they have as characters. Look, I'm not saying there's not the real chemistry between them, there absolutely is, but other elements of their characters give them the capacity to ruin what they have. As much as I don't really have any interest in epilogues or post canon or beyond canon or "2" or whatever brand they're establishing it as now, what I hear about what happens between them, while a kick in the teeth, I wouldn't call it out of character for either of them. Yeah it's awful that our super sympathetic and lovable Kanaya is straight-up cuckolded, but she lacks the character development in canon to stick up for herself and prevent it, as harsh as that sounds. However, I think Kanaya could've absolutely received the character development to rectify those flaws and stabilize her relationship with Rose, if Homestuck as a webcomic actually bothered to conclude its story within its own canon. And the clearest path for a troll to receive character development is through moirallegience.

Kanaya, girl...

Yes, you heard me right. Kanaya has flaws. And that's okay. Let girls be fucked up and unhealthy. That's how you tell the story of how they get less fucked up and more healthy.

A quick overview of Kanaya's flaws, as I see them: The root cause of most of them is her passivity. Kanaya's default method of retaliation is ineffective passive aggression until its too late. When she loves someone, she ends up being a chronic enabler of their worst habits. She's prone to auspisticizing for others, a quadrant she herself admits isn't emotionally fulfilling for her. She's just unable to put her foot down for most things, which ends up making her fairly doormat-ish.

Less significant as flaws, she's also kinda fussy (whatever), and... if you ask me, just a touch socially regressive in a way that only really hurts herself. It's no real fault of her own. Kanaya is very deeply associated with religious maternalism and chastity. Her ancestor is literally the Dolorosa, she lives in an ivory tower, has a chastity modus. Where it becomes a flaw is that she connects too much of her self worth to how she can be a mother and carry the matriorb. Oh yeah and there's that whole thing of her reading rainbow drinker romances about forbidden love that definitely doesn't mean anything at all. In my book, she's a classically repressed CatholicSapphic™.

In the ideal world, Eridan and Kanaya exist to improve each other, like some sort of... platonic soulmates 🤔. A key component of moirallegience is the ability of two personalities to complement each other. Pacification is only part of the equation. If Kanaya's flaws are passivity and excessive emotional selflessness, then her moirail should be able to engrain in her a level of assertiveness and selfishness. Y'know, the things that Eridan infamously has in excess, and thus would theoretically balance out in a moirallegience. There's often a stigma attached to "entitlement," especially in relation to privilege, but we also shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. You cannot be your own advocate without some sense of entitlement. Kanaya deserves to be entitled to some things.

Let's veer back to me calling Rose and Kanaya a bad relationship, how heretical of me. This concept of Eridan partially serving as a mechanism by which Rose and Kanaya either break up or sort their shit out is so critical to my thinking that I came up with a clever little name for the concept...

VAMPIRE, VAMPIRE

Eridan, unlike Kanaya who is a rainbowdrinker, is a vampire. Well, another form of vampire, besides the emotional kind. She is, according to the United States Military Brevity Code, a HOSTILE ANTI-SHIP MISSILE. A vampire specifically built to strike and sink the RMS Rosemary.

Suspicious Detour

I think I've said before what my favorite panels of Homestuck are from pages 3328 and 3331.

What beautiful styling, what beautiful intertextuality, what beautiful character parallel, what beautiful everything. *Chef's kiss*.

While style can make a panel your most favorite, it can't really make it your least favorite. In a webcomic of so many styles: hero mode and sprites, hussnasty, SBAHJ... the worst a style can be is forgettable. Even "bad" styling, like late comic vriska or lazy background lalorbs can only make me laugh. It can only really be the substance behind a panel that annoys you so greatly as to occupy a spot at the absolute bottom. And this is why the panel of page 6064 is my least favorite panel in homestuck.

Well since substance is my issue, lets give this panel context.

"Ah, but this is Kanaya finally learning how to say 'No.' Isn't this what you want?"

The actual context you can find by clicking the link and going back a couple pages but the jist of it is that Kanaya is mad at Rose for getting drunk, which quickly segues into expressing why she's hates it when she's drunk. I generally like Rose. A quirky, smart but hubristic dork, what's there not to love? Well in this moment I absolutely despise her. I sympathize with Kanaya in her frustration of being robbed of the personality you fell in love with, and feeling like they're not living up to any of the promises they made to you. But after all those frustrations are voiced, Rose asks the question that page 6064 answers: "Are you going to brek[sic] up with me?"

Kanaya is essentially presented with an ultimatum she can issue, without even being the one that brought it up. A simple "Maybe" would've been an implicit demand to sober up or they're through. Yet, we already know Kanaya's answer. She doesn't put her foot down. This breaks my heart. I think Kanaya should feel a little entitled to Rose's sobriety. At the very least, for the promises made to her to be kept. The real kicker is that in the retcons, Kanaya isn't even given her moment to flip this panel on its head (like she should've) by saying anything different to show some character development. That's why substance is what makes panels bad. Because if you gave me the exact same panel with Kanaya saying "YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" it'd be back among my favorites. Hell, I'd be happy with "TEMPORARILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Kanaya lacks entitlement... I'LL REMIND YOU WHO DOESN'T, THOUGH.

Eridan is a huge bitch (and that's kinda good)

See, Eridan is a pathetic little provocateur (and I wouldn't have it any other way), whose default mode of engaging with others is to W.A.H. B.A.D. (Whine, annoy, heckle, bitch, anger, demean). If there ever was any personality potent enough to goad Kanaya into active and not passive aggression through words alone, it would be her's. This behavior is mainly in service of stirring up caliginous feelings, but with Kanaya specifically it takes on a special meaning, because it is what she needs. In fact, there is already a canon example of Eridan explicitly steering Kanaya away from her passivity.

"ERIDAN: haha damn kan if thats your idea of offense bein made then i honestly gotta fuckin wworry for you...

This is Eridan essentially telling Kanaya that her passive aggressive sarcasm was so insufficient that she didn't even notice it, and she should let her teach her how to be a more direct hater. It should be noted that in this specific situation Eridan is fully aware that Kanaya means offense towards her, and Eridan's response is still that she needs to be more offensive, reinforcing the idea that she is goading her, and pushing her limits, even when she will be the target of that offense. Eridan already views most of her relationships with land dwellers as implicitly adversarial, so letting herself be the target is pretty on brand. It also paints their previous interactions in an interesting light. When Eridan "slut shames" her for being ashen quadrant promiscuous, well I don't think "how horrible" I think yeah shame her more until she gets it, she should be more entitled to a more emotionally fulfilling quadrant, auspisticizing SUCKS. When Kanaya finds herself nearly blocking Eridan, but puts up with it, I think "damn, so close." It is a weird moirallegience, one that can be easily seen as verging on pitch so closely it makes sense why you'd even call it that. But moirails being a little "mean" about their flaws is normal. Nepeta calls Equius a weirdo and a creep, which is correct and she should say it, just like Kanaya should call Eridan a fucking loser with dumb-fuck hang-ups she needs to get over. But an occasionally mean, bickering-full moirallegience is not necessarily pitch.

Another detour

Allow me a small tangent here to say that I think people have this warped, romanticized version of what kismesissitude is, instead of its toxic reality. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of this, my lovely asker, but I do feel I have to address it, before people tell me that they have a window into my mind and that I just want pitch EriKan because the nature of the moirallegience I described. Like, the popular understanding of kismesissitude is often just the kind of moirallegience I described, or of two enemies that strive to improve each other but never kill each other, but that's not really it at all. It's a mistake to look at the kismesissitudes of children largely imitating romance as being representative of reality. Instead, we should look at known adult kismesissitudes. Using the examples of Dualscar and Mindfang, as well as Spades Slick and Snowman, actual kismesissitudes are not productive or mutualistic, and seem to lead to murder and/or the brutal maiming of the other as naturally as red romance in humans lead to marriage. It sucks. These examples aren't really toxic kismesissitudes, they're kismesissitudes working as intended.

At the end of the day I can't really blame anybody for 'falling for it.' Black romance's romanticism is part of the story, and is literally in the name as a category of romance, complete with canonically overabundant media propaganda propping it up as an institution, not even to mention its officialization through mandated quadrant pailing. And of course, it's just fun to play with dynamics of rivalry but with smooches. Like I'm not heartless (spadeless?), I get it. But taking a hard serious look at the pitch quadrant, how haven't we come to the collective decision that kismesissitude is just symbolic of an abuser's manipulative normalization of toxic, destructive, creepy, dynamics with their victims? Doc Scratch's whole deal with steering Alternia's society to toughen up the troll kids for sgrub is meant to parallel all the same things Dave's Bro did to ready Dave for sburb. Why are still engaging with this creepy puppet motherfucker's institutions instead of throwing them out for being a whole crock of shit excusing his own barbarity?

So yeah abolish the quadrants yada yada and that's the main thrust of why I ship <> EriKan so strongly. God it feels good to be a hypocrite.

An Essayist's Favorite Letter: Why?

Look, any hypothetical that allows Erikan is implicitly inviting Eridan back into the narrative, which would be nice for me as an Eridan fan, but characters have to have purpose to justify their place in a story.

I don't see Eridan's part to play in the story as over yet. And I think her part is to be Kanaya's moirail. It is her justification to return, or at least one. If I were to really have my way, she'd also oppose Feferi (which btw is why I another reason I think EriKan should be pale, so that EriFef can be the one pitch (maybe (I'm actually not that sure if I like them together at all))) thus fulfilling her ironic role as Orphaner and Prince[ss] of Hope— by destroying the concepts of Maternalism in Kanaya and Paternalism in Feferi, but that's a whole other post. I can't get into it here lest this ungodly post gets any longer (edit: here's a start). And before I actually do close this out, if my answer here was a little indirect (or a lot), trust that I will always have more to say about EriKan in the future.

So uh wow, call to action because this became an essay like usual: to anybody else reading this, if you really hate Eridan and use that to say that she shouldn't be allowed back into the narrative, or that she "doesn't deserve to have a redemption arc," I'd like you to reconsider that position. Eridan is not a person. She's a character. In the language of storytelling, characters are just another sort of mechanism to communicate meaning. To constrain yourself to write without a character is like writing while denying yourself the letter V. Lipogram can certainly be technically impressive, but to be so may require denying itself its full potential. Eridan can be so much more if you simply let her be. For Kanaya especially, but for literally so many other characters too. Even if you still hate Eridan, think she can never wash herself clean of the sins that define her, or you just think she's boring, try to think of Eridan in the way she in her own 2nd person narration admits other people think of her:

But a useful one.

[itscalledmidgar]

OCs: 🌈❤️💙🤔🚌

thank you !!! <3

🌈 RAINBOW: orientations and pronouns? - khloe is amorphously trans and uses they/them exclusively! though an occasional she/her is fine. they're also bisexual. - i think crystal is a trans man, and uses he/him exclusively. he's gay, and he's extremely mad about it because feelings are for Losers. (the issue is the feelings, not the orientation) - a'vili is a trans he/they, not strictly a man but like, leaning that way. he's more of a, fuck before feelings sort of guy, and is bisexual.

❤️ RED HEART: what are three of their positive traits? - khloe is extremely fucking ride or die. they love to provide and care for their loved ones, cooking meals and getting things ready for them. they're very honest, and generally do their best to be tactful about it. - crystal is very good at cracking jokes at the appropriate time. he is also extremely ride or die in most circumstances. he's really stupid but in an endearing way so i'm going to say that's a positive. - a'vili............ he. uh. underneath the prickly bitchy outer layer he's actually really caring and even if he won't do it where anyone can see it he'll check up on people in his group. they're actually a really good teacher if you can catch them in a good mood. he's very quick with his words, and thus very good at getting out of trouble.

💙 BLUE HEART: any special abilities or magic? how do they handle it? - khloe has the echo, and it gives them premonitory nightmares. they didn't handle it well when they were a kid but they basically just. don't worry about it now lmao. they're very, very good at white magic, they're not very good with any other type of magic but being a white mage, they don't really use other types of magic anyway unless absolutely necessary. - crystal can hop through dimensions and timelines as he pleases. i have no idea how or why but he can. when he doesn't want to be in a dungeon he just zips out of there, hopping into a different place and then back to his main timeline at a centralised point. he's not very good with Magic, though he's a paladin so he has to use some. - a'vili doesn't really have any like. Special Powers so to speak, and he like. they're okay with magic, i don't know what class they is i just know he's the nuhn's boyfriend, so while he doesn't have special powers he does have special privileges within his society.

🤔 THINKING FACE: what are some of their quirks/mannerisms? - khloe has restless legs, they purr a lot including when they speak when they're excited, and they dig their claws into their palms as a grounding technique to stay calm! - crystal can, well, hop between dimensions and timelines. he likes lying on bench tops and on top of cupboards or the backs of couches or really anywhere he's not supposed to be sitting. he has trouble hiding his temper because his tail lashes quite severely the moment he's even vaguely pissed off. - a'vili is a bitch. he is The Village Asshole. everyone knows it and everyone ignores it unless they're new. they have a specific face they make when they want something (that he SWEARS he doesn't). their mouth runs far, far faster than their brain.

(i couldn't find a bus so i'm doing car!) 🚌 BUS OR CAR: do they have a driver's license? can they operate heavy machinery otherwise? i'm not sure you're required to have a license in eorzea, but none of them have one lmao. khloe can pilot a little mech dealie (maggie) because it was story important lmao. mostly they just ride chocobos

[sootneo]

i basically wrote the main selling point of tv show hannibal but hear me out,

in all his career and life, wilbur had never seen something nearly as creepy, weird, nauseating and fucking mental like his new case. he was an amazing and reliable investigator, known throughout all of europe, so of course he was the one the italian police called when they found the freakiest crime scene ever seen in the history of that country: a freezer in sapienza, filled with corpses of hundreds of people – they had to count after retrieving them because at one point four mortuaries still weren't enough for some reason – that were presumably killed by one single person. he obviously accepted to be the head investigator of it, being paired with a few guys: seán jack, brian terroriser and alex quackity. some police officers that were helping them out were george notfound and nick sapnap.

first and foremost, he had two suspects, one being clay dream, based on some background checks and his involvement with the whole case, being seen close to the crime scene, and his closeness to he officers which seemed really shady. and the other being a local, based on criminal record, also being seen close to the crime scene and knowing the owner of the establishment. the second guy gets a public defender, meanwhile clay has enough money to hire a professional criminal defence attorney: daniel condren.

while clay doesn't get proven innocent and walks free, daniel gets in contact with wilbur and notifies him he has started conducting his own investigation, which sounds and is normal, until they start crossing paths way too often, principally when daniel seems to be so incredibly friendly towards him – and even though will is sure there is something illegal about being the head investigator who's having a coffee with the main suspect's lawyer, he doesn't mind having him as background when he's doing research.

but will does start caring when evidence start to sound weird, wrong or not like he first remembers seeing it as. witnesses telling different stories, objects so small and barely noticeable disappearing, things appearing too, new clues, new paths, new names, the victims barely having anything to back him up even though he, at some point, felt like he had everything in his hands – it's like he was hallucinating some things, like he didn't hear them, seen the right way, like he was going crazy. now he's just doing everything while keeping his eyes glued on every move daniel makes, on every word he says, he even starts secretly investigating daniel himself, but why can't he find any proof of his involvement and only proof of the fact that maybe he is indeed going insane?

he doesn't know that clay has nothing to do with anything. nor does the second suspect. actually, he is right about daniel. he has been the one behind the butcher of sapienza, and his friend alex, quackity, has been helping him carefully manipulate stuff behind the scenes.

also, because i can't live without some crime boys input into aus, so i wanna say that wilbur was kinda glad he didn't let his pupil, tommy, follow him to the scene and left him out of the case. such a young man didn't deserve to witness the same horror will did.

also also, i don't know much about the whole crime world 👍🏻 LMAO so i don't really know how to write about these things. i think i'd have to watch hannibal to get a grip on how he was that good at hiding it. and i know hannibal was like. a psychologist. which makes stuff easier for him. but rt is way too smart to not be able to do the same stuff as him in an au where he's just an evil phoenix wright.