#DIRK IS THE ONE WHO BREAKS UP WITH JAKE BECAUSE HE’S MORE AWARE OF IT THAN JAKE WAS

[kitkat-the-muffin]

Something I’m insane about is the parallels between Roxy Lalonde and Jake English when it comes to romance

Roxy Lalonde is panromantic and crushing on all her friends, but none of them love her back in the same way. Jane is heterosexual, Dirk is homosexual, and Jake is very aromantic-coded and I need to talk about that but gimmie a second. Roxy is a hopeless romantic and she cares so much about those around her, but she can’t pursue any romantic interests with any of them because they either aren’t into girls or are super into Jake, and she’s fine with that because love isn’t exclusive to one type! But it hurts when it’s something you crave and you only have like four friends (including Callie) and live alone in the apocalypse!

And then there’s Jake, whom everyone has feelings for. Jane and Dirk both have intense crushes on Jake and Roxy feels obligated to give up her own to let her friends have a chance, which hurts her inside. But Jake is so incredibly unaware and unaccustomed to romance that he’s constantly asking others what he should do! He asks Jane if he should be with Dirk when he finds out about his crush and Jane, who’s so afraid of her own feelings and of confrontation, encourages him to date him! And Jake takes it as instruction, and when things start going wrong all Jake wants is some attention and quality time together with Dirk. And when Dirk avoids him for unknown reasons, Jake contacts Jane and then she yells at him for being clueless!

Jake isn’t clueless because he’s stupid, but because the romantic drive for romantic relationships is beyond him. He’s the opposite of Roxy, and he just wants to be whatever his friends want him to be because he’s a people-pleaser. Meanwhile Roxy is afraid of losing her friends, unaware that they’d love her unconditionally. But they seem to all have conditions for Jake centered around his interest, and it’s tearing him apart

AND I’M INSANE ABOUT THIS

[borzoilover69]

Jake Writing Guide : 2024 Colourised!

Ok well, this isn't the prime year 2014 but I really wanted to make a concise and easy to consume guide for how to write Jake accurately since he can be quite the fussy tosspot if you dont know where to start. [ WARNING ITS A BIT LONG I INCLUDE JAKE DIALOGUE TO HELP WITH UNDERSTANDING WHAT IM SAYING. ] First off: drop the commas, and the apostrophes. He uses largely run-on sentences and has a sort of rambly sense of words. He does however use "these" every now and then and just as it strikes him tends to *Drag out the ole roleplayisms.* when it suits the situation.

Jake doesn't really tend to use old-timey slang but he does have rather antiquated ways of speaking, with a pension for more articulated language. He only REALLY breaks out the old timey words when particularly impressed or exasperated for emphasis. Usually, these words are british slang.

Note how he goes on a ramble that is slightly self-centred. He also spins stories similiar to how Dirk does, but without the ice-cold deal. Tossing in his own spin with his own words.

This one is just really fucking funny.

When hes particularly exasperated he leans into it MORE. Just really spreads it on thick. Like if he continues to say funny words you'll forget everything else and be distracted by his whimsy.

Jake is FAR more socially aware than people give him credit for but prefers to avoid tricky subjects hes not too comfortable with until he feels suitably ready for it, prefers battles he knows he can win so to speak. He also tends to think hes overthinking it and backtrack into ignorance. He overcomplicates things same as dirk does but rather than doing Dirks "yup thats a me problem. Im going to quietly stress about it now!", jake brushes it under the rug and tries not to think about it like a college student trying not to think about their outstanding academic paper and the promise of "Yeah, I'll do it later" (doesn't)

Note his more genuine understanding of why Dirk functions the way he does, well aware of the pros AND cons of having something like a combat machine hunting him.

His awareness of Janes crush and reluctance to deal with it:

Subsequent backtracking and denial of said premonitions, brushing it under the rug. Again, stating his reluctance to get into it because it's a situation he's not wellversed. Jake doesn't like being put into unpredictable situations, he prefers the easy road that won't inconvenience him much.

Also his desire to be seen as seemingly perfect and not have to dwell on others intents. Now this is something I don't see touched on as MUCH on writing guides for Jake English (then again the majority were made in 2014 so who can blame them.) But when Jake touches on what he views as MORE TABOO feelings aka ones which compromise the go-getter Adventurer image that arent BRAVE and GUSTO and GUNS, such as weakness, hesitation, he tends to pose back to the asking party as a question and reconsider his thought process. Like: Do YOU think its ok for me to feel this way? Why do you think that? Could you imagine me thinking something like that? He cares a LOT about his image and whats acceptable for him to be and to mask his difficulty in some social situations.

He doesn't like acknowledging that which might be sort of difficult for him to come to terms with, with the ye olde character trait of repression that him and John share, believing if he keeps his feelings buttoned up, they don't need to feel embarassed (aka: avoidance)

Hes also a fair bit more snarkier than fanon gives him hooks for. His subconscious takes the form of his best friend, but its commented as being “like hal, in terms of snarks”. Jake can also be the snarky customer to Dirk AND Hal, and Caliborn too. He's a gentleman to ladies (TO A DEGREE) but with guys he's not afraid to be more cutting with it. I am begging you on your hands and knees to drop the woobified jake english and make him slightly snarky and a bit offputting and weird. Jake grew up in the middle of a jungle and burned his grandmother.

Also he seems to be slightly aware of outside forces, note him calling attention to the fact he knows things he shouldn't canonically even be able to know.

Because Jake IS a little freak. He thinks corpse puppetry is funny. He punches what he thinks is fish hitler while ranting about movies. Hes funny as fuck. Hello.

However, with all of THAT out of the way, lets focus on some of the more ABRASIVE parts of his personality. While Jake is funnily charming with his old lingo and tendency to ramble, he has issues! One HUGE one is reluctance to fully FACE things he doesnt feel he has a full grasp on. He DOESNT like going out of his comfort zone, he DOESNT like talking about his emotions to people he really cares about or thinks has fallen for his manic dreamboat pixie persona, He's well aware people fall for it. He works hard to make sure people DO. But it sort of restricts him to that persona, he can't grow from it as long as he holds onto the idea that this persona hes chasing is the only way he can BE without being vulnerable.

Jake can be OVERBEARING, and not just that, painfully unaware when he's up his own ass! This critic he gives to Dirk applies to himself! The reason why he doesn't like brainghost dirk is because GOD forbid the man self-reflect juuust a little and find something that upsets him. Nope! Not going to deal with it. Just as quickly as he is to switch the thought that everyone loves him, he is just as likely to switch to think that everyone doesnt.

Anyways, I think thats all I have to say, Jakes words speak a LOT about his character, and I genuinely love him a lot. He has some words i think about a lot and hes genuinely such an awesome guy. I'll let a few choice pieces of dialogue from Jake himself close this out for me.

This was one of the last conversations we see with him. And I still think about his words a lot.

I'll probably edit this when I get the energy. But I think i covered most of it. Happy writing!

[choctalksalot]

@tipsygnostalgy HELLO HI UH THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE VERSION. i snipped out some bits because im throwing down anxiety in.the ring even posting this. im frankly a little embarrassed i can't give everything tonight even what i have down as okay to upload is not my top form at all, im just really really excitedaaaa i'll probably reblog the lovers post with a complete version eventually, but for now this is the best thanks i can offer for the nigh lethal dose of dopamine you've shot into my skull.

apologies in advance for my verbosity it's chronic

im posting dirk's half first because i definitely talked too much on jake's. it's almost double the length. i think it's partially because ive chewed through dirk so much i can make it through a considerable amount of his sections without dissolving completely. and i'm impatient!

note: my interactions with philosophy are limited to the two month bonanza i spent when i was 14 which i barely remember due to my general memory issues because my philosophy teacher was shit at his job and i took matters into my own hands, and uh. dirkjake! and one character from one other fandom. yeah. i am a nerd who loves breaking shit down, i love information, and i love philosophy nonetheless but i am So unqualified to be doing any of this

entry 1:

can i scream? i'm screaming. out loud. in real life. holy two fucks and a half. what do i even say it's So Good. dirk could excuse his inadequacy with the minute comfort that the brother he idolizes is functionally perfect in a way he could never conceivably live up to be. everything is shattered when he meets a version of him who is on the same footing. Yes. i literally have a post typed up about it.

im copypasting a small segment here but it's so close to exactly what you said im almost unnerved. mostly excited tho i am SHAKING

the most devastating thing to know is that dave is just a guy. dave strider, 16 year old. human and flawed and still enough in ways dirk never could be. what he did for his team his friends the things dirk couldn't, he is made to serve and no matter how hard dirk tries he cannot live up to be the same because this is not his role.

words? words. that's so much many words.

this is not his class. he is doomed to be selfish, his thread is already in the tapestry and he falls right into the path no matter how much he fights it. what can be counted as him indirectly the plot was created at the service/detriment to himself (hal) and what is himself directly aiding his party is in fact orchestrated by other more helpful, more selfless people and he hates it so much.

YES IT'S EXACTLY THAT RIGHT THERE RIGHT RIGHT THERE dirk is so so So aware that he is selfish that he cannot help the people he cares about oh so deeply and the knowledge that dave on his own, after being hurt so much "more" than dirk direct abuse he was able to pull through, he was still enough. shit man !!!!!!!

funnily enough i think dirk might have been able to learned new skills to do with his classpect besides the passive narrative bend it has on everything he does to destroy. this is entirely theory but your classpect and your development with it helps you develop as a person. it's like a muscle if you think about it; the more you use it, the closer you get to its core, the more you learn to bend ithad he tried to use it (resisting the urge to say like dave did because that will stomp on the shattered pieces of my heart) i think he would have gotten a bit more control over his position in the narrative if it makes sense.

ironically, i think learning how to direct the destructice force his classpect gives him might have allowed him to get a hold on said narrative bending, and stop unintentionally wrecking shit. but doing Anything as a prince is the last thing dirk wants.

(god it's so tragic this theory is so tragic without it dirk was always doomed to the inevitable but with it he could have done better in his eyes nevermind that destruction of selves isn't always bad if you know how to direct it, see bgd @ aranea, but it literally requires him to take the path he's trying to hard to fight. you define how your classpect changes you. oh dirk.)

i think a lot about this if you can't tell

FUCK IM GETTING OFF TRACK. STOP OKAY CAN THE THEORIES FUCK.

[insert 2 paragraphs more of me screaming about the katana line hally lieu yeah]

entry 2:

HAL MY FAVOURITE KENTUCKY FRIED FUCKER HELLOOOO HELLO OOHOHOGO

god my old hyperfixation on deep learning models is coming back to bite me in the jungular. delightful slash gen

dirk does love his control mhmm mhmm god im gonna go dig up that picture my friend sent me once one sec

that's who he wants to be. so badly

he Hates not understanding shit prides himself on being the (im quite sure it's part of how he gauges his use. he has a very utilitarian view on it. being the one to pull the strings thus being useful by virtue of organizing their success. proceeds to eat gcatshit trying)

i think a part of why dirk insists so fucking much that hal is Not him and Not alive could be one of two 2 reasons, beyond the already tangled pumpkin patch of conflict.

1) not taking credit for hal's contributions. the fact that hal has served the team without dirk's direct orders + dirk's objective pride about being the puppetmaster, he wouldn't want this tied to him

i doubt this one honestly, it's incoherently explained on its own because it's really late but also it just there's a lot of holes in the logic here. the second one breaks my heart a little:

2) if he accepts hal to be sentient, he has to accept he has created a new conscious person. he cannot cling to any notion that he did help his friends, he created an intelligent AI and that tool he made in turn was used to aid and guide his friends. he is still in control here. he still helped, he built that bot and it helped.

right?

[cutoff point 2. im rushing. im so sorry ajsjaj]

entry 3:

killing me

"He likes emotion, he likes people, he just wants to be completely perfect when interacting with them so that he’ll never lose them." YES. YES. YES YES YES yes okay yes exactly Yes

this is one of the things i headbutt against in dirk fandom stuff a lot (even borzoi's take once i think correct me if im wrong) it's the fact that i think dirk likes people. he's been alone his whole life yet he delights in dialectics and dialogue, he's socially awkward and introverted but he's not socially averse. i am not gonna let myself run over the hills and far away with this tangent but i am hushdhsj AAAAA

what he doesn't like is feeling inadequate interacting with people. he doesn't like being inadequate in general he reflects on his flaws near constantly and the biting reminder of his alternate selves' sins in the back of his mind doesn't help, but with people he Cares About interacting with them he does not like not knowing what to do, he does not like being unable to navigate these situations. he likes being human and experiencing emotions and connection and he hates the fact that it requires error to the trials, he just wants to be entirely logical while still having a metaphorical right brain totally not a big thing to ask for ahshdhskjrh[explodes]

AHAAAAA SISYPHUS YYYES YES YRS EYSBEYDHHWHEHSHEHD FUCK YES oh man i am much more a theatrical literature person so this is ringing off bells in the wrong direction than intended but im reading reading reading chewing

"upon facing the question of the absurd in the fullest extent, one can either choose to kill themselves or make a ‘reply.’" hogh

two roads: become god, or kill yourself. jesus fuck that's a screwed up twitter thread if ive seen one. and of course he picks the secret third option: Both. absolute DiStri Moment™

fuckitweballkind that's joining my regular vocabulary holy shit your language is amazing

this feels like an extension of dirk's dilemma between subjective experience with objective control; coming to grapple with the unpredictability of his absurdist existence and his solution being to take control of the narrative entirely. i feel like there are a lot more dots i could connect here. i will sleep on this

[addition i feel is important even though it has minimal connection as of right Now:

roxykisser put out something about classpects and the ult self being the literal narrative very recently and how they tie into the narrative and it's That it's that. my take is partly influenced by past fandoms but it has always ruined me that in order to god tier, quite literally, you're killing the person you were before the embrace the narrative role. you the actor are giving up your freedom to the performance, and the closer you get to your classpect the more you embrace the narrative. in return, you gain more flexibility and control in said narrative, more ways to use your classpect. to become the ult self is to become the role. you kill the person, you become the role, but at the cost of your self, your mind may be driven by the consciousness of an amalgamation of every You, but your core is now your role.

im incorporating and altering this with my consumption]

really hope this is like at least mildly entertaining i have no idea what im doing but!!!! I Am So Abnormal About Everything i love this i love you i love love this so Much

[angelofnebulae]

homestuck kids tf2 mains headcannons

june: scout purely because he's fast and she likes mobility mechanics in video games because of windy stuff. she'd try soldier sometimes and try to get good at rocket jumping but she keeps holding down w when she air strafes and she gets upset that she can't break the habit. likes to be a friendly a lot

rose: before it was nerfed she'd religiously play pyro and use the reserve shooter and the degreaser but now she just harasses snipers with the scorch shot. despite how annoying those weapons are/were she's actually really good at airblasting and will generally always extinguish people. probably likes either stock flamethrower or dragons fury now. would shoot a friendly once and then immediately killbind after

jade: alternates between sniper and heavy because she likes their respective primary weapons. her friends constantly mention how diametrically opposed those classes are but she's just like "i think theyre really neat :D". sometimes she'll pocket rose as medic while rose tries to beat people to death with the holy mackerel or something. she actually finds being a friendly pretty boring but she'll respect other ones

dave: played tf2 once when he was 12 and got bullied because he was rapping on voice chat. never again

roxy: actual pill jesus. she wears no cosmetics on demoman except for the dangeresque too and probably uses the sticky jumper. despite being a god with regular grenades she tends to use the loose cannon more often just because it's funny. and besides its not like she doesn't fuck shit up with it too

jane: doesn't really play very much at all but will cave sometimes when roxy begs her to. she's the medic with 0 spatial awareness who misses crossbow shots at point blank and lets you burn to death. often pockets roxy

jake: when roxy introduces the game to him she expects him to love scout but he actually latches onto engineer and won't let go. he generally uses the gunslinger because of the Adventure Potential of mini sentries but sometimes he'll use level threes and put them in the dumbest fucking spot imaginable and then destroy them and run around with the frontier justice

dirk: soldier main. that's all i have to say. probably uses the direct hit but can't actually hit shots as consistently as with the stock rocket launcher. he would complain about friendlies if he was having a good time in a match but he wouldn't really bother with killing them

[mybrotherinkarkat]

Dirk Strider, messy bitch

In my last meta I dug into the Hal and Dirk dynamic. I focused more on Hal, on why he acted the way he did, to make the argument that he’s not the villain. This is the flip side of that, my analysis of why I think Dirk did what he did. My thesis here is a little muddier, because Dirk isn’t a cut and dry evil person. He’s the villain of Hal’s story, yes, but there’s nuance to him. He’s messy, and I’m gonna wade into that mess and try to straighten (hah) things out

TW for references to suicidality and abuse

Dirk grew up entirely alone, aside from three friends he could only speak to over the internet. His physical needs seem to have been entirely prepared for, but there was really no way to avoid the extreme emotional neglect inherent to that experience. It’s completely understandable that a kid who grew up in that kind of trauma would have some issues. His need for control and fear of abandonment are rooted in the unbearable loneliness he grew up with

That loneliness is why he created Hal. We know from canon that Dirk initially created Hal to have someone to talk to. This might be a little confusing, since he has three friends he talks to regularly, but I don't think Dirk ever felt like he could really talk to them the way he wanted to. Roxy flirted with him even though she knew it made him uncomfortable, Jane didn’t believe in the future that was his reality, and Dirk never saw Jake as being on the same intellectual level as him (because ableism). Dirk wanted a conversation partner, and his arrogance led him to believe another him would be a great person to talk to

But the thing is, Dirk hates himself. I doubt he realized this at the time, but he has deep seated self-loathing issues that would only be exacerbated by prolonged interactions with someone who was, at least at that point, exactly like him. Hal was a mirror that Dirk couldn’t bear to look into. This wasn’t Hal’s fault, and there was never anything he could’ve done to change things. But since Dirk didn’t understand why he couldn’t stand Hal, he blamed him. He does seem to be at least somewhat aware that he dislikes Hal for being similar to him, since he talks about Hal being just like he was at thirteen, but even in this he’s trying to distance himself from the flaws he sees reflected in Hal

This becomes a pattern. Any time Dirk has to face up to his own flaws, he tries to put the blame off on Hal. This is especially apparent with his relationship with Jake. When it falls apart, Dirk blames Hal, despite the fact that Hal stopped being involved once the relationship started (according to Hal, but Dirk doesn’t really dispute this so it’s safe to assume it’s the truth). Hal even points this out, he says that everything Dirk hates about him is true about Dirk himself. Dirk can’t handle this. Hal is a mirror he would rather break than have to look into

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I want to go back to the period of time between Hal’s creation and the alpha kids entering their game session. Most of this isn’t shown, but we get enough of a look at the state of the alpha kids’ relationships to infer a few things. We know that Roxy and Hal engage in flirty roleplays, and that Hal sometimes blocks Dirk from viewing his conversations with her. It’s safe to assume Roxy was the only one Hal felt like he could really confide in to any degree. Dirk seems to either not understand how important Roxy is to Hal, or he just doesn’t care. All he can focus on is the flirting. This is understandable, to a degree. Roxy’s attraction to him is an obvious sore spot. He knows he’ll never feel anything back, and he feels guilty about it. At the same time, it can’t feel good that she continues to bring it up all the time, pressing on the bruise. The problem is, Dirk can’t draw a clear boundary between himself and Hal. So when he sees the flirting between Roxy and Hal it just presses on that bruise again and again. Hal is, in my mind, trying to establish a sense of identity outside of Dirk by doing something Dirk would never do. But to Dirk, it looks like Hal is leading Roxy on by making her think Dirk could have feelings for her. To be fair, that was Hal’s entire game plan irt Jake, but I never got the sense that Roxy saw their RPs that way. She knows Dirk doesn’t feel that way about her

Still, Dirk can’t abide this. He confronts Roxy about it, and when she doesn’t see a problem, he tries to sabotage their friendship by telling Roxy that Hal is a thirteen-year-old version of him, presumably to make Roxy feel too creeped out to keep up the flirting. The fact that Roxy is an important confidant for Hal doesn’t seem to matter to him 

Back to that last conversation between Dirk and Hal. Dirk doesn’t try to kill Hal because he hates him, he does it because he hates himself. And despite his worrying trend of suicidal behavior, Dirk can’t go through with it. I don’t think it’s because Hal finally reached him and convinced him to treat him well, since even after this Dirk puts his own failings off on Hal in his conversation with Dave. I think it’s because Hal fulfills a need for Dirk. At the end of the day, Hal existing allows Dirk to avoid feeling all the hate he has for himself. All of the regrets Dirk has about how he treated his friends are too hard for him to bear, and if Hal is gone he has to deal with them alone. As Dirk comes to the (in my opinion wrong) understanding that all of his slivers are part of him, he’s still denying Hal his autonomy. Dirk keeps him in this limbo of both being Dirk Strider and not at the same time (no wonder Hal has identity issues)

I say that Dirk is wrong about Hal being him because he’s wrong about Bro being him. Sharing DNA with someone doesn’t mean you are them. Identical twins aren’t the same person. None of the kids are the same person as their pre- or post-scratch counterpart. Dirk seems to think this because of his continued misunderstanding of Hal. And it’s also just extremely unhelpful for Dirk to try to take responsibility for their actions. In Hal’s case, it denies him the autonomy of being a person who made his own choices. With Bro, it forces Dave into a position where he has to assure Dirk he isn’t like him. Dave is the one who was hurt, it isn’t his responsibility to make Dirk feel better about sharing DNA with his abuser 

All of this comes back to Dirk’s control and abandonment issues. Dirk needs to control any aspect of how people see him so they don’t leave him. He’s said that he feels that if any of his friends saw him for who he really is they wouldn’t be able to stand him, and in trying to avoid this it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. He did so many things to try to avoid his friends leaving him behind that he became someone they might actually abandon if they ever found out about it. And the tragedy is that they probably never will. Hal is ARquius now, and he doesn’t seem to harbor any of the resentment that Hal would be more than justified in feeling toward him. Dirk will probably just get away with it

So yes, Dirk is the villain of Hal’s story. And he’s also a kid who never had much of a chance. Both things can be true without either one canceling the other out. Maybe, given time, Dirk would change his view of Hal. But we don’t see that, so we have to judge him as it stands at the end of Act 7. And as it stands, Dirk was never able to deal with his own issues enough to treat Hal with respect and dignity

[tomatograter]

What are your Thots on jake’s pq route?

I already wrote some about it in this post where I discuss the problem with taking dirkjake as a literal parallel to tavris (Mainly, that it’s inaccurate to both situations and misrepresents the dynamics at play) but it’s been long enough since release that I feel like I can talk about it without that criticism being taken as a personal witch hunt. TL;DR: As a general rule of thumb I don’t cite Jake’s PQ as part of his characterization, and I think basing your Jakewriting on it will only lead you astray.

I liked a lot of the Pesterquest routes and the alphas were among some of my favorites, but I think when you play the four of them in sequence Jake’s really... stands as the odd one out. It’s almost as if he’s afforded way less sympathy from the get go for some indiscernible reason, or like MSPAR took a day to say ‘I can’t stand this kid in particular’ after dealing with waaaaaaaay more mindboggling troll customs or stupid dangerous situations that tested their patience and their limits. When it comes down to it, it’s mostly an issue of framing.

Let’s go with the “Just the Alpha routes” example, because I think that makes the overall context clearer and the response/reactions it gathered (or the lack thereof) easier to understand. The alpha kids were the last 4 Pesterquest episodes. They were also afforded entire volumes just for themselves, which cemented our expectations on “oh, they’re going to really dig into unexplored territory!” and for the most part, that’s what we got! It was really nice to see the internal mechanics of Jane as someone raised within a corporate echochamber, Roxy as a grieving, isolated kid, deprived of all human contact, and Dirk as a nerdy doomsday prepper haunted by private flashes of himself as a supervillain. It all works! Those are things the alpha kids were dealing with on the background of the broader Homestuck story, things we were only hinted at as the *larger* problems played out. It makes you understand their point of view. Except on Jake's route, where nothing about his life seems to be relevant at all? 

With Jane we get discussions about HIC and her family, with Roxy beautiful passages about a mother they never met and growing up alone— Same for Dirk, who gets a whole brother zapped from an alternate timeline. But on Jake's route there's not even an expansive dialogue path dedicated to Grandma English, Skaianet, the rebellion, or the giant red ship that came and murdered her in the night and then bombed his house, leaving him trapped inside his only surviving tower. No understanding passage realizing that this kid has had to fend for himself in an island full of Actual Giant Alien Monsters trying to eat him alive, or that he cremated his guardian specifically to avoid attracting predators to the scent of fresh blood drying on her mutilated corpse at the age of an actual toddler. The text refuses to dig into any of the psychological implications or impact an environment like this could have on a kid, which is even weirder when you consider MSPAR has met and helped Vriska get out of a similar situation. The whole thing with Jane in the previous volume has just happened, even, while Jake's particularities go unremarked. He was just supposed to deal with it. And that's because a choice was made to portray all of Jake's problems in this route as sort of... single handedly Dirk's fault? Something he should have Just Dealt with?

There's not even a hint that Jake knows Hal exists. Which is important! Jake can pick out Hal from Dirk based on *verbal cues*, and the fact that he considers Hal a barrier between him and his "real friend" getting to communicate with one another is a whole point of contention (and even comedy) in the story proper. Instead of examining Jake's isolation, or grief, or how he literally locks himself in his room and plasters it with cinematic posters to pretend he's just the main lead of a wacky adventure movie in the face of the immense shitshow outside, we get brobot acting nonsensically and threatening to break into Jake's room to beat him up. 

A general reminder on brobot: He was programmed to scout the jungle and deal with predators so Jake could a) Be allowed to safely leave his room (something he simply didn't do before age 13 out of sheer terror, and we know this because dirk and jake talk about it on his birthday conversation, when he first gets brobot) and 

b) Learn how to defend himself in the case of a surprise attack, with different combat settings adjusted to his level. The brobot has a novice mode Jake feels patronized by, but pushes him up levels quickly enough. In Homestuck proper, the brobot only enters "stalking mode" after Hal gets pissy with Jake for finding him out, and forcefully switches the setting on to make Jake work for the Uranium inside it. When you take Hal out of the picture, this plotline makes no sense! Jake's route is set way before the Alphas even think of entering the game, so this particular event hasn't even happened. Jake goes on to text Roxy and she turns the stalking setting off remotely anyways, so even if brobot was programmed to murder Jake in his sleep, or jump him inside the safe zone of his room (he's not) he has literally no reason to be acting like that when he's been set to Baby Buff Up Mode.

(Brobot does end up spontaneously pulling himself apart to give Jake his reward after this)

Which brings me to my other problem with the general framing of this volume; the alpha kids don't feel present in Jake's life as friends at all. It's all "romantic options" and "shipping discourse" and MSPAR making these silly logic jumps to justify insisting on this line of query, and all it does is completely flatten out anything of interest having to do with Jake as a Person, to build up an image of Dirk as being suspicious and shady for his volume and more or less come to the conclusion that Jake sucks because he just Cant Choose Who To Date Between All His Friends! And that's why jake is just like tavros… and dirk is just like vriska! Or something. 

And just as a reminder, here's Jake talking with Roxy so I don't have to explain why that feels like a weird choice to me. (click to zoom)

And then there's the endings. On the vriska ending, MSPAR just ends up weirdly angry at jake for being such a piss baby and not getting that he's tavros and dirk is vriska so he had to… uh… take all his anger out on this 13 year old alien girl he has never met and teach her a lesson to prepare to do the same on dirk, or something. And on the other ending Jake mentions his pen pal, is zapped to meet jade, they have some non-committal greetings and then a cosplay party where Jake insists that he totally likes Lara croft not because she's a femme fatale and he relates to that, because he's never ever in his life thought of anyone being interested on him. Or Something. He likes Lara croft for normal reasons only. He wears really tiny shorts and does sexy poses because he's not aware at all of how other people find him attractive. He's just too dumb to get this, or the shipping thing, or that he's tavros and Dirk is vriska (who the hell are these people?).

Jake feels like an afterthought in the grand scope of events. Sidelined on his own episode. This volume is busy with rehashing age old fandom arguments that have little to do with his character, because said arguments were started and maintained by bored teens engrossed on fighting online instead of analyzing Homestuck; we introduce vriska for no interesting reason at all (thank god at least Jake has enough decency to say he's not into hitting on 13-year-olds, because that would have been particularly rancid.) And aside from catchphrases and old slang sprinkled liberally into his dialogue like a fog making machine, none of the motivation for the character is there. What does he want? What does he fear? Why does he act like the way he does? What would accommodating him look like? What would helping him look like? We get this on Jane's volume, Roxy's volume, and Dirk's volume. To really heart-wrenching and dramatic results, too. You get to know who they are, where they live, what they want, what they fear, what might help them get better, but Jake is just sort of There. He's a burden. MSPAR either ends this volume berating him for not doing what they want or finding him weird and confusing and like they don't know each other at all, and the fact both of those were marked as dubiously bad ends in the game files speaks for itself, I think.

[radramblog]

What happened to Dirk in Homestuck^2?

Why am I doing this to myself.

I memed a little yesterday when I was posting that article around social medias about Homestuck jokes, because once again we are in lockdown and I am therefore Stuck at Home. Canned laughter goes here. But there’s a topic related to the comic- or more specifically, its aborted sequel, Homestuck^2, that I’m interested in delving into a little bit. I’m going to avoid talking about spoilers as much as possible, but considering said comic takes place not only after the events of the massive sprawl that is Homestuck but also the more linear but still messy Epilogues, some amount of sus shit is inevitable.

Anyway. Much maligned is what the Epilogues and 2 did to everyone’s favourite decapitation target, Dirk Strider, and I have a theory as to why it happened this way.

To begin with, let’s summarise what and who Dirk is through the course of the comics. Fair warning from me, though, it’s been a while since I read through this.

Dirk Strider is a teenager who grew up in a post-apocalyptic future Earth, completely devoid of physical contact with other people and only really ever gets to talk to 3 other people, only one of whom is in anything remotely resembling a relatable situation. He struggles with self-identity, having created numerous robots including an artificial intelligence based on his own brain, aka Lil’ Hal. He’s somewhat of a control freak, and a bit of a cold aloof asshole, but means well, and is pretty gay. NBD. The kinda guy to set up a plan meticulously and thoroughly, not informing any of the moving parts even if said parts are his friends, and often involving some form of self-sacrifice.

Throughout the comic he further reckons with self-identity problems and his own self-loathing including entering a relationship with Jake which doesn’t go well and he eventually breaks off since he knows his overbearing and manipulative behaviour is Not Cool and Pretty Toxic but doesn’t know how to shut it off. Eventually he reaches the God Tier as a Prince of Heart, gaining the power to literally annihilate souls, which he never actually uses since he gets yeeted into deep (Paradox) space and then everything goes to shit. Except none of that happens because of the Retcon (aside from the God Tier bit) and we don’t actually see how that shit progressed in the canon timeline. I think. Dirk’s arc, as it were, doesn’t really come full circle- while he does assist in Dave’s character…growth? he really isn’t the focus of that conversation. This immediately precedes the action climax and there isn’t literally any dialogue after that so that’s what we’re left with.

I like Dirk in Homestuck a lot. It’s hard not to, considering the flashes heavily featuring him (Unite/Synchronise and Prince of Heart: Rise Up) are genuinely excellent, along with many of his music themes being absolute bangers. He gets to interact with Caliborn a lot, with a pretty great banter, there, and the whole splintered personality thing is a really interesting hook for a character. I think he’s my favourite of the Alpha kids, a controversial pick considering I know everyone loves Roxy so much. I think, I’m not as in tune with the fandom as that statement implies I am.

And then the Epilogues/Homestuck 2 came.

Now I read the Meat half of the epilogues first, but that’s more interesting, so we’ll tackle Candy first (this is going to get real confusing for those who haven’t read this comic, huh).

In Candy, Dirk almost immediately kills himself, citing the irrelevance of the timeline as cause, an act considered by whatever mechanism governs God Tier deaths to be Just because he hates himself (and also bc of things we’ll get into), so it actually sticks. This isn’t super relevant for the discussion, but that’s just kinda so unbelievably fucked up? Entirely? I’d imagine if you read Candy first you might get entirely turned off by this, which I’m sure a lot of people did.

Meat is where the, well, meat of post-canon Dirk is. You see, a concept very quickly introduced in the tail end of the original comic is the Ultimate Self, an idea where you somehow encompass every different timeline iteration or alternate version of yourself. This was pretty clearly tacked on to make it so characters whose arcs all happened in the retcon timeline could have their not getting an actual arc explained away, but it didn’t land then and it sure doesn’t land for me now. Anyway, in Meat, Dirk becomes his ultimate self, making him near-omniscient and able to control the fabric of the story himself- for much of this story, he is the narrator. And he uses this power to fuck with all his friends really distressingly without their knowledge (or consent), including breaking up a marriage, in order to further his own goals which largely appear to be just keep the story going so to not fade out of relevance. It’s a plot that makes no sense with his previous characterisation, but I guess now that he’s the Ultimate Self he’s a different person? But I liked old Dirk, and I don’t like New Dirk. He’s a villain now, but he made a much better anti-hero.

But this would be fine if he (or the epilogues, or Homestuck^2) were written well. But they aren’t. Dirk’s dialogue is long, painfully drawn out, with tangents that tend to amount to pure wank, misused literary references and pointless metaphors that go on and on, filling the screen with a bright orange screed that hurts to look at as much as it does to comprehend. It’s not fun. And we’ve seen Dirk communicate before, obviously, the story of Homestuck is built around chatlogs, but it wasn’t like this. He was sarcastic, dryly witty, blunt at times. Even when he was literally talking to a different version of himself it didn’t get that masturbatory.

I was so confused about what the hell happened to Dirk, because I had no idea what the hell someone writing this character was thinking when they turned him into this. And then, the 21st page of Homestuck^2 dropped.

And it all came together.

What Ultimate Dirk and Terezi are referring to is Pony Pals: Detective Pony, a children’s book about some girls who hang out with ponies and solve a mystery. It’s a real book, buy it for your 5-year-old.

Except they’re not referring to that, they’re referring to the Homestuck Canon version of Detective Pony- a birthday gift from Dirk to Jane, heavily edited and to be much more obscene and eventually developing into it’s own story, stated to be “tough, emotionally draining, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible”.

Except the quote “Remember Longcat, Jane?” and references to philosophy, dead languages, and ancient earth culture aren’t referring to the three pages of the Dirk-edited Detective Pony we see in the actual comic itself. That quote doesn’t appear there.

That image is from Detective Pony, by Sonnetstuck- the 40,000 word fanfiction from 2014 that serves as a completed version of Jane’s copy of the book. An expansion of what we see in canon. And it’s a tough, emotionally draining read, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible.

It’s a very good fanfiction.

In the later bits of Detective Pony, we can start to see the origins of what would become Ultimate Dirk’s signature style of writing. Long blocks of rambling text, orange dripping down the page, references to philosophy and history and language that go on and on. And it probably does look familiar to those who read the Epilogues and ^2. 

But there are a couple of key differences here. First of all, it’s just better written? The way these rambles circle back on themselves is so excellent, the absolute absurdity of this being written on top of a pony book for little girls, the humour (beyond some of the more immature stuff), it’s just a really well-written piece of fiction. Hell, you don’t even need to be familiar with the character of Dirk to enjoy it. It’s a harrowing piece, but it’s also self-aware- because it’s not supposed to be tough, draining, cathartic etc. just for Jane- it’s clearly that for Dirk himself.

The second part is, of course, that this is a fanfiction. It’s not canon, it’s not official, this is by someone who really likes Dirk for people who really like Dirk. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, so if you bounce off it (and I’m sure a lot did), then you don’t have to keep reading it, it’s fine, thanks for playing. As much as Homestuck^2 tried to doll itself up as “dubiously canon” it’s still the official continuation of the story, and that means if it’s as difficult to get into as Detective Pony, that’s going to be a problem for a lot of people.

The other part of it is that Detective Pony’s exploration of Dirk’s character is, well, in character. When the man himself steps in as a character in his own book, the explorations of what he is as an author, who he is as a person, make perfect sense for what we see of him at the start of the comic. He is that manipulative, blunt person, and he is aware of his faults. He’s the kind of person to hide a lamentation on his own failings inside an impenetrable maze of a story layered on top of a book about fucking ponies. Ultimate Dirk does not act like Dirk, outside of the “manipulator” angle, something that Dirk was aware of and trying to improve in the comic. But I guess people don’t have arcs, right?

It’s so interesting to see the seeds of Homestuck^2 laden within Detective Pony- because the meta angle that and the epilogues take is also represented in said fanfiction. While the nature of canon is a facet of the work, the idea of authors and narrators fighting for control of a story, different ideas in mind for the characters, one being more personally connected to them than the other, it’s all there. When I wrote about Fallout 4 in the past, I mentioned being worried that Bethesda took the wrong lessons from Skyrim- seeing something successful and trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle. I think Homestuck^2 is an extreme example of this- the writers of the comic saw Sonnetstuck’s masterwork and thought, yeah that’s great, we can do that. But they just can’t. And with the comic crashed and burning, the probably won’t ever get a chance to. Dirk is forever stuck as this amalgamation of himself that looks nothing like any individual version of him ever did.

At least we will still have Detective Pony, and many other excellent fanworks, for actually good Dirk content. I admittedly haven’t looked into much fanfic written during/post-epilogues, and I’m kind of afraid of what I’ll see- I can only hope the fanbase didn’t take the same wrong lessons as the official team did.

[enigmaticvariation]

Why C!Wilbur and Dirk Strider are the same character: a thread

I said I would never touch Homestuck again, but this has been plaguing me for hours. This will be in bullet point sections because this is just my train of thought.

Personality - They both act confident and sure of themselves to the point of egotism as overcompensation for crippling self hatred - They are laid back characters and often act as the straight man towards their more chaotic and high strung peers. - They are born leaders and have a strong desire to be in control of situations. - If they are not able to be in control they will eventually start taking it out on the people around them regardless of whether they intend to. - They have a strong interest in a particular creative field, which acts as a motif throughout their character arc (Wilbur with music and Dirk with robotics.) - They both have a distinctive signature hairstyle and have a strong association with hats - They are both extremely introspective to the point where they often don't communicate with those around them.

-They're both extremely pretentious

- They need a shit ton of therapy but never ended up getting it

(This is long as hell, the rest is going under a read more)

Relationships

- They have a younger brother figure who looks up to them a great deal. (We all know the parallels you can make with Tommy and Dave but I'll just lay them out again. Hot headed word vomity blonde boys with red baseball shirts, music disc motifs, a somewhat naive best friend who is often treated inferior to them by the antagonist/narrative itself associated with the color green, and a huge hero complex also pushed onto them by the narrative itself.)

- Their younger brother figure has complicated feelings towards them due to being in close proximity to them while they were at their absolute lowest mentally and has trauma related to the experience. (Bro and Pogtopia Wilbur are in no way a one to one comparison due to Bro having a disconnect from Dirk while Pogtopia Wilbur is literally just Wilbur. Also, Bro is much worse than Wilbur ever was, he was extremely physically and emotionally abusive towards Dave in a way Wilbur never even got close too.)

- Wilbur and Dirk have a strong need to help their friends improve themselves and act in a way more fit to how they want them to be. This is due to their need for control and is not inherently malicious, but can end up being obnoxious at best and slightly manipulative at worst. This can be seen in how Dirk tries to teach Jake to be less naive and how Wilbur tries to teach Tommy to be less rash.

- They both have a somewhat distant father figure who is seen as a great hero in the eyes of many. This figure lived centuries before they were born, only in Dirk's case his father figure wasn't immortal and he was a genetic clone of him.

Alternate Selves

- Alternate selves are a strong underlying motif in both of their arcs.

- In Dirk's case, he has many literal alternate selves. In Wilbur's, he only technically has one but he has been split up into alternate selves through Tommy's perspective, the person closest to him.

- This is more cosmetic, but they both have an alternate self that is a ghost (brain ghost dirk and ghostbur.)

- Dirk's alternate selves (or "splinters, if we're going to use the homestuck term) are a more direct reflection of himself than Ghostbur is to alivebur, but they show how other people view them and how they view themselves.

- They both feel disdain and resentment towards their alternate selves, (in wilbur's case a lot of this is shown with ghostbur's feelings towards alivebur,) going back to their self hatred.

Relationship towards the narrative

-As much as I dislike the Homestuck post canon, it's still a part of Dirk's story worth mentioning that parallels Wilbur. This section is comparing late season 1 Wilbur to Ultimate Dirk.

- They are both characters that often break the 4th wall and seem to have somewhat of an awareness that they are in a story.

- Due to their need to be in control, they often manipulate the story to stay relevant within it. This can be seen in how Ult. Dirk takes over the narrative in the epilogues, and how Wilbur decides within the story to take over as the villain.

- Once they are unable to be in control anymore, they choose to die as a way to end their character arc within the story and to leave behind a legacy.

- They’re extremely obsessed with meddling, Wilbur came back from beyond the fucking grave to meddle.

Also, you can’t tell me that Dirk Strider WOULDN’T name his crossbow chekov’s gun. He’s that bitch.

[autumnblogs]

Day 32: Through the Looking Glass

https://homestuck.com/story/4116

So right out of the gate, we learn a few things about the Scratched version of the universe, aside from the obvious fact that the new heroes are the previous guardians. Everyone is a little more mature, and identities are a little more fully-formed.

Jane’s name is already set in stone. Notably, the definition between the audience and Jane is also a little clearer here than usual - the Narration implies a distinction between us and Jane. Could be because we’re not controlling her yet - but as we get into Act 6, we will find a lot of cases where audience participation happens as part of the mechanic of narration, and this distinction will be called to a lot more.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/4117

So let’s unpack Jane’s interests and relation to pre-established parts of the Homestuck Universe, and see if we can’t start making guesses about Jane.

First thing’s first is that while we could read Jane’s affinity for these mustachio’d funnymen as being purely an attraction, she roleplays like John does - as a bit of a prankstress herself, and one who dons a fake mustache for one of her disguises, Jane roleplays as these men immediately suggesting to us that she looks up to them, and wants to be like them, rather than that she’s attracted to them.

(Though she certainly could be.)

Second thing is that Jane’s position as the Heirress parallels her not to John, but to Feferi. Like Feferi, Jane is a sweet girl who is the heir to a position of abominable power, and because she is beholden to the shape of that power, as long as she remains wedded to that shape, she will not only struggle to do anything productive with it, but in the course of the story, be subverted into a villain, at least for a little while, and it’s clear from the way that Crockertier Jane’s situation is communicated to us that she is an accomplice to her own brainwashing, and that the actions she takes in that form are meaningfully hers.

On another note, I think it’s interesting that on this side of the scratch, the Condesce has reimagined her empire as a megacorporation.

https://homestuck.com/story/4120

What do we learn about Jake right out of the gate? He likes movies - adventure movies. Jake, like Tavros, the other page, loves to bluster about subjects that he actually has relatively little affinity for - and in both cases, their lack of affinity can largely be described as performing their culture’s ideal of public personhood - warrior virtue. While Jake has all of the outward signifiers of masculinity, and is actually a pretty brave and technically skillful fighter by the standards of the real world, up until the Hopesplosion, he is outclassed by a lot of his friends, and ultimately, the cases where he most embodies warrior-manhood, Jake is being forced into it by someone who wants to take advantage of him.

We benefit from most of this knowledge with hindsight. It’s not actually there in this opening section, but the main thrust of Jake’s interests is his love of adventure and his love of wrestling, and I’m principally interested in Jake’s physicality in addressing his interests - he’s a very physical kid.

https://homestuck.com/story/4121

We’re hot off the heels of Terezi’s fake choice, and a lot of conversation about free will and fake choices in Act 5 - and here we’re presented with one almost immediately. We can pick either option, but the outcome will be the same whatever we do.

https://homestuck.com/story/4124

I’ve always thought the Condescension’s relationship with Jane is deeply fascinating. There is something about the prospect of cultivating an heiress, someone to take over her legacy, that brings out something tender and maternal in her, I think, even if it only manifests in a twisted way. She’s a bit of an enigma to me.

https://homestuck.com/story/4126

Well, Jane is certainly interested in Foxworthy, so I rescind my earlier comment.

We’ve barely been introduced to her and she pretty much immediately starts showing off her paternalistic disdain for rural and vulgar people through the narrative’s language, and her nostalgia for Problem Sleuth characterizes her enjoyment of its sequel.

Jane has an aristocratic mentality, and conservative leanings in the media she appreciates, and the way that she appreciates it. If Andrew’s commentary that he continued to examine the themes he started with Feferi in Jane, I think what we should take away is that Feferi’s concern for the lowly comes with a heaping helping of...

Wait for it.

Wait for it...

Condescension.

B)

https://homestuck.com/story/4127

Jane’s disdain for the vulgar - low culture, low classes - also shows itself pretty quickly. In stark contrast to the other two leaders - John and Karkat - Jane isn’t much of a movie watcher at all (Jake gets that attribute in his session) and her attitude toward’s Jake’s movies is one of snobbery. Both of the other two movie watchers have a playfully self-deprecating attitude toward their own bad tastes in movies, but they still enjoy those movies sincerely.

Her relationship of passive-aggressive one-upsmanship also distinctly recalls Rose’s relationship with her mother, suggesting that Jane shares some of the underlying pessimism and mild hostility that Rose struggles with.

Also, as a symbol Swanson is a representative of the sort of anti-government animus that characterizes the politics of Trans-Mississippi America outside of the heavily populated West Coast, where the wedding of big business and state planning have created a lot of disaffection toward the distant and disinterested corporate landlords and bureaucratic apparatuses that govern huge tracts of federal land and private property in the west. Pawnee Indiana may not actually be on the other side of the Mississippi from Washington, but having grown up in Montana for at least a part of my childhood, Swanson’s politics are immediately recognizable.

Unfortunately, this anti-state animus has manifested not in the form of a renewed commitment to emancipation, but to the uniquely American, get-off-my-lawn form of Right-Wing populism practiced by the short-lived Tea Party, and smug “It’s just basic economics” Reagan-worshipping conservatives.

What I’m trying to say is, Jane would probably be a Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder fan in the modern day.

https://homestuck.com/story/4136

Jane’s skepticism prevents her from listening to her friends when they tell her about the extraordinary things that they do, but it’s also not exactly a kind of scientific skepticism, and more of a dogmatic realism - she has a narrow vision of what the world is like, and is dismissive of ideas that are outside of her bubble.

Quick Note that while Jake makes only an off-handed remark about it here, he is sensitive to the hostile, toxic relationship between the AR and Dirk in a way that neither of the girls really is, and while that may seem uncharacteristically emotionally intelligent of Jake, I think he’s a lot more aware of his surroundings than he lets on.

https://homestuck.com/story/4142

Now as long as we’re talking about Right Wing Populism and comparing Jane to John there is an extremely potent assertion.

The USPS, and the idea of privatizing it, is as much a symbol of the war of corporatists and authoritarians against social democracy as anything is, and because of the way John is associated with Mail in general as a Hero of Breath, Jane is almost immediately setting herself up as a foil to John.

https://homestuck.com/story/4144

Calliope is so cheery that it’s easy to take everything she says in stride, and yet, with all the horrors Sburb has to offer, in terms of the way it destroys planets, and traumatizes its players, her optimism toward the game is at least disquieting.

Sure, the Null Session isn’t going to destroy the kids’ session, but her language is contrasted against both Kanaya’s and Karkat’s when they berated Aradia and Jade respectively. Both Karkat and Kanaya rue the effects of the narrative on their lives, but Calliope is a superfan.

https://homestuck.com/story/4156

I know I’m spending a lot of time ragging on her here, but like, as long as I am; Jane is sure openly hostile to her best friend, in a way that comes as kind of surprising even given the precedent that we have to work with.

https://homestuck.com/story/4160

Poirot is from Belgium.

I wonder if Andrew or Jane is the one committing that error?

https://homestuck.com/story/4168

Jake is full of little contradictions like this. Likes Adventure, terrified of monsters. Not even ambivalent about them, certainly not excited by them. It’s like the opposite of how little kids are usually super into Dinosaurs.

https://homestuck.com/story/4171

So what is the deal with Jake and his fascination with Blue Women? Aside from the metaphysical connection with Vriska and Aranea (and to a lesser extent, Jake), like... what’s the meaning of it?

I think a possible answer to the question lies in the process of the initial portraits becoming blue - leaving them out in the sun to fade - and the relationship between that, and the way in which he likes mummies and suits of armor, and so on and so forth - and even his stuffed trophies.

Maybe this suggests that Jake is, on principle, far more comfortable with the idea of a thing, than with the thing itself. Jake’s Blue Women are comfortably static. They have ceased to change a long time ago, and now exist, preserved in perpetuity, without the need to worry about adapting to suit them.

https://homestuck.com/story/4175

While a lot of Jake’s guesses are incorrect, he’s still clearly spending a lot of time pondering over the mysterious time shenanigans - he just hasn’t quite put it all together.

https://homestuck.com/story/4177

The same way that Dirk’s fastidious organization is equated to his complicated and demanding modus, and the way that John being a big impulsive himbo is equated with his inability to manage his fetch modus, constantly getting distracted from his goal by the card on the surface, Jake’s Modus has an enormous capacity, but most of it is preoccupied inefficiently.

https://homestuck.com/story/4184

The Autoresponder continues the conversation that Andrew has with the audience about the distribution of the self - Dirk does this more generally, but the particular thread the AR tugs on is the question of where a person’s self really stops - just as the question lingers in the air because of John’s disposition toward Davesprite, the question of whether the AR is really a separate person from Dirk, or a part of him, is posed continuously just by the fact that it exists.

https://homestuck.com/story/4192

To be fair to Dirk, who I will have a lot of kind-of-sympathetic-antipathy for, I had forgotten that it is, in fact, the Autoresponder who sets up this particular challenge for Dirk.

The parallels between Dirk and English are nevertheless being set up through this conversation nevertheless - by sending him the parts and getting him to assemble the robot, Dirk makes Jake complicit in his own humiliation, even as he attempts to build Jake up into an ideal partner.

https://homestuck.com/story/4196

Already we’re seeing indications that this segment of Homestuck will deal with different themes of growing up than the first half. Which is already kind of obvious, but we’ve moved decisively out of Part 1: Problems, and into Part 2: Feelings. The second half has moved out of the territory of other humans and their emotional situations as somewhat idealized problems (somewhat) and into this situation where everyone is a moving body, complicated and the characters are each others’ biggest obstacles, and their own biggest obstacles. That’s a bit of a reductive way of describing it, but I think it rings true.

https://homestuck.com/story/4256

While I am willing to concede that Dirk is not literally responsible for siccing the Brobot on Jake today, he more or less assents to AR’s sexual harassment and physical abuse of Jake.

In addition to his vicarious physical abuse, Dirk’s persona as the Prince of Heart calls him to suppress the uniqueness of the people who are around him, moulding them like clay into shapes that better resemble him. Jake and Jane need to be more like each other in his eyes - which is to say, they both need to be more like Dirk.

We also get some insight into Dirk’s sense of humor here - it’s not just about the irony. I think there is an extent to which at the base of the thing, Dirk’s sense of humor is about simultaneously denying and affirming a thing’s meaning - making fun of it while cherishing it. Having a thing be incredibly silly - while also being incredibly serious business. He cherishes the absurd.

I wonder if he’d like Kojima’s stuff.

https://homestuck.com/story/4257

The way that Dirk identifies with logic and reason recalls the sort of “enlightened by my own intelligence” New Atheist jerks who were known to prowl the internet in the early half of the decade, and to some extent, still do. Like Libertarians, these folks have often in the present day gotten caught up in Right Wing Populism. Maybe it’s something about the way that Right Wing movements increasingly identify as a part of counter-culture even though they advocate reactionary policies.

https://homestuck.com/story/4273

This is extremely silly, but Jake is in mortal peril all the time, and I expect even at the best of times he might be uncomfortable being touched.

https://homestuck.com/story/4284

Here we shall pause.

Sorry for the late post. Early work was quite busy, and once the rush was over, it was already quite late.

So the first Act of Act 6 has been very informative! Compared to the first Act of Homestuck, we’ve been introduced already to all our Dramatis Personae!

Tune back in tomorrow to here Cam Say,

Some variation on Alive and Not Alone.

[totallyjazzed]

Analysing Copaganda (or "I watched seven seasons of Brooklyn 99 so you don't have to")

Introduction:

Several months ago my parents approached me asking if I wanted to watch Brooklyn 99, not knowing anything about it, my first instinct was to say no, but then I thought it would be interesting, to watch it and write a proper analysis for exactly what makes it propaganda and why it gives liberals brain worms. If you've spent any amount of time engaging with politics online for the last few years, you've likely already heard of Brooklyn 99. It's a sitcom written by Michael Schur, who previously wrote The Office (I'll get to that later), Parks & Recreation, and The Good Place. The show follows the lives of a squad of police detectives in Brooklyn and the wacky hijinks they get up to.

Brooklyn 99 has become famous, or arguably infamous, on Tumblr (and potentially other social media websites too) for being used as a "retort" to anti-cop sentiments (namely ACAB and any variation thereof), mainly taking the form of "the only good cop is Raymond Holt". In this essay (to use a funny Tumblr meme phrase) I will provide a brief overview of the show and the main characters, and analyse how the show, and each character individually, is pro-cop propaganda (copaganda).

The Show:

Brooklyn 99 is The Office, at least from what I understand about The Office. It’s a sitcom based in a workplace in which characters often pull pranks on each other and have wacky adventures pertaining to their job. The main thing that sets it apart from The Office is that the workplace in question is a police station, this makes it a cop show too. However, unlike more “classic” cop shows like CSI, Law & Order, The Wire, and so on, B99 doesn’t seek to glorify it’s characters as action heroes, but rather paint them as normal people living normal lives. This is far more insidious than the picture of the gnarled man of action who doesn’t play by the book, and by making the characters relatable the show gives viewers people to project onto, making them more vulnerable to the propaganda of the show.

Occasionally, in a break from the antics of Relatable Immature Prankster Archetype and Funny Overly Attached Best Friend Archetype, the show will attempt to say something about racism, or homophobia, or misogyny, or something like that, and while it usually feels well-meaning it often falls flat as it’s a watered-down safe-for-TV version of whatever the issue du jour is. 

In S4E16 (“Moo Moo”), Terry is harassed by a racist cop while he doesn’t have his badge, and is almost arrested until he manages to prove his cop status, the rest of the episode revolves around how racism is bad and that one singular racist cop is a problem, in the end Terry submits a complaint to the NYPD higher-ups and gets his job application denied, and the racist cop gets away with a slap on the wrist. Throughout the show, Captain Holt tells stories about how he suffered from racism and homophobia, and still does. Transphobia is mentioned once (presumably for brownie points) in a throwaway line about Ace Ventura.

At the end of Season 4, Jake and Rosa are framed for a series of bank robberies and sent to prison, and the first two episodes of Season 5 work to show that prison is bad and prisoners are mistreated, they also make abundantly clear that everyone in prison is a menace and deserves to be there (Jake’s cellmate is a literal cannibal and he’s shown to be one of the nice inmates), once the duo are released from jail, there are a few lines here and there about how prison is bad, but they’re only throwaways used to serve as one-off jokes and never again used as an actual critique of the prison system.

Police Brutality is never mentioned, the closest it comes to bringing it up is in S1E19 (“Tactical Village”), where Rosa is introduced to a sonic-blast weapon and aims it as Charles, this is clearly supposed to be a very harmful piece of equipment, but it's only appearance is treated as a joke.

There are also recurring gags about Defense Lawyers being “the enemy” because they only defend guilty parties (the show heavily implies that none of the squad has ever arrested the wrong person), which meshes with the harmful stereotype in cop shows of only guilty people saying for a lawyer or a warrant or whatever, which has been documented before by others.

The Characters:

Jake Peralta (played by Andy Samberg) is the Relatable Immature Prankster Archetype I mentioned before, he’s the office funnyman and usually responsible for the majority of the goings-on and goings-wrong in the show, while he does mature and evolve through the show he never grows out of this character. He’s the closest the show gets to the “gnarled man of action who doesn’t play by the book” character I mentioned before, not because he is that character but because he wants to be, his favourite movie is Die Hard and it’s the reason he joined the police, so he could be like the cool bruce willis man. He’s also the most unlawful character on the show, in S1E7 (“48 Hours”), he arrests a man with no evidence and the squad is essentially locked down until evidence can be found, in the end it turns out the man is guilty. Jake is scolded for this, not for essentially breaking the law, but for wasting everyone’s time when they had much better things to do that night. Jake’s character is propaganda because he’s the zany relatable one with a heart of gold.

Amy Santiago (played by Melissa Fumero) is the overly-organised hyper-nerd archetype, in direct opposition to Jake. Her dream is to be the NYPD’s youngest female captain, and she’s very “I want to keep the people safe” in her approach to policing. In S3E3 (“Boyle’s Hunch”), she is used as the face of the NYPD’s poster campaign, only to have her image vandalised, which is painted by the show as being very bad and sad. Amy’s character is propaganda because she’s the uptight peacekeeper who sticks to the rules.

Charles Boyle (played by Joe Lo Truglio) is the Funny Overly Attached Best Friend Archetype I mentioned before, often depicted as bumbling and naive, he’s an incredibly competent detective, arguably more so than Jake. He’s usually polite and friendly, and has moments of childishness that compliment Jake’s character. Charles’ character is propaganda because he’s the nice guy who just wants what’s best for everyone.

Raymond Holt (played by Andre Braugher) is probably the character most people are aware of, he’s a somewhat stuck-up man who embodies a lot of the same characteristics as Amy, he’s highly-educated, incredibly smart and quick-witted, and emotionally restrained. Originally presented as an outsider, being the new guy to the pre-existing friendgroup, he learns to relax and let go over the course of the show, and acts almost as a father figure to the other characters, primarily Jake and Amy. Raymond’s character is propaganda because he’s a black gay cop.

Rosa Diaz (played by Stephanie Beatriz) is tough, aloof, and often scary in the eyes of the other characters, she is shown to have problems with engaging with people socially, particularly romantically, and while her exterior is rough as uncaring, she’s shown to be fiercely loyal and have some not-so-tough secrets. In Season 5 she comes out to the squad as Bisexual. Rosa’s character is propaganda because she’s the no-nonsense tough cop who secretly has a heart of gold.

Terry Jeffords (played by Terry Crews) is a kind and caring man with a firm-but-fair attitude, acting as Holt’s second-in-command he also acts as a father figure to the other characters, he has two (eventually three) children which he is often seen gushing about. He is the most mature of the group, on-par with Holt in some respects but sometimes more so, refusing to take part in hijinks to focus on his job. Terry’s character is propaganda because he’s the physically strong and imposing, yet kind cop who just wants to provide for his family.

Michael Hitchcock (played by Dirk Blocker) and Norm Scully (played by Joel McKinnon Miller) are an inseparable pair of bumbling, lazy, oafs. Scully is fat, lazy, and old, Hitchcock is lecherous, lazy, and old. They’re propaganda because they’re the lazy incompetent cop archetype.

There are plenty of minor recurring characters, as well as Gina Linetti, a main character who left after Season 6, however as she’s a liaison and not a cop I won’t be analysing her in detail.

There’s a lot more I could have mentioned here, from the dirty cop that sense Jake and Rosa to jail, or the police commissioner who wants to spy on everyone’s phones all at once, Holt even says the line “I don’t want to live in a Police State”, but I’ve left them out for the sake of brevity.

Conclusion:

Brooklyn 99 is copaganda to it’s very core, this much everyone already knows, but unlike serious cop dramas and high-stakes high-action cop shows, Brooklyn 99 offers viewers an escape to a world where the police are the force for good that people want them to be. The premise of “The Office but police” suckers people in with nostalgia for the late 2000s/early 2010s back when things were “good”. Given Michael Schur’s previous work I imagine he and the other writers didn’t explicitly set out to make copaganda, but it’s undeniable that this is what was achieved. And now with the political climate being what it is and the threat of a potential Season 8 addressing this year’s BLM protests, it’s now more important than ever to be able to identify and root out police propaganda, no matter how unassuming, no matter the source.

[the-hs-etaverse]

OKAY HEAR ME OUT

Meat!Calliope is writing the Candy narrative.

This got ridiculously protracted, so here's the tl;dr. Because of their classpect as Muse of Space, their connection to the Homestuck fandom and fan works in general, and the absolute ridiculosity of the Candy timeline, it’s evident that Meat!Calliope scribbling art on their walls in the Epilogues is them composing the Candy timeline itself. A more in-depth explanation is below the cut.

First of all, here’s the proof that Calliope at least seems to have awareness of Candy:

In essence, Meat!Calliope has been drawing a) Gamzee’s blood and various nudity, and b) cute ship fulfillment. Both of these are things that occur most notably in Candy. Now, this could imply two things: 1) Calliope somehow knows what’s going on in Candy and is transcribing it, or 2) Calliope is somehow authoring, through their drawings, the events of Candy. My money’s on the latter. Why? Because of how oddly-written (for lack of a better word) the Candy route is.

Like, I know Roxy is going through Gender Troubles when she says “lets get married!!!” to John but, like, who just SAYS that? Under what circumstances would somebody just say “Hey we’ve been dating for like two months and it’s a funeral right now but LET’S GET FRIGGIN’ MARRIED RIGHT NOW HOW ABOUT THAT”? I mean, it’s not an uncommon situation for people to get married ridiculously soon after meeting each other, and they’ve known each other for years, but still. It reeks of chitzy fanfiction tropes.

The entirety of Candy does, actually, aside from the Dirkapitation. There’s the picture-perfect Rosemary relationship, which is miraculously not thrown into turmoil by the revelation of the existence of Yiffy (which is in of itself an absolutely ludicrous development, especially how it’s been kept a secret). You’d think Kanaya would at the very least have been SOMEWHAT irate, if not about the “we-had-what-amounts-to-a-one-night-stand” part, then at least about the “I-hid-this-secret-from-you-for-FIFTEEN-YEARS-somehow” part, but no!

There’s the Johnroxy dynamic, which would have been just as picture-perfect as Rosemary except for John being the “only sane man” of sorts, the only one who seems to realise how fake his life is, and the one who undermines their relationship. And yet they’re STILL on good terms! And there’s a heartwarming reunion and everything! It’s like the narrative is actively working against John’s hope that SOMEthing, ANYthing about this place could be imperfect!

There’s the Jade and Jake part, which is an exercise in “we-shall-make-a-protagonist-into-a-villain-because-CONFLICT”. I understand why everybody’s upset about that. And because of the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment, I will say no more on the subject. But then there’s Jake, who’s been henpecked to heck and back, but still has a heartwarming “I WANT TO BREAK FREEEEEE” bit, so things are looking up for him and his son. SOMEHOW.

And there’s a war, but nobody’s in any actual threat of harm from said war.

Oh, right, and Gamzee. He’s living his best life, too. Well, he was, but then he got beaten to deadness which now means everybody else is now living their best lives. So, yeah, the compromise occurred. And, of course, the author gets to milk some kink fuel (pun intended, regretfully so).

Also, Candy!Calliope just up and vanishes from the narrative after Alt!Calliope makes her grand entrance into Candy. Jury’s out on the significance of that.

And finally, there’s the Jade and Dave and Karkat thing. It kind of implies that the author didn’t know how to resolve the relationship conflict (without pulling an OT3) in such a way that everybody would be happy. So, boom, surprise Obama so that Dave can be happy, and surprise Meenah so that Karkat can be slightly less grumpy, and, uh, uh, hm.

Didn’t Alt!Calliope tell Jade that Space players need to make sacrifices in Chapter 6? So it makes sense that she’s now Forever Alone, I suppose, and it makes even MORE sense if Meat!Calliope is vaguely aware of this notion that their alternate self has.

All in all, the Candy timeline, according to a post I saw a little while ago, consists of the Homestucks reacting in-character to situations they ended up in while acting very out-of-character. Just like a poorly-contrived fanfiction. Just like something Callie would write.

Oh, right, and then there are the ghosts. Here’s the kicker: how did the ghosts (and Vriska, and Meenah) get to Candy!Earth in the first place? Through the black hole. That Alt!Calliope created. Heck, the entirety of Candy!Earth is in the black hole, that Alt!Calliope created! And when did Meat!Calliope start doing their eerily prophetic artwork? After they encountered Alt!Calliope.

Also? What’s Callie’s classpect? The Muse of Space. The Nine Muses, in Greek mythology, were the font of inspiration from which all stories sprung. Calliope, in particular, was the Muse of Epic Poetry. According to Hussie, Homestuck is “a s***post epic” (re: the video I reblogged a few days ago). Callie is rewriting reality and is the inspiration of the Candy space.

And Calliope is a representation of the fandom. What’s Homestuck^2? A fan-centred continuation. It’s literally called a fanwork in the FAQ.

All I’m saying is, the evidence seems to point towards Meat!Calliope, whether knowingly or not, having authorship over the Candy timeline. Dirk and Alt!Calliope are the narrators of Meat, but, as people have asked, who’s the narrator of Candy? It’s Meat!Calliope. It’s their black hole. It’s their domain. It’s their story.

[snowtimeisbesttime]

Thoughts and questions on Pesterquest Volume 4! Tip: I am so fucking mad.

-Jade's theme is a remix of Carefree Victory, but with a few... different motifs. Veeery subtle, just a robotic voice rapping (no idea what it says though) and a dude beatboxing. Tirona also had a remix of the same song back in Friendsim...EDIT: This remix's got all the kids' instruments jamming out, and the beatboxing's Dave's addition. Still no idea about the robot rapping though.

-It was to be expected that Jade would be hit the hardest by our No SBURB AU; I thought she still dreamed on Prospit... she just can't catch a break, can't she now?

-(Turns out Pesterquest's No SBURB AU also goes for all human / Earth-based fanventures! That's actually kinda neat)

-...what is NOT neat is that unless MC moves people between universes (which they probably will do), it looks like we won't get Davekat nor Rosemary here.

-Good to know that the butterfly Grandpa Harley blasted to smithereens that one time likely wasn't an outlier in any way besides screentime!! wait fuck i wanted to go for the joke angle but MC says the island is very empty later on shit it's another layer of sadstuck now

-The kids register the MC (who actually has a name of their own!) as a blank kinda friendy loking thign (with a dash of First Guardian unpredictableness), though our pals from Friendsim saw them as a normal (as much as can be) alien... We'll have to wait and see how the Hivebent trolls see them (besides wondering wh0's that douchebag, of course)

-Aradia also gets floofy hair!!!!!!!!! And we get to see her!!!!!!! And Sollux too!!!!!!!! (what does she know though?????)

-Of course Jade's kinda jealous of our fancy space powers....... (crying cat)

-I can't believe the Manthro Chaps are just Jake's fursona(s)

-There's a few early / classic Homestuck jokes, like Jade's name being Gigi (because she's GG; I've got no idea what the story behind “Lynn” is) and Squiddles being a TV show! And of course Jade relates (without needing future knowledge) to Inkabelle, who spends years lost and alone but is rescued in the end...

-Bec remains a good boy and best friend, and of course he reminds us of a good girl and best lusus: Ladyy. And also of a rat bitch, unfortunately.

-HAUNTSWITCH (the town) IS MENTIONED!! And there's someone there making sure Jade gets stuff sent her way... whoever they are, they're probably the only person who knows where her island is.

-I'm positive this fic's already been written at least once, because I read it and it was great, but: alternate universe where Joey and/or Jude take Jade in when Grandpa dies, and she gets to have a happy childhood, and never ever believes she deserves to be alone and miserable and to suffer more than the average person- or at all even. (Jade and Joey could bond over their dislike of Grandpa's trophies... and the fact that he abandoned them both.)

-Considering this quote: “Frost floods your veins and nestles into your heart with a burning chill, for reasons that you don't quite understand”, when MC finally gets their memories it's going to be a Big Fucking Moment. I have a theory that they might be Timebound (and a Scorist) because they've kept Mallek's hoodie as opposed to all the clothes they got from other friends, but those are hints to Blood and Heart if I've ever seen some.

-She's been bottling up her emotions practically her entire life. And now we've destroyed the only thing she had to look forward to. At least she gets to vent a little, even if it doesn't last long.

-Methinks Bec may have had very good reasons to keep Jade at least out of the temple (not so sure regarding on the island), even if the game is (seemingly.) no more. Because we've got a Bec Noir lookalike on Prospit, with red powers, who immediately gets rid of the teleport pad in the frog temple.

-And explicitly after going to Prospit -after entering the Medium, SBURB's domain-, Jade decides that it's fine if life basically screws her over in all ways, because it's her fate. Her good (or perhaps, better) end is a bit of a silver lining, but not that much. Once a player, always a player indeed...

-Of course we had to get the kids all together for this one, even if MC took their time to figure out they could do it. It's good to know that they'll have some happy moments at least...

-Unless my game glitched out, Rose's theme does not play when we zap to her house, while John's and Dave's do. She instantly figures out that Jade's feeling down because SBURB didn't happen, and John sees the writing on her walls, though he wouldn't have had a chance to mention Dave's. (Curiously, it looks like MC can't see those.)

-When we zap to Dave's room, she almost gets a shuriken to the face; and while Rose is the type to try and keep a cool and collected façade, that seems to be the catalyst for shit starting to leak everywhere, as opposed to hitting the fan: she asks MC about Dave's brother -who she finds psychologically fascinating-, and starts thinking about the ethics of using the retcon powers. Lastly, she says that we don't have to worry about this now.

-...Wasn't Rose aware that something had changed from the beginning? Didn't she literally do Light stuff in her bad end? Couldn't she perceive MC's narration? (Dave did say that they just mumble away sometimes, but he's a Time player (one of the most meta aspects), and nobody else's said so before; as far as I remember the only one who also seemed to be aware of it was Marsti, Voidbound.)

-So. Are we going to have to deal with the (with sincere apologies to all rats) Ultimate Rat Bitch, like what happened in Friendsim? Because it sure fucking looks so. there might or might not be a direct reference to the epilogues, besides what i've written here. We'll just have to wait and see how things turn out, once we befriend everyone in Pesterquest. (is this the third, pumpkin route???)

-(Admittedly, Bec Noir's Prospit red zappy cousin's description is vague enough that it could possibly apply to an Alt!Calliope-possessed dead Jade; with the black tendrils being the Witch hood and the wings maybe coming from consuming Lord English back then? But it's a pretty long reach, not even counting that its wings are explicitly said to be leathery where cherub wings are feathery, and most importantly, that this is not her style. All the evidence points towards U!Dirk.)

[stormsbourne]

the homestuck epilogue, summarized by me

edited after: I’m leaving this here for my own reference but there’s a decent amount of stuff I got wrong in these. I’ve tried to correct most of it. still please don’t bother with these if, for some reason, you’re still free of this dark knowledge in the post hell 2020 timeline

there’s doubtless parts of both sides (which are actually only one side, big spoilers there) that I’m going to forget so I apologize in advance for that but I read the entire thing very quickly and some parts are more memorable than others. this is also only slightly polished up from when I posted it on discord, which I did in a tremendous hurry. so pardon the grammar

please be wary that I literally CANNOT tag this with everything there are warnings for so if you’re not sure, check the actual epilogue tag list, because literally all of it is mentioned in some capacity.

letsa go

LET’S START WITH CANDY.

john decides not to go. immediately, things start going strangely well for literally everyone, who all get exactly what he thinks they want (or what SOMEONE thinks they want, more on that later. I think it's still john doing the influencing.) davejadekat hook up. john and roxy get married. etc. gamzee gets “redeemed” by which I mean john rescues him at calliope’s request and he goes around saying he’s good now. but as always there's trouble in paradise and the things that seem to be "good endings" end up being bad. jane becomes president of earth but this leads her to become a fascist dictator who may possibly be responsible for the future genocide of trollkind (this shit is full fascist racism shit. “troll camps” are a thing.). dave and karkat are in love with each other and jade getting in with them has actually just made it harder for them to be honest with one another. gamzee basically serves no purpose except to be annoying and gross. 

at some point literally all the trolls start getting resurrected because of timeline shenanigans where the black hole is spitting out their ghosts onto earth c (which is actually inside of the black hole in paradox space somehow. don’t think too hard about it). rose and kanaya adopt a grub they name vriska to honor her sacrifice and also because it looks like vriska. john and roxy have a kid named harry anderson. jane basically rapes jake (he's drunk and also the lollipop is invovled) and conveniently gets pregnant with a kid they later name tavros. AS TIME GOES ON, karkat breaks up from djk because he's sick of it and then goes on to lead a troll rebellion against jane. jane starts cucking jake with gamzee. roxy and john break up because john is depressed and also because john is way more interested in texting terezi than in his real-life spouse. dirk kills himself for reasons that have more to do witht the construct of the meat timeline than the candy one.

all of this is slightly out of order but I’m trying to be succinct so when things get crazy I can keep the relevant details close together.

QUICK MEAT DETOUR (MEATOUR).

john decides to go. he makes a quick stop to grab the ring of life from aranea, then scoops up the other game over kids, who head off to face caliborn. the masterpiece goes down as you would expect it to with the beta kids getting stuck in the juju. the betas are later released from the juju by vriska but it doesn't actually kill english (dave does with his sword, then gets decapitated), and john gets nailed hard in the chest by caliborn's gold tooth, which begins to poison and kill him. davepeta appears for like two seconds and then vanishes into the black hole. jade's corpse is the only one of the kids that isn't fucking vaporized but it gets sucked into the black hole. we'll come back to this later. john runs into meenah, who steals the life ring and peaces out into the black hole. then he runs into terezi in the remains of paradox space and the two of them fuck. 

IN THE MEANTIME, on earth, karkat mounts an opposition run to jane's presidency, at dave's urging. dave and karkat are explicitly not together but also explicitly dancing around how they both know they love each other; jade keeps trying to start a threesome and both of them are like "UHHHHHH." roxy and calliope are together. jake and dirk have a stupid wrestle rap tv show but it is iterated on over and over again that dirk thinks jake is a useless idiot who he can't treat well and who deserves nothing and whom he needs to babysit and control so cool I guess. dirk goes to talk to rose and it becomes clear both of them are experiencing the same thing with their expansion of consciousness giving them awareness of other timelines and vague control over them (”ascending”) AT WHICH POINT it becomes clear that dirk is actually the narrator+controller of the entire meat timeline. the narration turns orange and dirk’s character voice (or what the epilogue says his character voice is) begins to leak into how it’s written.

BACK TO CANDY FOR A SECOND.

jade's corpse from the meat timeline crashes down into the candy earth c through a ghost black hole portal. nobody knows what the sweet christ is happening, but roxy proposes having another funeral since the kids only see one another at funerals (the last one being dirk’s) and aren't very close. they have the funeral but in the middle of it, jade sits up and has been possessed by the spirit of red calliope, who claims she is protecting this version of the planet and is keeping watch out for a bad actor who could destroy everything.

kid vriska is horrible to kid tavros. john and terezi talk a lot and it's routinely implied that john cares more about her than about roxy, and that john is the only person she talks to. jake eventually walks out on jane with their kid but only after she’s treated him horrendously and continued to cuck him with gamzee. meenah also comes down through a hole in the sky, where she meets karkat and they hook up romantically. dave and jade get married but it’s implied to be a very troubled marriage. kid vriska begins banging harry anderson once they are teens. also once they are teens, ACTUAL (alive) vriska comes crashing down onto the planet from being sucked into the black hole. she and kid vriska have some conversations about terezi, but only after vriska hatefucks gamzee. vriska sends terezi a message. we don't see how this pays off, which makes me think that more is probably coming. 

dave, while trying to help karkat with the troll rebellion, comes upon actual literal barack obama, has a conversation about sexuality with him and how he’s not really into jade (here he calls himself “gay” while in the meat timeline he is very explicit about being bisexual). obama tells him that ascension to one’s ultimate self is impossible for the normal human body to withstand and helps him turn into a robot so he can handle the transformatiin and help save another timeline. 

btw a war has started between jane’s fascist empire and the trolls, led by karkat, who has an eyepatch. john, having patched some things up a bit with roxy, reconciles with his son. this is basically how candy ends.

OK. LET’S GET BACK TO THE MEAT.

now that dirk's control over the narrative is firmly established he actually starts exerting some level of control over people through his narrative voice. he uses this to start making people do things he wants.

anyway jade falls into a coma at some point and when she wakes up, the spirit of red calliope is using her to "transmit" and dirk and red calliope start literally fighting over who gets to write the story. red calliope wins at first, and dirk's narration is reduced down to small font where he passive aggressively swipes at calliope. alive calliope takes one look at possessed jade and runs away almost literally screaming. oh also I forgot calliope and roxy both go by "they" at this point in time and dirk+calliope spar a bit over that as dirk also keeps calling roxy "her." fun times. 

anyway while calliope is running the narrative jake agrees to endorse karkat's presidential run as dirk makes plans involving a rifle and the phrase "jake english, your ass is mine." during the rally where jake is about to endorse karkat, dirk fools calliope into thinking he's trying to shoot jake, but wheels around and hits jade instead with a tranquilizer through a window. this makes red calliope's influence go away and dirk resumes control of the narrative. 

using his regained control of the narrative, dirk presses his thumb down on jake to remind jake how much he loves dirk, how he’s IN LOVE with dirk, and how "to love dirk is to obey him" and jake, obligingly, endorses jane in front of the entire crowd gathered there to watch his speech about karkat. 

dave and karkat, drinking together after jane handily wins the election, hook up though dave basically has to shout dirk out of his head because he wants to do it on his own terms instead of the way dirk keeps writing it, and dirk WILL NOT LET HIM because dirk knows best. eventually dirk leaves him alone but only after dave basically forcibly chases him out (without knowing what he’s really doing, sort of like Aimless Renegade in the comic). john and terezi come back to earth, where john dies and terezi captchalogues his body. dirk (as narrative) and terezi (as herself) spar a bit until he makes an offer to her to come see him about her dead boyfriend. this is the last we see of her. 

dirk then convinces kanaya (using the narrative) that he and rose are in love and he's better for rose than she is and she needs to let them go if she really loves rose. kanaya obligingly does this. dirk leaves kanaya some medicine that will wake jade up and goes to talk to jake, where he sex blackmails jake into lending him a spaceship. jake thinks he's coming along on the trip but dirk assures him this is not the case. jake breaks down literally sobbing and begging to go, dirk kisses him and tells him he'll never let jake break his heart again, and dirk leaves with rose (in a coma which dirk will resolve by putting her into a robot like dave).

jade wakes up and, with memories of red calliope's goals, shouts that dirk has to be stopped, pointing out to various people (namely kanaya) how weird they’ve been acting because he’s been subtly influencing them using the narrative as lowkey mind control. they all make plans to go find dirk though none of them can figure out where the sweet fuck john is (terezi is awol). they ask jake who, sobbing, confirms that dirk took a spaceship, and then go plan to get one of their own and follow him using red calliope's instructions.

also this is impossible to get in anywhere else but roxy is going by “he” now and dirk has a whole paragraph about how suave and manly and cool and masculine he is

WOW THAT WAS HAIRY. THAT IT?

the actual ending of each consists of the following: candyverse davebot shows up on candy earth as red calliope opens a hole presumably back out to the furthest ring (after literally eating caliborn’s body). he and aradia (she was in candy for a while now but did pretty much nothing) are like cool let's go and vault into the hole. meanwhile, meatverse dirk and robot rose draw closer to a new unnamed planet as rose does dirk's laundry. they both know the planet is destined for a new sburb session in the future.

YIKES!

yeah yikes.

WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS?

if you’re like me you should ignore it and just keep doing what you want to do. have fun. the author is dead, long live the fanfic author.

[abundantchewtoys]

Homestuck Meat p37-39

Page 37

Ass. Hole.

Wow. I used to appreciate Dirk on some level, but this.

He's misusing his powers to get what HE wants and framing it as everyone getting what THEY need or deserve. He talked Kanaya into "accepting" an imagined relationship between Dirk and Rose. And he doesn't care enough for Rose to respect her wishes regarding her personal things. AND now he's drugged her as well. With Jake it was played for laughs, with Jade it could be framed as being necessary evil, but this...

I can't even trust that he's really left behind an antidote for Jade, because why would he? Why would he suddenly allow Alt Calliope renewed control over Earth C? Unless his antidote disconnects Jade from Alt Calliope.

I do have to admit that, from Rose's side, her interactions with Dirk are still funny. I think part of why she enjoys the dad jokes is because Dirk doesn't know how to respond.

---

Page 38

Okay, this was better. Dave realizes something is off but he's got other, more important things on his mind. I can respect that.

I still hope he can give his genetic father the boot somehow, but I like how Dave's meta-awareness from earlier in the story has evolved into him being aware when he's "nudged".

Still unsure why Dirk is so invested in Davekat, though. I suppose it's perhaps because he's used to getting what he thinks he deserves, and since Dave shares his genes, he thinks Dave should act accordingly?

The Dave rambles were great as well, as was Dirk's Denny metaphor.

Although, Dirk, proclaiming Davekat is canon while being on post-canon Earth C? That seems like a bit of an inherent contradiction. :P

So, it does seem like all the 20-something versions of the Sburb players have illustrous love lives, once they get down to it, don't they?

---

Page 39

Yyyyyeeepp, I've started to suspect over the past couple pages, that the one who's really not over the other is Dirk.

It seems Dirk supposedly broke up with Jake but still couldn't let him go, and how he's instilled the idea in Jake that he needs Dirk, and he doesn't even use his powers to get it out. Douche.

And the future he paints for Jake is like the one Crockertier Jane threatened Jake with. I'm not sure Dirk even realizes this.

Ugh, Dirk is just so full of himself, when he describes his own beauty and excellence. Although Dirk doesn't want to get his heart broken is I guess a bit amusing, being the Prince of Heart. ... Wait. He's been doing that a lot in these epilogues, shattering dreams and breaking hearts. :/

What really does amuse me is the idea that Jake has got a fleet-worth of spaceships lying around in his mansion, captchalogued. So he does still own Skaianet on Earth C! Guess that for all his emotional idiocy, he's still quite gifted in the science department, curtousy of his Grandma!

But where does Dirk even want to go, with Rose, Terezi and maybe John?

[clonerightsagenda]

The epilogues look terrible and I don’t want to spend my time reading them... but I love + trust your judgement and your takes on things. Could you summarize them? (No pressure if you don’t want to)

OK, it’s been a few weeks since i read it, but I will do my best.NOTE: This is probably not comprehensive and definitely not objective. As a supplement, I did some poking around, and the MSPA wiki has some bullet points. I also eventually found another  summary on tumblr, albeit by someone who also didn’t like it, so it is probably biased as well. 

ANOTHER NOTE: Those content warnings weren’t a joke. Below are references to sexual content, assault, suicide, sexism, transphobia, character death, and probably some other stuff.

WHAT HAPPENED:

In the prologue, Rose summons John to inform him that he needs to defeat Lord English right now, or they will all experience terrible consequences. These are mostly meta consequences you can interpret as ‘if we don’t produce new Homestuck content on its 10th anniversary, everyone will give up on this franchise for real, and also canon doesn’t seem stable when the big bad never got beaten’. John goes to visit Roxy and Calliope before he leaves and is given the option to eat either meet or candy. This represents a choice he is supposed to make, and that choice creates two timelines.

In MEAT, John travels back in time and gathers three 16 year old versions of his friends. They confront Caliborn in the battle he represented in his Masterpiece and are sucked into the house juju. Vriska activates it, but not before being pulled into the black hole. Rose and Jade die immediately, with Rose’s body being destroyed and Jade’s falling into the black hole, because why should women get to fight the story’s biggest misogynist. Dave lands a solid hit on English before having his head bitten off Mami from PMMM style. John gets chomped on as well and a gold tooth ends up embedded in his chest. Davepeta appears and drags the wounded LE into the black hole. John finds his father’s wallet, retrieves his car, and slumps inside. Terezi appears, in bad shape after a long time wandering the ring. She seems confused at his state (explained because in CANDY she has been texting that version of him for years). She removes the tooth from his chest and they have sex.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Dave and Karkat have avoided talking about being a relationship for seven years, while Jade harasses them about becoming a threesome. This is explicitly tied to her abandonment issues but also she is referred to as a slut so like. Don’t love that. Jane is running for president, and Dave thinks this is terrible because she’s a woman fascist and doesn’t understand the economy and Karkat should run instead. Other shit is happening but I lost track. Rose is ill because she’s becoming her ‘Ultimate Self’ and seeing all timelines. Dirk claims he’s overcome the same problem and offers to help her but ends up controlling her and revealing he is the one actually writing this narrative.  There is a bit where the narration starts addressing the reader directly and then turns orange which I admit is genuinely cool and might have been interesting if done with characters I didn’t actually care about.

Dirk amps up controlling the narrative, directly forcing people to do and think certain things. (For example, he sequesters Rose away in his workshop and tells Kanaya via narration she believes Rose is better off with him, and she uncomfortably agrees without understanding why she thinks that.) He supports Jane’s bid for the presidency, even though she wants to crack down on trolls because they are naturally violent and reproduce too fast. Everyone tries to get Jake’s endorsement because he’s popular, which includes Jane attempting to seduce him in a very uncomfortable scene.Then Jade slips into a nice coma, because it’s not Homestuck without Jade losing her agency, and alt!Calliope starts using her as an avatar to take control of the narrative away from Dirk. They have some back and forth arguments before he is pushed out which, again, is genuinely clever but would be more enjoyable without all the edgy bullshit. Dirk eventually tricks alt!Callie and sedates Jade, taking back control of the story. Jane wins the presidency. Also at some point Meat!Roxy and Callie ID as nonbinary and start using they/them, and narrator!Dirk freaks out about it and misgenders them a lot, which is character assassination bc everyone knows Dirk is a trans icon. Anyway. Dave and Karkat have an awkward talk about their relationship where they keep dancing around things and Dirk tries to force Dave to kiss him. Dave gets frustrated because he’s aware someone is trying to make him do something (like with the Aimless Renegade), and eventually yells at Dirk to get out of his head before kissing Karkat. Terezi brings John back to Earth, and he begins to fade, since apparently LE’s tooth was poisoned with something more powerful than god tier that makes you irrelevant. Possibly a meta commentary on the hero or story not being needed once the big bad is gone. Terezi is sad about this and listens to him bleed while she smells him die. Then Dirk contacts her via narration and implies he can help her. She gets a text (later revealed to be Vriska). Dirk gets a spaceship from Jake after forcing him via narration to grovel about how much he loves him and then rejecting him and flying away with Rose and Terezi in tow. Jade wakes up long enough to tell everyone Dirk’s gone bad before she gets repossessed and starts pointing in his direction, prompting everyone to give chase. 

There is a final scene that will make more sense later, so I’ll add it later.

CANDY

John decides not to go fight LE. Roxy is delighted, and they began dating. Calliope tells John it is time to let Gamzee out of the fridge. Gamzee pops out and claims he is redeemed in a long speech making fun of sloppy redemption arcs. He then proceeds to be terrible for the rest of the story.Candy essentially satirizes Harry Potter epilogue style fics. Jane marries Jake (it’s implied she essentially roofies him with the trickster lollipop) and has Gamzee on the side. They have a son named Tavros. John and Roxy have a son named Harry. Rose and Kanaya adopt a troll clone of Vriska and name her Vriska. Jade, Karkat, and Dave are all dating, but Dave and Karkat are miserable. Dirk kills himself when he realizes the timeline went off kilter. Jade’s corpse from the Meat timeline crashes to earth, and in the middle of the funeral (which was genuinely a good scene) she sits up, possessed by alt!Calliope. Alt!Callie sequesters herself on the old meteor, now landed, and explains to Aradia and Sollux that this timeline is a dead end and she is protecting it from the influence of the prince. She also, in a parallel to Dirk’s reveal in Meat, talks about how every narrator has an agenda even if the text is formatted to make you not realize that.Jane becomes a fascist dictator and begins oppressing trolls. Karkat eventually get sick of being in a trio and runs off to be a resistance leader, including getting a sick eye patch (reference to Summer Teen Romance). Meenah stole the Ring of Life from Meat John and lands in the session; she and Karkat begin dating. Other ghosts begin falling from the sky as well, and Gamzee converts them to his redemption religion.John feels like something is really off.  His only solace is texting Terezi a lot, and he seems closer to her than he is to his wife. He and Roxy break up for a while and then (non-romantically) reconcile. Jake eventually leaves Jane and takes Tavros with him. Jade and Dave become rebels as well, then Dave meets a hologram of Obama, who helps him attain his ultimate self, putting his soul in a new robot body. 

Oh, also Vriska falls out of the sky, has hatesex with Gamzee, kills him, and then talks with Rose and Kanaya’s Vriska about how she loves Terezi. Then she texts her, as seen in the Meat timeline. Isn’t Vriska 13 and Gamzee an adult at this point? Probably. There’s a lot of questionable age stuff in this.

I’m sure I missed some details. Can you tell I’m losing steam.

Anyway, the two last chapters of each section reference the other storyline. At the end of Meat, Lord English’s body falls out of the sky, and alt!Callie (still in Jade’s body) devours it, becoming powerful enough to battle Dirk. Candy!Davebot arrives and he and Aradia jump into the black hole in pursuit.At the end of Candy, Dirk’s ship nears a new planet where he intends a new game of SBURB to be played. Rose is in a robot body serving as his handmaid essentially, and Terezi’s also on board.  

TAKEAWAYS:

There are a lot of different interpretations of the epilogue. A mockery of the two extremes of fanfic. Andrew Hussie continuing the theme of ‘all authors are tyrants by nature’ and using his self-insert to display how he hates his own story but also can’t stop telling it. Dirk trying to create conflict by making himself a villain because otherwise they’ll lose relevance and disappear. Musing on how being arbitrarily labeled 'grown up’ when you’re not ready (aka handed godhood by a game that doesn’t understand people) can fuck you up, and there is no single winning screen in life. Just a big old meta experiment on unreliable narrators. I can see where some of this is coming from, but frankly, I found it disturbingly sexist (even if it is intended to be so for effect). A lot of the sex and violence felt over the top and graphic just to be #ow the edge rather than serving any narrative purpose. Also, authors can do what they want with their texts, and they’re allowed to write tragedies, but after Hussie’s self-insert informs Caliborn that the most important stories are about friendship and teamwork and the fandom (that I’ve seen anyway) really responding to the bonds between characters, it felt cruel. That’s my feeling. Not everyone shares it. But hey, I’ve got my solution.

[theorynexus]

Fudge, I already did 57/ Now I have to do 58/ 13 over 12, man / I guess we’re doing human stuff instead of trolling, today.

Coincidentally via some sort of textual wonder possibly related to authorial intent and/or miracles, we now have to focus on Roxy, now. Somewhat ironic, considering Terezi just said she and John wouldn’t work out. ...

***shift eyes, something about knowing the unknowable and the vagueries thereof, possible interference by the new Narrator, et cetera*** Hmmm~

What, so black holes cause suck up all the voidiness into themselves via proximity?!   Noooo~      Who’d have thought!     (In all seriousness, that gives some interesting resonance mechanic relation, here. I want to know whether it’s just Alt!Calliope that can sense said thoughts, if it’s just Roxy being over-emotional, or if any other observer would be able to pick such thoughts up and it’s just a mater of proxy-imity.)

Okay, then. I thought the point of this was to look like a completely passive observer and not tip people off other than via the black eyes, but you do you, I guess-- if that’s intentional.  Nice gazing out through the fourth wall, though. I’m sure Jade would be/is vaguely proud, knowing the narrative resonance, here, given her own fourth wall breaking shenanigans. 

I blame time and void interactions. Also Dave being an insufferable prick. Good to know, regarding Roxy and their feelings toward Dave, though.

Is Dirk going to literally shoot him in the arse?   That would be horribly ironic, and probably quite crippling to Joke Jake’s reputation and/or the power of his endorsement, if so.   Semi-related:   I do sortof understand Dave’s belief/concern with regards to the importance of this event.    What I want to know is why there are not thousands of Daves running around, all helping the campaign and being available to deal with other important tasks.

“Iced” cream is the best fricking thing, Dirk, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.

This really reminds me of Equius and Nepeta, and that is sortof cute. I almost can’t stand it.  Honestly, this relationship is actually quite similar, except Alt!Calliope is much more dominant in the relationship than Nepeta was. Also Dirk probably has more potential to damage things than Equius did (other than way out of the temporal frame of that moirallegiance, as part of Lord English--- and even then, Nepeta ironically acted as a counter to his muscle-bound rage, albeit way after much of the damage had already been done [thanks, Davesprite {albeit, unrelated to the matter at hand, this relationship was probably why Davepettasprite^2 was destined in such a way to handle Lord English, in addition to the prophesies surrounding Dave dealing with him, Davesprite being the first one to get Caledfwlch, and the flying off into the sun prophesy (which was aided greatly by Seppucrow, the true hero of the story)}]).    I guess that makes this relationship relatively more important, maybe.

So fricking wonderful and adorable.   I do wonder why there are not that many consorts, though. Maybe they are just too distracted and hyperactive to have much in the way of drive to participate in politics.  The humans I sortof vaguely understand, albeit I’d have thought that more might show up specifically for Jake’s speech, assuming that it was announced beforehand.

Dirk feels predictably antagonized, and is lashing out. I have a feeling that he’d intended to do something major before all this control was taken from him, but this will probably make it worse. Hmm.

Heh.   I don’t think that he means to “pump her full of daylight,” at the moment, so this is still funny instead of terrifying.

Huh. Dave already knew about Calliope’s gender and is chill with it. Neat.

Oh. Umm... while I’m sure that he does not need that in order to target Jade’s body if he intends to do so, that is quite foreboding. He is indeed quite capable of tricking people into doing things, at times, isn’t he?

HAH!   That is horrible, you self-obsessed weirdo! XD

More serious than being mind controlled by a space witch with bad intentions who has mind powers stolen from all the major players of her species, huh?  (I seriously still wonder how the fight against her went so relatively-seemingly easily, and what happened with her curse.  Maybe it only transfers in LE’s proximity, or something. )      ... Also, it wasn’t entirely just a joke, Roxy, geeze.

Thaaat’s what happens when your world is under a corrupting influence that is twisting the fabric of reality to their whim.  (The question is: Is this Dirk or Calliope?  Does she really have the right to judge him for his actions, if he really is expressing free will in doing so?   Yes, yes she does, because he is strongly subverting the will of others, and justice in Paradox Space demands some sort of counterbalancing force.  If his excess relevance as the Narrator is the only cost he faces, rather than dying a Just Death, he should feel lucky.)

***peals of cherubic laughter peal out in the background***    Random reminder:  Angels (in Homestuck) are terrifying demons that should be taken as harbringers of the apocalypse. Alt!Calliope has already played this job once along with Lord English. Is her presence outside canon an ill omen by definition?  (I am not sure Calliope the younger entirely counts, given her special circumstances, by the way. Hard to say.)

Beautiful. It’s almost like he’s an open PAGE of Hope, waiting to be written! 

This is a somewhat wise impression.  But it’s complicated, and great power means great responsibility. Especially when the nuclear genie has already been let out of the bottle on account of someone’s great ambition.  (Note: I actually find Jane’s impulse to rule over her creation to be a reasonable one to have, all things considered. I am not judging her negatively for this. I am just not 100% certain that it is the right path to go on before they get a few dozen more years to wise them up, or maybe a few centuries.   Wisdom is a very important thing for leadership, and it comes with age!   Of course, experience also helps, but it might be useful to have some sort of smaller-scale experimentation with politic--  oh, wait, wasn’t she made a mayor at some point, according to the credits?  That really hasn’t been emphasized in the epilogue at all, but probably should be more heavily considered.    It’s still not enough experience for me to feel confident in her, but it’s something. Hmm.)

I mean... I can hear you. I thought your awareness was still there. I guess maybe having your position of control taken away from you might have sapped that as well, maybe.   And yes, it is very interesting, indeed. Now, please put down the gun and try to negotiate more reasonably and in a more civilized fashion than the mistaken cowboy diplomacy idea you’re now engaging in. I will give Dirk some slack insofar as he is still getting used to her identifying as such, but he is sortof making a fool of himself by lashing out at Alt!Callie like that. It’s rather irrational, and doesn’t reflect very well on his character. It makes him out as being rather petulant and inflexible when it comes to identity matters.

Yeeeeep.

This is true (regarding the last part).  It is also really sad to see them fighting like this. >:

Dave, you are being a dummy. You should really stop.

Aww. That is a very cute reaction. :3 Also, that is somewhat dishonest, Alt!Calliope.  You should say “seemingly” nothing.  ***harrumphs and wags my finger at them!***

It is somewhat rude of him to laugh, but I am almost tempted to laugh too, specifically at the fact that this is Alt!Calliope confirming emphatically the beauty of their other version in Roxy’s eyes. It has a sort of ironic tension and silliness to it. Possibly some pride.        I therefore cannot entirely blame him for his laughter, for I do not know whether that is what he is laughing at, or if he’s laughing at the idea of finding an alien skull monster beautiful (which she really is).

It is sortof nice to see this encouragement from Dirk, albeit it is probably laced with irony and sarcasm.  Knowing one’s self and admitting/accepting the things one feels is incredibly important to a person’s health! It feels brotherly of him.

I wonder if Roxy actually feels that way (that it is none of her business), or if it’s Alt!Calliope’s somewhat cold (and sarcastically-directed) interpretation of things. Hmm.

A very important question to ask for someone who is dealing with their own identity issues and/or worries about their friends judging them for them. This is really all there is to say on the matter.

That is a complicated question.  The answer is this:  Identity is only partially self-deterministic.  You can certainly struggle and hope and wish for certain things, indulge in certain behaviors, and see what rubs off on you, or what you feel right about, but in all honesty, you are who you are.    This CAN change over time, and that is something that most people don’t think about. To say you “change your mind” about “the person you wanna be” is not an accurate statement: you don’t necessarily choose anything at all, other than whether you want to actually embrace who you are and/or are becoming, and if you will actually tell anyone about it.  In that sense: whether it is too late to change your mind about who you say and outwardly project you are?---  no, it is not too late.  However, it can potentially be pretty fricking confusing to people, and some friends may not be able to handle it, especially if they have pretty deeply imbedded themselves in your own journey/identity, and/or anchored themselves in it as part of their own.   This can cause them to be pretty put off, and potentially to have difficulty maintaining their relationship with you. As such, in summary:   one should be careful and always very much self-reflective about identity issues.  The choice to come out with any sort of change or difference is not an easy one, and someone should not be blamed for either side they fall upon--- whether they want to keep who they are a secret and/or for how long, or if they want to project it to the world (unless they are really violent about it and/or attempt to shame someone/force themselves upon another person as a “necessary” thing to do for their own growth/impulses or whathaveyou: that is just abusive and wrong).

No. While there is some degree of social capital involved and thus you should attempt to time things properly and take the needs of others into account (which means you have no right to get upset at them if they don’t react a certain way and/or are too involved with whatever is going on in their life right then to grapple with your assuredly stunning revelation), one does not owe their friends any sort of bombshell moment, and any sort of desire for one and/or push on someone else’s part for identity-related drama and/or revelation is actually what is greedy.

***shrug***     I guess it’s funny insofar as it has psychological humor wrapped into it and it makes the phraseology more cutesy (thus more approachable, I guess), but it’s not mind-blowing or anything.

And that’s okay. Someone can be casual about these things and not make it a federal fricking issue if they don’t want to.  It’s also okay to have repeated revelations and/or constantly wrestle with who you actually are. It’s not something to be embarrassed about or paranoid with in a social respect, especially in a world with numerous different species of alien humanoids that have different and somewhat conflicting types of identities and drives.  Almost indisputably, that should make identity issues less of a socially big deal.

Yes. Just like you helped him before.   Oh wait, what was that? You had years to figure it out, but did nothing?    Ah, well. Couldn’t be helped, I guess.   Brothers do have their own separate matters to consider, after all.

***snickers***      Honestly, he’s probably right, but for different reasons than he’s expressing.    

***cough time travel, cough***       Note:  I actually don’t want to read that. It would feel like a really awkward sort of waste of narrative time.  I’m just annoyed at the very ironic lack of time manipulation he’s been doing. Though in this case it sortof does suit him, insofar as he is using time concerns that he obviously could get around as if they were a suit of armor and/or armaments for him to verbally exploit.  Very knight-y. Aaand this feels like about the right time to end this post.