#Don’t you love it when you create a character and then after analyzing your own writing

[lieutenant-amuel]

Today is my… ahem Emilio’s birthday!

Happy birthday, Señor Writer <3

He’s “good” now so he deserves to have a kind-looking version of his picrew (and I gave him a pocket watch because he does have a pocket watch. With the portrait of his family inside)

[dotthings]

Legit reasons why people expected a more satisfying conclusion to spn:

Dean’s long arc telegraphing a movement toward hope. He went from fatalistically believing the only happy ending he could ever get was Sam living a long life while Dean was doomed to die bloody and too soon to believing he could have his own happy ending too with toes in the sand and his closest people there (not just Sam).

Previous experience with spn’s powerful and effective and fuller storytelling

The fact that Dean deserved better than that rebar death at the hand of low budget vampmimes. Dean is the character most short-changed by the ending. People who care are not the ones out of line who don’t comprehend spn.

The fact that Sam deserved better than having every single arc he ever had dropped like a hot potato and all he got was a bad party city wig

The fact that Cas deseved better than to be shut out of the series finale after 12 seasons of being key to all the major mytharc plots and a crucial found family character close to Sam and Dean, especially dear to Dean.

The fact that spn wrote, right into the story, Chuck smirking and pleased about his unsatisfying, miserable, bleak ending while Becky denounced and analyzed why that wouldn’t work narratively and why fans would find it unsatisfying

The found family theme on spn which has been there the entire time and deserved better than to be vanished.

The fact of a global pandemic that screwed up filming of the series finale until all that was left was scraps of the full intention. We’re trying to grade an incomplete. People’s feelings about the finale are valid but otoh, it’s also trying to analyze it is like trying to infer from scraps of parchment what the whole text was about. Personally, I’ve come around to writing it off as an abberation and not forgetting all the good spn gave me along the way. spn deserves a second chance to tell a better ending.

The fact that stories do, in fact, have an obligation to create fulfilling, satisfying endings and people are in their right to object when this obligation fails. This doesn’t mean endings must be free of tragedy or bittersweet notes.

Actually, no, this is not about Sam and Dean and Cas move to the burbs, spec about endings that fall outside of likelihood and spn’s purview and that disregard the actual metaphysical systems the canon always had in place are a distraction. Unfortunately some people weaponized that and used it to start another war, full of their own low media literacy takes and arrogance, shaming others for a legitimate yearning for a more satisfying ending.

This is about spn fulfilling its story promises in a more satisfying way than the aired finale, within the genre and framework spn occupied.

spn was never the style of narrative that was about hopelessness, it was about hope.

It was Campbellian and heroic. spn being about monster hunting doesn’t mean it has no obligations to a fulfilling, satisfying ending that offers some comfort. Stories inspire people.

You can’t have it both ways. When fans keep talking about how spn helps give them hope and inspires them, you don’t turn around and start playing “it’s just fiction so it’s okay if the ending was unsatisfying to most of the fanbase.” You either respect the meaning the story has to people personally or you don’t. Make up your mind if you think the story matters or it doesn’t.

A majority of the fandom was left screwed over, and the people who keep insisting it’s perfect and that anyone who finds it unsatisfying is a Bad Fan keep on demonstrating their disdain for Dean, their ignorance and disregard for spn’s great overall themes, and their narrow-mindedness about spn. I’m not here to be the joy police, I could care less if they enjoyed the series finale, but the actual problem here is the continued aggression, shaming, attempts to stifle all dissent, and demanding universal acceptance of the series finale as “satisfying” via utterly fallacious arguments. They love to troll about it and crave drama because the unhappiness of other lanes pleases this minority who keeps banging on to claim they’re Everyone and all “Normal” fans.

Imagine being that far gone that you think anyone who craves a satisfying ending for a series so many fans are so deeply emotionally attached to after 15 seasons is a freak.

*raises glass* Onward to the future. Here’s to a more satisfying conclusion having its chance to get told in the revival.

[ekkotimesthree]

RE: Homestuck Discourse, Media Literacy, Fandom Entitlement, & The Puppet Theory

an essay by yours truly

content warning: discussions of child abuse, CSA, & child neglect

so many discourses and debates surrounding homestuck boil down to lacking basic media literacy. so instead of making a petulant rant, i’ll attempt writing a productive essay, but forgive me if my annoyance seeps into parts of this post due to the subject matter. let’s start with dave, since he’s one of the most contentious characters (also because he’s my blorbo, sorry not sorry), and move on from there!

i constantly see people say something along the lines of “davekat happening in the retcon timeline makes no sense why would terezi ignore dave and gamzee yada yada yada”, like there’s not a whole scene that explains this! and it’s one of the most plot relevant scenes in the comic!! if you don’t know what the blood scarf even is, your opinion on this irrelevant, since you didn’t read/remember the text. rule number one of media literacy is properly consuming the media.

“dave being abused and the gay stuff came out of nowhere” this is definitively not true. one of the first things we learn about dave is that he has to hide food in his room so he doesn’t starve, and that this is an intentional choice by his brother. oh, and then his brother actually beats the shit out of him on screen, while not letting him abscond, right after we see john and rose strife their parents in a healthy way no less. (take note of bro using cal, and dave trying to abscond from him. more on that later.)

and re: dave’s sexuality, rose immediately points out that dave is probably gay during their first on screen interaction, and it’s her first line of dialogue to him.

TT: In some cultures the persistent refusal of a lady's invitation to play a game with her would be a sign wanton disrespect.

TT: Either that, or flagrant homosexuality.

moving on, later that same day, dave outright admits he loves john:

in these scenes, rose would be considered a mouthpiece! author’s use mouthpieces to get across information to the audience, that the character(s) themsel(ves) don’t know. in this case, that character is dave.

so now let’s address the elephant in the room, you probably thought these messages were just jokes, and that’s okay! that’s for three reasons:

first, your worldviews and perspectives shift the way you perceive the world, and more specifically art in this instance. that’s a fundamental part of the human experience. having your own personal biases based on your life experiences isn’t inherently a bad thing! for example, if you finish my essay, you can learn more about compulsive heterosexuality, or the effects of child abuse, see all of the signs, all without having to deal with it first hand. which is great! that’s the point of art and storytelling.

secondly, you probably still thought dave was straight while reading this narration. that’s because homestuck is written in deep pov, or as you would probably call it, unreliable narration. these are technically two separate things, but i don’t feel like breaking down all of those pedantics. all you need to know is: deep pov is when a character’s worldviews and perspective shift the narrative, rather than a story being told objectively. think junie b jones, the percy jackson series, or uh, catcher in the rye, if you’re into that sort of thing. that means that all the dialogue and narration within homestuck will always have some level of subtext, aka the non-literal explanation for text. homestuck is made by adults for adults, so it’s created on the basis we can analyze the text, and come to our own conclusions, unlike YA and children’s media.

a lot of people assume homestuck is supposed to be YA series, but that’s not the case. homestuck’s themes are about exploring the effects of child abuse and neglect, which you need to be an adult to fully understand. and unlike cinderella, homestuck shows child abuse on screen, and as we’ll discuss later, tackles subject matter about CSA, or child s*x*al *ss*lt. that inherently makes it a 18+ story, no matter the ages of any characters involved. just because most of us read homestuck as kids doesn’t really have any impact on that.

“well there’s no explicitly 18+ content in homestuck!!! they’re all 13!!!!” please take one look at equius’s room, or translate damara’s dialogue, and tell me if you still feel that way. oh, and read the epilogues too. also do you not remember the sheer amount of bloodshed, sex jokes, and cursing shown without a single censor??? even the official homestuck twitter said this:

finally, it’s also worth mentioning the time homestuck was made, because art can’t be removed from it’s historical context. so in 2009, gay representation was still virtually non-existent, especially in children’s and teen media. in the 2000s there was an extremely prevalent trope, “queer people are funny”, where the whole joke is that a character doing something that could be perceived as gay, or transgender, is funny. this problem was especially rampant in media for men. the most infamous example of this is family guy this was s8e18 of family guy, “quagmire’s dad”, where the whole joke is that brian slept with a trans woman, and everyone single joke comes at the expense of the trans woman, who’s relegated to a background role, while the narrative focuses on quagmire and brian’s emotions, the two cis men. so what homestuck is doing is called a deconstruction of this trope! deconstruction is where you break something down to critically analyze the philosophy behind it. we’ll leave a pin in john for now (just you wait), but it’s made extremely clear that dave is struggling with internalized homophobia, thus deconstructing why he makes these jokes in the first place. by the end of homestuck, dave says:

DAVE: but ive had a fuck ton of time on my hands to think about stuff. about stuff ive said and done in the past why i said and did them. a lot of things i once would have insisted were like part of my brand and helped me come across cool and smartassy, but now im not so sure. we used rip on each other all the time for being gay even though we knew we werent which of course is what made it "funny" remember?

with this quote, and the knowledge that dave goes onto date a man, i don’t think anyone is denying the internalized homophobia now, so let’s move onto reading this:

i’m sure all of us are thinking “there’s no heterosexual explanation for this, he doesn’t even like ben stiller!” OR “maybe dave’s just too embarrassed to admit he likes shitty movies? is it really more than that??” either way, that’s because hussie utilitized the rule of three to make you subconsciously notice dave’s obsession with irony! the rule of three is used to set patterns in a story, either to establish a fact, or to subvert the viewer’s expectations. for example, let’s analyze this joke:

notice how terezi’s third response is the funny one?by setting up the pattern, both you and john are expecting her to keep laughing in response, so when terezi flips the script on him, it’s hilarious. that’s called payoff, or in this instance, comedic payoff. now we can compare that to dave’s irony, where it was mentioned three times on one panel. no subversions of expectations here! that’s because hussie wants to establish dave’s obsession with irony, and they did so by creating a pattern you would notice subconsciously. this is how the rule of three works! psychology is cool, right?

so now that we can all agree that the subtext here is related to the irony, we have a new problem: we’ve only gotten dave and rose’s perspectives. we still need one more to complete the rule of three. fuck. thank god i can skip ahead!

using my whimsical ability to read ahead analyze text, i find out what john said to dave, and leave out the unimportant bullshit for everyone’s sake (mostly mine though):

dear dave, happy birthday!!! (…) i got you these. they're totally authentic! they actually touched ben stiller's weird, sort of gaunt face at some point. i'm sure you'll dig them because i know you lolled so hard at that movie. ok so for real, this is sort of a shitty present, but it is an ironic present because i know you wouldn't have it any other way. maybe you can wear them ironically some time. they MIGHT even be more ironic than you and your bro's dumb pointy anime shades.

now we have three characters’ perspectives on dave’s behavior. you’re probably able to put together the pieces i’m putting down, but for those who aren’t getting it: when you compare john’s letter, with dave’s actions, and rose’s messages, you realize that: dave is keeping these glasses because he loves john, not because he likes ben stiller, but he can’t admit that to himself, hence why his narration overcompensates with the usage of irony! it’s worth noting that all of these examples are from dave’s pov, because switching to rose or john’s pov would no longer make them mouthpieces!

“okay but isn’t dave’s perspective not reliable either??” yes! that’s why we’re using his actions as textual evidence, not his statements. the fact dave kept these glasses, and hung up a picture of an actor he doesn’t even like, is the proof he loves john, not him saying outright that he loves him. like i said earlier, this is a comic intended for adults, so characters aren’t going to outright say themes or how they feel. that’s more for peppa pig, hannah montana, and riverdale, you feel me? just like in real life, talk is fucking cheap here.

so now we’re left with a new question: why does dave feel comfortable admitting his love for john to rose, but not john himself? i’m sure the answer is becoming obvious! putting all this together we can gather the following: hussie wants us to know that dave possibly has a crush on john, but definitely loves him.

wait a minute… possibly?!? that’s because we still need textual evidence dave likes men. luckily, like i mentioned earlier, we can skip ahead to the epilogues, where him and karkat get together in the meat timeline, thus proving dave has liked men this whole time. boom! that’s payoff!!!

now we can OFFICIALLY put together that dave had a crush on john. once again, notice how we’re using dave’s actions to prove this, and not just quotes! either way, now we have officially used media analysis to deduce that dave had a childhood crush on john! huzzah! pat yourself on the back my loyal reader.

and for those who still aren’t convinced of dave’s crush on john, this masterpost has way more evidence than i ever could fit in this post.

(trigger warning: csa)

so now with everything we’ve learned about media analysis, i present you with my own analysis: the puppets are a symbolism for abuse, and the sex puppets specifically are an allegory for CSA, or child s*xual ass*ult. symbolism is where you use a certain object to represent ideas or qualities. the best example of this is the iconic green house logo we see throughout the comic. in comparison, an allegory is when a certain object or plot device is used to get a point across, without directly stating the point itself, aka, a hidden meaning. for instance, hussie has said their game “pyscholonials” is an allegory for how they feel about their gender identity!

so now, let’s start finding textual evidence to back up my claims about the puppet allegory, through looking for textual evidence of dave’s symptoms, aka analyzing character psychology:

dave’s anxiety manifests in the way he types. according to healthline “rambling or excessive talking [is a sign of] social anxiety. you fear saying the wrong thing or being judged by others, but you end up talking more (…) in an effort to help make up for your anxiety, and help quiet the worries revolving around what others think of you”. this is basically dave’s whole personality, but more specifically, you can see him doing this around the puppets in this scene, he rambles to himself non stop when returning to his childhood bedroom, and he’s still doing so on the meteor when he can’t find terezi to do “some stuff”. by the end of the comic, dave even acknowledges this himself by saying: “DAVE: yo im hardly one to talk here since i am a goddamn geyser of hilariously self-pulverizing freudian bloopers”. it’s also worth mentioning that, generally speaking, dave also spams his friends a lot until he gets a response, implying he gets anxious when people don’t respond quick enough to him, which is a normal reaction after being neglected as a child. that’s called a trauma response! all of these bullet points are trauma responses that happen to people who had to deal with CSA. in this case, the trauma response would be dave’s anxiety in general, and not him spamming his friends specifically. moving along…

dave’s hypersexuality manifests in a pretty in a pretty straightforward way, hence him constantly making s*xual jokes, and him drawing dicks on stuff on the meteor, much to the annoyance of everyone else. terezi even points this out herself while dave is failing to grieve bro:

TG: im sorry you are so flustered by the mere mention of glittering mythical cryptodick it honestly makes me think youre not ready for the truth

GC: D4V3 YOUR P3RPL3XING 3UPH3MISMS INVOLVING WHAT I PR3SUM3 TO B3 L3WD 4ND VAGU3LY INTRIGUING PORTIONS OF HUMAN 4N4TOMY 1 THINK 4R3 NOT 4S HILARIOUS 4S YOU PROBABLY B3L13V3

his dissociation is also pretty straightforward. he constantly talks about himself in the third person, and treats himself like he’s a character in a story, rather than a person who has wants and needs. for reference, dave immediately pulls meta shenanigans when you meet him, foreshadowing his dissociation. you can tell it’s built up to an already toxic level when we meet him, because on the same day, he has almost no reaction to seeing his own corpse, and immediately disposes of it “for jade’s sake”, rather than his own. and to make matters worse, he immediately “moves on” as if nothing happened. deep pov, remember? he also couldn’t properly process bro’s death. once again, terezi tries to point this out to dave, and he’s still not getting the message. put a pin in this section for now.

near the end of the comic, davepetasprite outright says that davesprite was depressed, regularly talked about how he wanted to off himself, and implies he might of attempted it. this is a grey area since davesprite is technically a separate character, and grieving the death of everyone from his original timeline, but it feels weird to just ignore it. to each their own on this point, but i would assume davepetasprite was referring to dave’s whole life when they talked about him being depressed based on wording, and his terrible childhood, but the s**cidal stuff could go either way. again, the proof here is dave/davesprite’s actions, not davepetasprite’s quote itself.

he displays regressive behavior 24/7 by wearing his shades to avoid eye contact, refusing to participate in common social cues (i.e.: constant dick jokes), and the few times we see him get upset, he shuts down rather than feeling his emotions. not so fun fact, the only time dave cries in all of homestuck is because of onions being cut in front of him. there’s an allegory in this scene, can you find it? (hint: the dragons forced dave into the soup, but he refuses to get out of it) also, in his most emotional scene, he still tries his damndest to not talk about emotional stuff with dirk, and still doesn’t cry when they hug, despite discussing bro’s death, and his thoughts on his own abuse in detail:

the lack of self esteem is pretty apparent. he constantly over compensates at the beginning of the comic, as seen below. he always talks about himself as if he’s a famous important guy, despite that all of his friends know he’s lying, and regularly say it to his face, but he’s still adamant that they’re wrong, or commits to the bit without actually admitting the truth. i wanna note that dave’s humor is always more of a commit to the bit and keep it going sort of thing, for better… or usually worse. not full on sarcasm. this is opposed to rose and john’s teenaged douchebaggery mixed with flagrant sarcasm. also, in the aforementioned scene above, davepetasprite still refers to davesprite as a piece of garbage, showing this is something dave struggles with even while being combined with nepeta. again, we’re using the action of putting himself down, not the quote itself. (also, sorry for the image quality, i’m on mobile)

in the long term, it’s basically impossible for him to form long lasting, fulfilling, and romantic relationships. first, it’s his crush on john, but that’s just kids being kids stuff. there’s also the fact dave and rose had some sort of failed relationship in davesprite’s timeline, due to them not learning they’re siblings. then we see the serious problems arise with terezi, who he dates pre-retcon mostly just cause she’s there, and his weird definitely not gay rivalry with karkat, which leads to her being unfulfilled in their relationship, and starting a kismesistude with gamzee. obviously the jade stuff is a big wooooof (pun NOT intended), both with davesprite, and the candy timeline. ultimately, both times, dave only dates jade because he feels bad for not liking her back, which leads to the relationship falling apart both times. remember the pin in dissociation? that’s what he’s doing here. karkat would be the opposite of jade. dave doesn’t let himself date karkat because dave hates himself, and more specifically, his attraction to men, which i’ll elaborate on later. this is what we call a character foil, aka two characters who have similarities so you can contrast their differences. think naruto and sasuke, or uh, deku and bakugo i guess? how do you do fellow kids? actually yeah! cause jade is green, and karkat is red blooded, which would symbolize how dave sees karkat as the “wrong” choice, while jade is the “right” one. the colors green and red are opposites, but jade and karkat are both of dave’s love interests in the epilogues. see? character foils! symbolism! personally, i refer to this as “star wars logic”, cause the good guys have green lightsabers, and the bad guys have red ones. this is definitely intentional, seeing as homestuck is littered with star wars references, like how HIC is basically just darth vader. meenah is also definitely a reference to darth maul, just look at her double sided weapon, or how they both die before getting to their respective thrones. i could keep going but it’s not really relevant to the discussion.

so right now you might be thinking “well you still didn’t explain how dave got assaulted tho”, and that’s fair. however, i wanna remind you that showing children porn against their will is 100% a form of CSA, same with sex paraphernalia, and especially forcing sex paraphernalia onto them. to do that to a child non-stop, in an environment they can’t escape, would have horrid effects psychologically, and dave displays almost every one of them, as you saw with the textual evidence above. so when dave can’t admit to himself that he he hates bro’s puppets, and more specifically the sex ones, it’s because doing so would force him to admit: a) what bro did to him was wrong & b) that he enjoyed it in some aspect. john even points out how weird bro’s affinity for puppets is weird and definitively not cool, which causes dave to immediately shut him down hardcore (more allegory).

speaking from experience, one of the worst parts of CSA is that you have no clue what’s going on. victims of assault often blame themselves, or feel guilty of what happened, and children lack the ability to tell what’s fully going on in the first place, due to their brains being underdeveloped, thus amplifying the guilt and blame. people often worry so much about the “man tricking kids with candy” because it’s the most pervasive p****ph*le you see in media (god i hate true crime culture), that people forget that 84% of csa happens in the home, 50% of the time it’s someone the child trusts, and 40% of time it’s family members specifically. even if 99% of your experience is terrible, you’ll still find a way to blame yourself for the 1% until you can properly process that you didn’t do anything wrong. this is what’s referred to as the “the myth of the perfect victim”.

i know this is “personal speculation”, but to me, it seems very apparent that dave is gay, and can’t come to terms with it because of his CSA trauma, hence his inability to just admit to himself he has a crush on john. every girl he dates in the main comic is quite literally the ONLY dateable girl in front of him, or usually the only girl in front of him at all, and all three girls have crushes on him/flirt with him WAY before he starts their relationships. and once again, he only dates jade in the epilogues due to his own guilt and dissociation, combined with her doing everything short of forcing herself onto him. compulsive heterosexuality is a major part of homestuck. for instance, hussie has confirmed via author’s notes that rose had a crush on dave when they were kids, and that something happened between them when they never learned they were siblings on davesprite’s timeline, yet hussie has also said that rose is a full on lesbian. that’s comphet, and it’s very intentional!

i also wanna take a moment to acknowledge that dave and rose are 100% nods to luke skywalker and princess leia, who also kiss before finding out they’re related. notice how dave fights with swords, like a lightsaber, and has the same hair as luke. meanwhile, rose’s seer of light powers are basically the same as leia’s force powers, and she uses most of her weapons as blasters, just like leia. i don’t think hussie was trying to be weird or add this stuff in for any unsavory reasons, like some people imply. there’s a reason all of this extremely vague, and not shown on screen. put a pin in that.

so in the same way the katanas in dave’s fridge symbolize bro prioritizing preparing dave for battle over what he actually needs (food and shelter), that’s how the puppets symbolize dave’s CSA. now, if you read dave and rose’s conversation about the sex puppets with that knowledge, it starts to paint the harrowing picture (again, allegory). it’s important to remember that rose had a canonically had a crush on dave at the time during this conversation, so she was probably just negging him the same way she negs her mom. she was upset because she knew that dave liked john, and probably was just gay in general, so he was never going to like her back. she’s definitely projecting her gayness (and love of puppets) onto dave too. again, all of this is definitely comphet lesbian behavior. all that’s to say, i’m not claiming she’s intentionally victim blaming him or anything during this scene. she’s just as much of a child as he is. put a pin in that too! i got sited sources coming, but i can only put so many goddamn words and images in a single post.

so, i see the sentiment shared a lot that hussie just tacked on the abuse stuff at the end, and that the beginning of homestuck “was just a silly comic at the beginning it’s not that deep”. that is an objectively ill informed take, and now you know why! the entirety of homestuck’s themes are exploring the effects of child abuse and neglect, hence the name, home stuck. there’s a reason the protagonist who is able to save everyone, also has a seemingly perfect home life. notably, the only other character who’s a completely well adjusted nice person is nepeta. she’s also the only character who’s able to free roam as she pleases, has a loving lusus, and ironically, is the only character without a home/hive to begin with. once she makes into the game, her land is quite literally her cup of tea as well. these definitely aren’t coincidences. i hope your allegory alarms are going off right now!

the only reason homestuck is sillier in the beginning is solely because it was a fan lead project for the first few acts. back in the day, there were forums dedicated for audience input to decide what happens next in the story. fun fact: this is how a lot the characters names were decided as well! so there’s a reoccurring bit where (insert beta kid) does (something stupid) and then the plot just moves on (i.e. john’s HILARIOUS antics). those were the silly suggestions sent in by the fan community! that was back when the homestuck community was still pretty small, all things considered. this explains the wonky pacing in the first few acts, and the more comedic tone.

moving on, the reason the puppets and the katana fridge are used as symbols, is because yeah, the tone would be way too dark if they played that straight. however, there’s another reason that’s way more important. remember how homestuck is written with a deep pov, aka unreliable narration? (please don’t kill me pedantics police!!!) hussie uses deep pov to display how homestuck chacters see their parents/lusii, in order to convey the themes of the story. stick around a bit longer and i’ll explain the theme of homestuck! just let me explain something real quick, so you get the big picture.

bro is shown in a positive zany light because that’s how dave sees him. to dave, bro is his whacky older brother, and sure he’s a little out there, but ninja battles and puppets are sick as fuck, right? well we as the audience know that’s NOT the case. again, dave is literally starved on screen, and gets the shit beaten out of him, also on screen. this parallels rose’s relationship with her mom, who gives her everything she could ever want and need, but doesn’t fulfill rose’s emotional needs, so rose sees her as a some sort of spiteful cartoon villain. dave even calls this out the second he sees all the wizard stuff rose got from her mom.

meanwhile, you can see rose admit to liking the puppets here, and she says she’s a fan of bro’s pornbot websites as well.

ultimately, they both want what each other has, but aren’t really able to fully grasp why their own parents did what they did, much less each other’s parents, which leads to them both envying the toxic part of each other’s households. i’m sure you’re starting to see the big picture with the puppets now, so to send the point home, remember that image i showed you during dave and bro’s strife? well, bro is attacking dave with a puppet, and dave wants to abscond, but can’t, perfectly paralleling dave’s abuse to a puppet. furthermore, that’s why he’s surrounded by sex puppets specifically, and they’re all throughout his apartment. it’s all symbolism for how dave is trapped in home dealing with CSA.

this is the purpose of allegory, telling you something without directly showing it. i doubt any of us think homestuck would be better if this stuff was depicted literally, for all the obvious reasons. i’ll close out with this dialogue since it shows what i mean better than i ever could myself:

DAVE: why did i get such a raw cut of the asshole deck? and why did it take me so long to figure that out? and like hes dead now so thats that. so all thats left to do is look back and try to put the pieces together of my first 13 years, and all i can think is what the fuck WAS that?!

DAVE: i dont come away with the impression i used to try convincing myself of, that he was like "mysterious" or "stern" or "aloof". the only feeling left is this insane impression that i was raised by somebody who fuckin HATED me, and the whole act of even "raising a child" was some totally fucked up game to him.

DIRK: What… did he do?

DAVE: i dont want to get out the laundry list, but for reference laundry wasnt one of those things. that was just one of the many little domestic things i just had to sort of FIGURE OUT. sorta like i eventually had to learn what the REAL purpose of a refridgerator was from movies.

DIRK: Wait. What???

DAVE: i dunno theres too much to even get into. just- i dont remember the atmosphere ever not being nerve wracking. all havin to sneak around and... ugh my shitty childhood spider senses are tinglin just thinking about it.

DAVE: it was "training" you know?

DAVE: but you know what it really was, it was some vicious shit that was bad and sucked and i hated it

DAVE: it didnt make me stronger

DAVE: it did the opposite

DAVE: it made me never want to fight

DAVE: it made me never want to see blood or be near danger or hear metal sounds

DAVE: it made me hate the idea of being a hero cause he was a hero and he ruined the idea of heroism

(…)

DAVE: i know how it sounds but i am NOT joking and there is NO shred of doubt in my mind that he loved all those puppets more than me

so uh, this essay is already long enough, and you definitely want me to just say the theme by now, so let’s explain the rest of this allegory in optional bullet points that you should definitely still read.

rose liking the puppets is symbolism for how emotionally neglected children often end up subconsciously “wanting” terrible things to them, like abuse or self harm, so they can justify their own unhappiness with their lives, due to them not understanding that their emotional needs aren’t being fufilled. again, the myth of the perfect victim, starting during childhood specifically. rose does this by convincing herself that her mom hates her, rather than seeing that her mom is trying her best to parent, and failing miserably. rose is also unaware of her mother’s alcoholism, which symbolizes how she doesn’t understand that her mother is emotionally neglecting her. this parallels how dave is seemingly caught off guard by dirk’s sexuality, and thus bro’s sexuality, due to dave not processing that his abuse is sexual in nature.

jade’s love of plushies parallels dave’s love, and eventual hatred, for puppets. (once again, notice the red vs green. character foils!) this is because her neglect causes her to become extremely immature. when she’s a kid, this mostly just manifests as her liking children’s toys, and speaking with a childish affectation. however, this immaturity goes unchecked, leading to the epilogues, where she completely ruins dave and karkat’s relationship for her own sexual desires (paraphrasing). you could say the same for her secretly getting rose pregnant in hs^2, knowing kanaya will be upset when she finds out. basically, she has a huge emotional disregard for everyone around her, which stems from her almost complete isolation for most of her childhood. once again, emotional neglect leading to regression, more specifically maturity regression in her case, which makes sense when you remember she grew up raised by an actual dog. and interestingly, dogs have low emotional intelligence compared to other animals. jade herself becomes part dog while going godtier, right as she has to go into further isolation during the three year journey. dogtier symbolism! jadesprite also throws a tantrum when she’s created, right after being combined with a dog. more symbolism!

dirk loving cal is an allegory how he can’t let go of his own self abuse, which becomes extremely literal when he cuts his head off. something something symbolism. this is also foreshadowing his eventual role as the villain of the story once he achieves his ultimate self, and begins thrusting abuse onto others. after going ult, dirk ends up pushing jane into presidency, thus allowing a troll genocide to happen. it’s also worth mentioning jane r*pes jake in the epilogues, and while knowing this, dirk still supports her because he believes “the ends justify the means” during all of this. now he’s officially just as bad as bro at this point. i also wanna point out that this, once again, this makes dirk a huge foil to dave, with both of them helping their respective presidential picks to win the election. i believe this is hinting that dave will eventually be the one to defeat dirk, thus finally not letting his bro have power over him, or anyone else for that matter. remember how dave is a reference to luke skywalker? well the main villain of homestuck^2 is his father figure from another timeline/universe, so at this point, it seems like dave will have to be the one to do the killing blow on dirk, the same way luke did to vader. only time will tell. pun intended bitch. also, dirk’s shade of orange is right in between dave’s, and the yellow bloods, possibly symbolizing how dirk is doomed by the narrative just like sollux, mituna, and the Ψiioniic, combined with his own self abuse.

roxy has seemingly no affinity or hatred for puppets, dolls, or plushes, foreshadowing her failed assassination attempt on the batterwitch, and her short lived alcoholism. however, she does still have a pile of cat and wizard plushes in her room. roxy is probably the third most well adjusted character in all of homestuck, and had a pretty nice childhood all things considered! obviously it wasn’t perfect though, hence the short bout of alcoholism. all that fits into my puppet theory pretty well, implying that roxy made it to the end of her game due to her lack of alcoholism, unlike her alpha self, but just like rose. her shade of pink being the middle ground of dave and rose’s makes sense as well.

on davesprite’s timeline, his sprite prototypes with cal, and one of the birds who never left his apartment, symbolizing how he was unable to escape the trauma of his abuse and homelife. also another easter egg! crows are the smartest bird, and one of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom. this is symbolizing how dave is actually the smartest member of his session, which makes sense due to the sheer amount of math he does for his sylladex, despite bro not bothering with his homeschooling. this is why davesprite’s wings are clipped, to symbolize how his neglect and abuse ultimately made him worse off, rather than “being the air beneath his wings”. actual dave notably fights with a clipped sword, can you guess what that symbolizes? (hint: bro clipped the sword)

john interestingly fits into this as well, due to him receiving a harlequin doll for his birthday, and it later prototyping his kernelsprite. john hates clowns, and is the main character, which interestingly foils gamzee, who loves all things clown, and is relegated to a joke background character. let’s just put another pin in john and gamzee for now! i promise it will pay off.

but most importantly, lord english is the referred to as “the 8ig 8ad” by vriska (not a coincidence! think about spidermom!!!), and lil cal himself is referred to as the “most important character in homestuck”. notably, lord english is also the mind behind lil cal. this symbolizes how abuse is a central theme of homestuck, and the last trial the characters must overcome. that’s why rose stops drinking after the retcon, and why dave starts… doing something with karkat?

so there’s a huge elephant in the room! if we’re discussing davekat, we have to to mention the contentious reveal scene, don’t we? forgive me, but we have to address all the little nuances of this. so uh, remember dave’s anxious speaking habit we’ve established? well he starts blabbering when karkat immediately brings up his old black feelings for john, most likely implying he’s a little jealous/insecure about that. this is pretty normal, cause he’s still teenager at the end of the day. you can see it specifically in these two lines:

DAVE: so are you SURE you still dont have these unreconciled blackrom feelings about john

DAVE: i say we air this out before it ferments into some rank and hella unexamined feeling sauce

see? remember what i said about dave having trauma responses? this is it. he’s just anxious karkat might still like john, thus ruining their relationship, or uh, situationship at the time. he also might be projecting his romantic attraction to john onto karkat as well. then, he rambles a bunch of incoherent bullshit when john asks what his sexuality is. karkat is extremely embarrassed by this part of the conversation, yet he was able to calmly discuss his old crush on john. so this all comes to a head with the following dialogue:

JOHN: did you... like, date any boys?

DAVE: uh

JOHN: but there weren't even that many boys on the meteor? well, there's the clown guy, but i don't really see you and him... that really only leaves... um, were you and karkat... ARE you and karkat, like. hmm.

this makes karkat officially loses it due to embarrassment, but i’ll spare you from that huge wall of text. next dialogue reads:

JOHN: dave, i'm pretty sure we're making karkat uncomfortable now.

DAVE: yeah maybe we should drop this

JOHN: ok.

so lets think. they aren’t dating, but they definitely did something kinda gay. notably, this parallels the “things” dave did with terezi pre-retcon, while still being tastefully vague. the idea that dave did some gay teenager shenanigans actually does make sense for his character arc, because it implies he’s comfortable enough now to try something like that now. though i do wanna emphasize that i’m not try to explicitly say they had sex, i’m just saying dave explored his sexuality. come to the conclusions you’re comfortable with here! hussie goes out of their way to not display or mention characters doing any sex acts while they are minors, and this is the closest we ever get to anything like that. there’s only one instance of making out even happening in homestuck, and it’s just jake making out with his avatar poster. well, unless you wanna count this i guess? considering everything we’ve gone over in this post, this is most definitely intentional.

through john’s retcons, the butterfly effect forces the dave and rose to address their respective childhood traumas, which leads to them being able to beat the game. same with davepetasprite finally giving jade the closure she needed right before she woke up. same with terezi fixing her relationship with vriska. karkat runs for president later, proving he’s got over his leadership trauma as well. that’s how you win sburb. john saving everyone with that retcon shows the central theme of homestuck: you can change at any point, and get through any hard times, as long as you have people in your life to help and support you. the retcon is great because it shows you how a timeline is doomed, so that way you can understand why they won.

EB: well to be honest, i never really believed any of your guys's doom and gloom nonsense. not because i think you are lying... i just feel like there must still be a way to win! (…) also, there is always hope for someone who has good friends to count on!

so when dave and karkat start getting together, and do “stuff” on the meteor, that’s all the tasteful way of saying: dave was able to process things, and become more comfortable with himself. again, this totally could’ve just been making out, come to the conclusions you want. the vagueness is intentional.

notably, vriska, dirk, jake, gamzee, and jane are the only surviving characters to not address their trauma at all by the ending, which leads into their current arcs in homestuck^2 (or lack thereof in gamzee’s case). there’s also one more character, who we’ve carefully left pins in until now….

it’s time to address june egbert. spare the torches and pitchforks please! i’ve done a ridiculous amount of research, and there still doesn’t seem to be a proper explanation for june egbert from either a homestuck fan or a creator behind homestuck, so i’ll bare the cross of this explanation. from here on out, i’ll still say both names interchangeably for pedantic reasons, but that’s solely because this is still in a weird state of schrödinger’s canon, and hs^2 is pretty much it’s own thing in itself. but i’m a trans woman so w/e. once again, spare the pitchforks! please!

the reason why her being trans works is because john/june spent the whole series so focused on saving everyone else, that she never focused on herself, or thought too deeply about anything. that’s kind of her thing, taking everything at face value, and not thinking too deeply about herself (i wonder why… ♾️). this is even pointed out by dave himself during The Davekat Scene™:

DAVE: ok i guess what im saying is… i dont think its all as simple as you think it is, or maybe not like ACTIVELY think it is but continue to assume it is on account of NOT thinkin about it much, due to a lot of junk about the subject that gets shoved into our brains from movies and stuff while we were just dumb kids

JOHN: i,

JOHN: hm.

so you see the set up here right? the character who i was referring to, who still hadn’t processed their childhood? it’s important to realize that june/john has never actually had a character arc herself, because her story is told via the hero’s journey structure, not a typical three act story structure like almost every other character receives in their arcs. ever notice how homestuck is constantly compared to the odyssey or the iliad? that’s why! this all means, june/john is a plot motivated character, rather than a self motivated one, again, like almost the rest of the entire cast. it makes sense for her to have to start self introspection once the game is over, she never really had the chance to while saving everyone else. interestingly, vriska’s arc is told in the format of the hero’s journey as well. dave/davebot’s arc in the epilogues and hs^2 is also told in the format of the hero’s journey. he seems to be in between “woman as the temptress” (aka jade) and the “atonement” stage, which would most definitely be finally seeing karkat again, something hs^2 is still building up to. this makes sense for all three characters, seeing as being a “hero” plays huge parts of all of their respective storylines.

i also wanna bring up the clown stuff again, and more specifically, gamzee. even more specifically, this amazing analysis by @abcq2:

before murderstuck, gamzee has no idea that he is a clown. sure, he anoints his face with greasepaint, rides a unicycle, and juggles, but these are serious religious sacraments to him. and, sure, sometimes he trips on his giant floppy shoes and lands face first in a pie, but that's just being blessed with a miracle, because he was just thinking about pie. and, sure, sometimes his friends say things like "HEY ASSHOLE. CLOWN ASSHOLE. YOU WORSHIP A CLOWN RELIGXON. FOR CLOWNS." to him, but he's too zonked on sopor slime to extract any meaning from it. when gamzee sees the ICP miracles video, he's too sober to dismiss it as a mere coincidence; for once, he gets the joke, and realises that he was the butt of the joke the whole time. he understands that every time he fell face first in a pie, it was the work of an unsen riddler. he grasps that he is, in a cosmic sense, a clown, and hates it. (…) when the murder spree is over, gamzee's beatific grin returns; no longer a look of blank ignorance, but a knowing smirk. he's successfully ruined his character forever - no one wants to see him and no one thinks he's funny. hussie seems to say: jesus you are such a shitty clown. and gamzee's impassive face seems to say: i know. gamzee refuses to clown out of spite, and hussie refuses to remove gamzee from the story out of spite. it's a committed relationship of reciprocal, mutual antagonism. what i'm saying is that hussie and gamzee ar-

once again, all credit for this gamzee analysis goes to @abcq2, please check them out!!!

so i’ll cut straight to the chase, mostly due to me getting close to tumblr’s character limit. the clowns are an allegory/symbol of being transgender. it’s impossible to ignore. remember that game i told you about? psycholonials? if you’ve ever played it, you’d know that clowns and transgenderism are tied up together in one big scene. i won’t spoil the game, it’s really good! check it out! this parallels homestuck, where june has always been associated clowns. not a coincidence. once you fit gamzee into this equation, it’s clear that gamzee’s “clown” dysphoria is a stand in for gender dysphoria. read the analysis above one last time and tell me i’m wrong. hussie themself has only posted themself in clown makeup since 2020, this started exactly half a year before they unofficially came out as non-binary via a homestuck announcement. they also tweeted that they use any pronouns shortly afterwards, on a private (?) twitter account. it’s also worth mentioning that one of the few of photos of hussie that we have, they were in ICP/juggalo stuff just like gamzee, and this photo was taken in october of 2010, mere months after gamzee’s introduction, and possibly a month or less after act 5 act 1 was finished. if you know anything about this image, or tumblr user @dead12234352356456775, please message me! this blog is the earliest place the picture can be tracked to, and i’d love to ask OP if they know anything about this image. hussie has notably referred to themselves “clown gender” as well. it’s unclear to me whether hussie actually likes icp, or if this is one huge coming out ARG, but either way, clowns = trans, got it?

so when john/june have a clown sprite following her around, it’s an allegory for how the trans stuff is literally in her face, but she can’t understand it!

“but there’s no textual evidence of john wanting to be a girl!!” see, we’ve officially waded deep all the way into the murkey grey waters of nuance. so if you don’t know, june is the embodiment of what us trans women refer to as the “pre-egg crack”, aka, the phase before you realize you’re trans. this phrase applies to all trans people, but trans women use/identify with it the most, just cause we usually come out way later, usually around say, 20-23, like john/june is by the end of homestuck! huh, what a coincidence. in all seriousness, this is because most trans women start their transitions when they first live on their own. john/june’s also a computer scientist by hobby, something a lot of trans women do. this is because trans women are one of the smallest minority groups, so we usually have to go resort to online communities to talk to each other. this is also necessary for a lot of us, due to research on hrt not really being as advanced as it should be, and the fact transitioning is still illegal/hard to access in a lot of areas. trans women are also likely to stay inside on our computers cause yknow… dysphoria. plus computer jobs often have decent pay, low barrier to entry, and require little to no interaction with other people in person, making them perfect to both medically and socially transition. sure, june never outright says “i want to wear a dress” or laments about dysphoria, but again, homestuck is by adults for adults. the story shouldn’t have to explain something like this to you. the only reason you had the impression that there’s no evidence of john being trans is because you weren’t educated on the subject matter, but now you are!

“you’re just projecting onto this character!!!” and you are too! again, that’s how everyone engages with art. to think you don’t do the same yourself is foolish. utter poppycock even! however, i really despise this sentiment. the fact i’m a trans woman makes me the most qualified to speak on this subject, not the other way around. who are you to speak on the experiences of trans women? exactly. i’m tired of us trans women being berated for headcanoning characters as trans women, even when it’s extremely obvious why we do as such. it’s always the boils back down to the same bullshit in response: “well actually YOU’RE the transphobic one for saying all trans women look/act the same!!!” *sigh* that is literally the definition of an identity. you sound dumb, and are speaking over actual trans women, whose opinions are infinitely more important than yours when it comes to this subject. this is literally just the “what is a woman” debate repackaged with the guise of liberalism. it’s annoying.

“all this june stuff came out of nowhere!!!” this headcanon became prevalent during the pandemic, where tons of trans people were able to start their transitions! i did this myself, and so did hussie. doesn’t seem so random now, does it?

“hussie is just doing this for woke/fandom points!!!” uh, and what would they be gaining by making john trans? if this was about making money, wouldn’t the merch link on the official website work? hussie makes visual novels now, and has removed themselves from homestuck as much as feasibly possible, while still maintaining their ownership of the IP. not exactly the most lucrative career path. and if you’re implying hussie is adding any element to homestuck simply to please fans (yes, that includes davekat), you obviously know nothing about hussie. go on reddit, read ANY responses to the epilogues, or the plot of homestuck^2, and tell me when you find the tons of people happy with their contents. oh, and see how homestuck fans feel about kankri and cronus while you’re at it. i’ll wait.

“okay but the toblerone stuff is dumb!!!” at no point before the june wish did hussie say that finding a toblerone would give the finder the power to make a canon-altering wish. as you can see here, all of the wishes weren’t even granted, some of which have no impact on canon at all. if hussie wanted to, they were well within their rights to go “yeah no, this is dumb, sorry” when the wish for june egbert was sent in. this means that june egbert already fit into hussie’s idea of canon, and as i’ve already pointed out, june egbert has properly been foreshadowed, so this all adds up. the idea that hussie “turned john transgender because of a toblerone” is an exaggeration of events perpetuated by losers misguided and ill informed fans. hussie has been sent an insurmountable amount of headcanons over the years, and aysha u farah, who has had major involvement for multiple homestuck projects over the years, has said “the only headcanon i've ever seen andrew get excited about is june egbert” on a now defunct podcast called perfectly generic podcast. (forgive me, but any links to the specific episode i’m finding no longer work due to their official website no longer working. i’m not listening to hundreds of hours of an archived podcast for this minuscule of a clip. be my guest if you want to take that on! once again, message me, and i’ll update this section.)

either way, based on everything we know, june egbert is canon because hussie wanted this prior to the toblerone wish, because if the wish contradicted or retconned canon, it wouldn’t have been granted in the first place. simply put, june egbert is canon because it’s want hussie wanted to begin with, and the wish came after that. once again, the sheer amount of foreshadowing here should be more than enough proof, and if you want more even more proof of june egbert foreshadowing, check out this blog post! it’s great!

“well it’s dumbledore logic!!!!!!!!!” is it though? j.k. rowling is a transphobic bigot, who’s works cost money to access, who confirmed dumbledore was gay only after he died, and then she still straight-washed him in future harry potter media. hussie is an actual trans person, running an indie project, who wrote one of the longest literary works in the entire english language, made it all free to access, supports all fan archives, and hasn’t even ended homestuck^2, where john/june is very much alive. and once again, the wishes were to add something to post canon content specifically, without shifting the canon of the main series. homestuck^2 is still updating, and as far as we know now, more projects are on the way, like the completion of hs^2 and hiveswap. these situations have almost nothing in common aside from deriving from twitter. if you’re mad about this, were you mad when jake was confirmed to be brazilian in a youtube livestream comment? or when gamzee’s red crush on tavros was confirmed via a dubiously canon comic? probably not. eh, maybe you were actually, i don’t know you. either way, feel how you wanna feel about jake being brazilian, i don’t care, but you can’t say there was “nothing building up to june egbert” now that you’ve read this essay. the dumbledore comparison is dumb as hell.

“well i’m trans and i don’t feel represented by june!!!” if you’re “feeling unrepresented” by june, it’s probably just because you’re not a trans woman obsessed with computer science. that’s just you not relating to the character. it’s really not much deeper than that. and on that point…

“well i just don’t like this!!!” with all due respect, you seriously need to put thought into why that is. i can’t think of a single non-transphobic to be upset about a character transitioning in a story. and again, homestuck is one of the longest literary works in the entire language, and is completely free to access. in all of homestuck history, not a single product was sold under the guise that “john will be cisgender forever” or “dave will not end up with karkat” or “jake will never be brazilian”. hussie doesn’t owe anyone any part of their story’s canon. it’s their story, full stop, and if you’re mad about that, you’re entitled to something that was never yours to begin with. not all art is made purely for your consumption, and free art is especially not made for your consumption. can you critique it? absolutely. there’s a big difference between criticism and bashing though. if you don’t like any part of homestuck, write a fan fiction, make some fanart, or write an oddly soapboxy essay about your personal fan theories and headcanons. turn that negative energy to make something positive! i’m being serious! hussie themself encourages this!!!

“okay but it’s still lame the davekat stuff happened off screen” i can agree to a certain extent, but dave and karkat’s relationship plays a major part in the epilogues, as well as homestuck^2, and that’s not even unpacking their weird borderline black rom dynamics pre-retcon. to act as though their romance starts and stops during one intermission really downplays how seriously their relationship is taken throughout the homestuck series.

“okay but isn’t a lot of that stuff dubiously canon?” baby, everything is canon. hussie has said so themself. there are infinite possibilities for what could have happened during homestuck, so maybe we should just focus on the fact it’s taken seriously at all? honestly, the line between dubiously canon and actual canon is paper thin. homestuck^2’s entire plot is currently deconstructing what canon even means. if you wanna only see the main series as canon, be my guest, but the accusations of homophobia and queerbaiting over the davekat reveal are a little ridiculous. their relationship plays a major part in all homestuck content for years now. also, big reminder that, with the reveal of june egbert, there’s now only one canonically straight character from the main series, and she’s a villain now, so…

“well you’re just strawmanning me now!!!” my loyal reader, i understand you are a human being with infinite nuances i will never be able to understand, cause quite frankly, i have no clue who you are to begin with. i don’t think everyone who hates davekat or june egbert is some anti-lgbt bigot. i’m just here to set the record straight, and provide context for people who are willing to listen. a lot of this shit is confusing, and there’s misinformation a plenty out there. most people who are participating in this discussion clearly haven’t bothered reading homestuck for years at this point, possibly even a decade. and that’s fair, most of us read it as kids, and probably stopped by the final update, if not sooner. honestly, i think the main issue here is that people are playing the telephone game via fandom discourse. that’s how we went from “hussie supports june egbert” to “hussie made john being transgender canon cause of a candy bar” in the first place. if you’re participating in this discussion, maybe try rereading homestuck before you let your vague memories of reading the comic years ago define your current day opinions? besides, i’m not delusional enough to think any bigots are going to read this post and be convinced, but i’m sure i can open up the minds and eyes of people who are willing to listen! give homestuck a reread, imagine how much more foreshadowing has gone unnoticed over the years!

i feel the need to be so thorough, bust out so many references, break down every bit of nuance, and speak from my own experiences, because inevitably, a small group of people are gonna read this post and still go “it’s not that deep! they’re just puppets! june egbert is a bunch of sjw malarkey!!!”, and to those people, i hope you stop making fandom spaces miserable because you didn’t wanna pay attention in english class. media analysis is a necessary tool, and i’m sorry our education system here in america failed both you and i. (or maybe your a non-american country has english classes as terrible as ours? idk.)

honestly, i think i read like five or six books in throughout of all high school. i failed english my freshman year, and dropped out by my senior year. there’s always room to grow though! look at how i’m able to write this essay now! all you have to do is just watch some video essays that break down your favorite movies, tv shows, books, and more!!! there’s tons of jackasses like me who will lament about their hyperfixations. plus, now you already know what symbolism, the rule of three, and allegories are! before you know it YOU’LL be the one noticing all of the easter eggs in the media you enjoy, just like us the rest of us pretentious media analysis fuckheads.

i’m sure all of us are old enough to remember how exciting it was when rosemary was first confirmed, or when the dirkjake kiss happened, or all the recent stuff with davekat. and guess what, june egbert is going to be that lots of young trans women! after reading all of this, is hating june egbert the hill you’re gonna die on?

you know, hussie practically uses homestuck as their personal diary. i don’t think anyone’s denying that. it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why they want their main character to be trans, or why they wanted dave to end up with karkat. maybe you’re just not willing to understand it? if we’re allowed to project on to these characters, then why won’t you let hussie?

if you got to the bottom of this post, thanks for reading! i might turn this into a video essay if i’m being honest, but if you wanna repost this, or make your own response, please just credit me! also check out my homestuck fanworks if you like this post, i’m sure you’ll like them too!!! i don’t really have anything else to promote so uh…. if you’re on the homestuck^2 team and read this…pleasefortheloveofgodiwouldkilltoworkonanofficialhomestuckprojectidontevencarewhowhenwhenwhereorhowbutillsettleforanytjingpLEdareplelaplwlalsplelallaldle

in all seriousness, thanks for reading! i doubt this post will take off simply due to how long it is. i’d love to hear other people’s thoughts and opinions on this, or possibly make mutuals to yap with even! dear lord i miss having friends to talk about homestuck with. also sorry for the censors, normally i wouldn’t bother with something like that, but i’ve been working on this non-stop for the past few days, so i don’t wanna risk it being taken down.

anyways….. THAT’S why i have the bro strider tag muted 😭

(EDIT ON 9/15/24: added a new source i found and fixed some minor grammatical errors)

[bc-jpeg]

hello i love your art so much, do you perhaps have any tips on character design bc yours are so distinct to me? thank you <3

tysm, anon! I'm glad you like my designs, since you decided to ask me for tips <:D

actually, I don't consider myself very skilled in creating character designs, and I don't really feel like i’m focusing on this in my work, but from the outside view I really like watching this area in my favorite media. I don't know if I can give really working tips, they may not be suitable at all for your creative process and character vision.

here I’ll talk more about creating a design based on an existing image, like minecraft skins, where everything is shown in a very minimalistic way originally and you just have to work from it.

I try to focus as much as possible on the feeling of "is this thing actually suitable for the character or not?", trying to create some kind of composition in the overall design of the character so that everything is in its right place. and that's it, I guess..

I don’t like frequent themed designs that changes every arc/season/smth. in my opinion, yes, it can be beautiful, but it doesn't work at all in my head. some characters TEND to change clothes frequently, sometimes it's literally a character feature that explained by the plot, but it’s not for everyone, I feel. instead, I try to change the original design a little bit for various occasions. especially when you have a base of specific items of clothing, it's a lot of fun to try to keep the same clothes, but changing the shape, details, etc.

I don't like changing the canonical design much, for me it feels wrong by default. but it's still fun to adapt things to your own vision, the main thing is not to get carried away. these frames of the canon makes you think outside the box always, I love it.

logic and practicality are also important to me, simply because that's how I live my life. I’ll obviously choose something practical and comfortable for a daily physical work or a survival games, rather than something fancy. BUT at the same time, I want to do some ordinary practical details fancy still, because it's interesting in the context of practical design.

this doesn’t mean that I’ll assert every detail only on the logic basis, but most often it is so. I like the thinking process itself, how I can adapt a thing so that it works in design both visually and practically and works for the character’s essence.

+ personally, I really like asymmetry in designs, it looks interesting

therefore, I will probably highlight from my entire answer:

— focus on your sense of character, but do not forget about logic and practicality, it’s so useful sometimes.

— try to analyze the character as much as possible so that you can convey many features through their design. shapes and colors are the ultimate basis.

— often look at the design in full picture, so you don’t get some overloaded parts, otherwise the whole design falls apart

[sources with universal advices from professional character designers who have been in their industry for a long time will be useful here, you can find many videos on this topic on youtube]

— references. save as many references as you want, scroll through the pinterest feed at least once a day, there are many unexpected details that can be used to create a character design. artbooks for various media are a very cool thing for this, I dream of a collection of such books.

— if I work on something from scratch, it’s easy to draw a multiple versions of the same design, with some changes, just to see which of them is working the most. also always trying to analyse each of them, “what I like about this version? and what about that?” and etc. after the time you can find a perfect combo of each criteria you like from every versions.

— sometimes also you just have to give it a time, if you doubt some parts of the design.

I tried to think on something more to add here, but for now that’s it-

[lovelettersbyj]

Hunger For Power

Warnings: None.

Pairing: Coriolanus Snow x Fem Reader (?).

Summary: Pearl Whitegrove is a fashion intern, who, after a few meetings with Coriolanus Snow, realizes that if she wants to be Panem's next top Fashion Designer, she has to make sure she's at Coriolanus' side when he inevitably gets into power. It helps that he's devastatingly attractive.

Word Count: 1,814.

A/N: After having watched the new Hunger Games movie, this idea popped into my head and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I wanted to create a character that was sort of the opposite of Tigris? A negative influence for Coriolanus that ultimately turns into a toxic love interest for him. I quickly wrote up this sort of intro to her character, so I hope you all enjoy! Also I should say, I've never read the books and I'm only going off of the movies/making up information. So I apologize if anything is slightly wrong/doesn't match.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“How’s that cousin of yours, Tigris?” Continuing to sew, I glanced up at the blonde haired woman who sat across from me. She was busy stitching some dark turquoise buttons to a white long-sleeved shirt, trying her best to hide from our mentor and boss Fabricia Whatnot.

She looked up at me with a stoic expression, then back down to her secret project. “He’s fine.”

I chuckled, returning my attention to my dress. In a few days, the 10th annual reaping ceremony would take place. I knew Coriolanus because of Tigris, and in the few conversations I’d had with him, I knew how powerful he could be. He was intelligent; speaking always with such an elegant charm that could convince anyone to listen and obey him. He’d choose his words carefully and completely analyze the situation in front of him before speaking. If he played his cards right, I could very well see Coriolanus Snow becoming the new President of Panem. That is, if Dean Casca Highbottom didn’t despise him as much as he did.

The door to Fabricia’s office swung open, her long magenta hair peeking out as she yelled out to us, “I want those designs done before the sun goes down today. Otherwise, neither of you are getting paid. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Madam Whatnot,” Tigris and I both nodded, never once making eye contact with her, and rather, continuing to sew at a faster pace.

Of course someone as incredibly stylish and knowledgeable in the fashion industry as Fabricia Whatnot was also something of a wicked demon. She was incredibly rude to her employees, particularly Tigris & I. Hired under the impression of an apprenticeship, we quickly met a much more grim fate in the form of slave labor. She took advantage of young capitol people with a hunger for fashion, tempting us with the idea of being able to one day create our own designs for the capitol students, citizens, and even Hunger Games tributes to dawn our clothing. So in the meantime, we worked long hours, had little rest, and even more little pay.

Hours had passed, and Tigris and I miraculously finished the designs Whatnot had asked for. With a wave of her bony hand, she dismissed us, and sliding on our coats we exited her office and made our way out of the office. Upon opening the large glass door to the front of the building, a somewhat scrawny, curly haired blonde man stood waiting with his back turned to us.

“Coryo,” Tigris spoke, and he turned, his eyes lighting up and a smile decorating his face, “What are you doing here?”

He walked over, taking her hand to help her down the last step, “Grandma’am told me you hadn’t come home yet, so I figured I’d come down to wait for you to finish work. I don’t want you walking home alone so late.”

I slipped my hands into my olive green coat, tilting my head slightly towards him. He had a slightly boyish look, with an air of innocence about him. But all the whispers about him were true, he was much more handsome up close.

“Coriolanus,” I smiled, “I was wondering when I’d see you again.”

His attention now switched over to me, a gleam in his eyes highlighting the striking pale blue color, “Pearl Whitegrove. It’s certainly been too long.” With a hand extended, I reached my palm out, placing my fingers carefully over his. Lifting his hand, his lips brushed over my knuckles ever so softly in a formal greeting. How warm his lips were, I thought.

“I hear you’re first in line for the Plinth Prize. You must be ecstatic. Finally, the Snow name is making a comeback.”

His lip curled up in a curt smirk, “Well, yes, I’ve studied hard and hope to be congratulated for my efforts. But all I want is to provide for my family.”

“Right,” I chuckled, glancing over to Tigris whose face slowly became more worried as she tucked herself behind Coriolanus’ back, “The fame and fast track into University would just be a bonus, huh?” 

Silence. Just as I thought.

“Well, Coriolanus, I wish you the best of luck. If there’s one thing I know, is that you’ll find a way to succeed one way or another. You’ve got this… hunger in you. It drives you. I think ultimately it’ll guide you to what you want—” Tigris’ hand wrapped around Coriolanus’ arm in attempts to pull him away, “—If you allow it to take over.”

He looked down at her, placing a hand over hers before looking back to me, “Thank you, Pearl. Let’s hope you’re right.”

They turned away, walking towards the main road. Shortly after crossing, a familiar black car pulled up, with a man dressed in a charcoal colored tailcoat stepped out, extending a hand towards the open door for me.

“Yes, Coryo. Let’s.”

————————

10th Annual Reaping Ceremony

It seems as if a few days went by in a matter of seconds, and before I knew it, the Reaping Ceremony had arrived. In a strange change of heart, Fabricia Whatnot had excused everyone from coming into work that day and instead encouraged us to attend the ceremony.

I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my last conversation with Coriolanus Snow. The way his blue eyes shimmered under the dim lights of the street lamps. How thin his frame was, hiding underneath his slightly oversized Academy uniform. His hair was so blonde and curly, a single strand hanging delicately just across his forehead. Every bit of my brain was obsessed with him, and I made it my mission to get him to feel the same.

Taking in a deep breath, I dusted off my golden yellow dress, grabbed my black coat and made my way out the door.

Entering the Academy building I was greeted with a sea of red and blue, students shuffling about the main floor as they met up with friends; greeted teachers. I glanced around in search of a familiar face, when I suddenly felt a hand land cautiously on my shoulder. Turning around, I was greeted with the same pair of eyes that hadn’t left my mind for days.

“Pearl,” His deep voice spoke, “What a surprise.”

Any sort of control I had to stop the smile from forming on my face completely failed me, “Coriolanus, hi.” Be cool. “I see Tigris’ secret project turned out well.”

Coryo furrowed his eyebrows, and I pointed to his shirt. He let out a small laugh, running a hand  across his chest, “Oh yes. It came out quite well. I had her make a few modifications—”

“I know, she would always work on it when Whatnot wasn’t around. I figured it was for today.”

His cheeks flushed slightly, embarrassed at the fact that his cousin was scrambling to help him look his best. “So why are you here and not at work?”

We both turned, slowly walking up the staircase towards the ballroom, “Fabricia told us all not to come in and to attend today’s ceremony. She wouldn’t tell us why— I figured Tigris would be here?”

Coriolanus just shook his head, his face blank with confusion. Before he could respond, a short girl with long black hair seemingly appeared out of nowhere, slipping her arm to loop with Snow’s. “Coriolanus! It’s about time the prodigy student showed up.”

Her eyes met with mine, slightly narrowing as she analyzed everything about me. I cocked my eyebrow at her, unwaveringly unbothered by her. Except for the fact that she was about to steal Coriolanus away from me.

“I’m sorry— I’ll find you afterwards?” Snow looked directly at me, an apologetic tone in his voice. Glancing over to the strange girl, I nodded, looking back up at him with a soft smile.

I found my way to an open seat just across from the 24 chairs that had been placed for the graduating honors Academy students. I watched as Snow sat down in the first row, looking around the room before eventually finding me. He smiled as I gave him a small wave, which he returned gladly. A faint sensation of butterflies began to arouse deep in my stomach at the acknowledgement. Damn it. The ceremony began shortly after, with Dr. Volumina Gaul seemingly having crawled her way out of her laboratory and in front of the podium to give an opening speech, before introducing Dean Highbottom. He stood amongst the sea of red dressed Academy students, speaking cryptically about the Plinth Prize and the Reaping Ceremony. Upon reaching the front of the podium he revealed the sudden change; the 24 honor students were to compete as mentors for the tributes as a last attempt to prove their worthiness of the Plinth Prize money. 

Gasps echoed throughout the room; mutters of protest and shock as everyone began to look around in desperation. My eyes were glued to Coriolanus’ face, whose jaw gaped ever so slightly in disbelief before looking up at me. I remained still; I didn’t know how to react.

Suddenly two large screens on the wall in front of the students clicked on, playing live footage of the Reaping ceremony. Boys and girls from each District appeared on screen as Highbottom read aloud the names of the tributes, and the student assigned to them. One by one, the tributes were handed out like livestock. I held my breath, terrified to hear Snow’s name, but it almost never came. Not until Highbottom arrived at District 12, assigning him to a girl by the name of Lucy Gray Baird.

My eyes narrowed at the screen as I watched her, analyzing the messily sewn, colorful dress that dawned her tiny figure. She had a natural beauty, but was covered in dirt and poorly applied makeup. She got into an altercation with the man who had just read out her name, which landed her a blow to the face, making her collapse to the floor of the stage she was on.

I whipped my head as the sound of a chair scraping against the floor alerted my senses, seeing now how captivated Coriolanus Snow was to the scene unfolding on the screen before him. Why was he so worried about her?

Anger was now the only emotion raging through me, or perhaps jealousy? Whatever it was, it was interrupted when a soft voice began to sing, echoing throughout the entire room. Everyone’s attention was back onto the screen, watching in a stark silence how Lucy Gray slowly stood back up as she sang some song. Additional voices from various District 12 members rang through before she screamed at the camera, extending her arms and taking a bow.

She is nothing but trouble. I looked back over at Coriolanus, but he didn’t return the glance. She can ruin everything.

[jenosfairygirl]

Zauns finest: arcane character playlists pt. 1

authors note: the playlist i created for them are based on what i think THEY would listen to. going based off the soundtrack, analyzing the info we know about zaun- , jinx, vi, and especially ekko have lots rap & hip-hop, <33 there is no taylor swift/taylor type bc i genuinely feel like they wouldn’t listen to that! Caitlyn, Jayce, Mel, Sevika, & Viktor will be released sometime soon (after my finals tbh) enjoy <3

powder/jinx

i think her music taste is very much all over the place with lots of rap elements as well as alternative, rock and a little dubstep. i can see her mumble rapping the lyrics to feel good inc. by gorillaz, while washing and braiding her hair especially the lyrics“don’t stop, get it get it- peep how your captain’s in it, steady watch me navigate, ha ha ha ha ha.” she definitely air guitars when her own song comes on, saw a hc that she was a rock star in zaun and now i can't unsee it-

vi

i think vi's music taste would represent her emotions and her socioeconomical status coming from zaun. her looks later in season 2 (sexy pit fighter era) was inspired by the punk movement, which leads me to think she'd be listening to tons of rock, and hip-hop. personally I think she would love chop suey by System of a Down, i can see her working out, assaulting the punching bag with all her force, grinning with her toothy smile "wake up! grab a brush and put a little makeup! hide the scars to fade awake the shake up!" she definitely does some goku warm up shit while she be working out.

ekko

my favorite magical black boy! considering that JID rapped his ass off in enemy, i truthfully believe he was yapping jinx's ears off about the drake and kendrick beef. he would probably listen to "still in the paint" by Denzel curry while practicing on his hoverboard attempting to impress jinx. ripping on his board, flying near the tops of zaun's buildings screaming at the top of his lungs "you don't want no problems, watch a movie for some drama! imma call my mama to say fuck you and your mama ho!" definitely shakes his dreads when he's being hyped up by everyone especially jinx.

[louisjude]

Honestly -

Most of these ‘fans’ do not like Buck for Buck. They have created a version of him in canon and anything he does that doesn’t fit it it’s OOC for them, even if it is exactly how he’d act (case in point: The BT scene on 710). They, somehow, cannot accept Buck has changed and matured and is not the same guy he was during S2/S3. Hell, he’s grown alone during S7 alone. Discovering a part of himself has done wonders for him.

Likewise, I truly believe the only representation they care about or want is if it comes in the form of Buddie. They cry on how Henren is being ignored and how it is BuckTommy’s fault, but when have they ever shown care or interest for them beforehand? They use them as part of their argument without giving them proper attention. They don’t care we now have great mlm representation on screen in a show like 911, they’re just mad because it is not Buddie.

And I do suspect they became this mad this fast because they do see the potential of BT and they know this can very well be a LTR for Buck. Ofc we don’t know what will happen, but if we look at it from a neutral POV, we all can see the seeds being planted for Tommy to be there for a while. They’ve made creative choices with him that they haven’t made with no other LI that really sells it for me, to be honest.

(Including giving them a particular sound for everytime they have a moment, but I digress)

I do agree with you - I care about Buck being happy. I was quick to get on board with BT because I have never seen Buck act so giddy and into someone. And so far, I think Tommy is matching him really well. We’ll see what happens in Season 8, but I would be surprised if they break up during it, even more so if it is ep 3/4, which arguably will be right after the start of the season (assuming they go for a multi eps opener)

If I'm being honest, the toxic side of that part of the fandom feels very reminiscent of certain subset of another fandom I'm apart of that I do not want to delve into because I've already done so many times.

get ready for a long response

I came into the 911 fandom as bvddie shipper, I still love the ship itself, idc if it ever goes canon because fanfic exists, edits exist, fanart exists. I love eddie and buck as separate characters respectively and I do not need them to be together enjoy their relationship whether it's platonic or romantic.

I think a lot of the loud, toxic shippers cannot separate them. Listen I think the co-parent jokes are hilarious and cute, but when it comes down to it in reality of the show, buck is not chris' parent. he's like an uncle, so many ppl grow up with their parents friends as their "aunts and uncles" and that's exactly how I'm viewing chris and bucks relationship ever since I've come down from the bvddie high of analyzing everything and putting meaning behind every little piece of dialogue or set design or just like anything. I can acknowledge 911 is not a blockbuster franchise that has months or years of thought put into meaning behind set design or clothing choices like other fandoms I'm apart of that absolutely have so much thought and time put into them for things like that.

bvddie in itself is a great concept. absolutely you can read into scenes as being romantic even if they never were intended that way, that's what we do as fans. I completely understand why ppl see them as endgame because they're absolutely allowed to think that. but us bucktommy shippers are allowed to also talk about why we think bucktommy is endgame. I think that's another issue ppl are having is being able to curate their own feed, if you don't want to see people talk about one of these topics then block accs, block tags, keep your peace!

buck and tommy absolutely feel as though they have been written to last from what I've seen so far so tommy leaving so quickly would feel weird and like a punch in the gut to the journey buck as made. he made the effort to be with tommy even after everything went south. tommy made the effort to show up for buck. we are shown them being on very good terms by the season finale, like, we are probably intimate with one another and are in our cute honeymoon phase type of good terms. having them break up so early would be another Ali/Natalia moment and like, I just am tired of the same story being repeated for buck.

If they really were going for bvddie endgame, I think it would have been done this season. tommy wouldn't have been brought in at all or wouldn't have been involved in the plot outside helping rescue bobby and athena. they didn't need kim there, they could have built on eddies catholic guilt for his queer arc, they could have written what people were theorizing with the bachelor party where buck and eddie ended up kissing while drunk which could have spurred their relationship to begin and still have eddie go through a crisis and found a way to have chris still leave for texas (if they wanted to stick with a cheating arc, it could have been marisol & chris walking in on buck and eddie kissing) like there's so many things people theorized that genuinely would have been great ways to have bvddie be endgame but literally none of those things happened and instead we got buck in a stable, happy relationship with tommy that has been set up in a way that absolutely can have them going through all sorts of things from strengthening their relationship to testing their relationship. tommy can absolutely be integrated into the plot as much as karen is if not more. all I can say is why throw away such potential when you already had the other potential there?

also as an eddie diaz defender, they can never make me hate eddie diaz, I just want to see him not feel this constant need to find a new mom/wife when he's never had time for himself EVER. he needs therapy, he needs to build back trust with christopher, he needs to stop searching for this perfect woman because if there's someone out there for him they will find him eventually. I really want eddie to focus on chris and himself and stop worrying so much about what his life should look like per his family/what society thinks his life should look like.

I truly cannot stress enough how much eddie needs to fix himself and his and chris' relationship before jumping into another romance, whether it be buck or anyone else.

on the other hand, buck deserves to be loved ANYWAYS. tommy is already showing potential to just love buck anyways despite anything that happens, that he'll do anything for him, that he can be his rock. gerrard can definitely be smh to shake them up, no couple in this show is safe from anything no matter how in love and happy they are. it's time for buck to have his madney, bathena, henren moments with his own love interest. buck deserves to be happy with tommy, to go through the hard times with him, for someone to love him no matter what and that absolutely does not take away from how important buck and eddie's friendship is. people cannot seem to grasp that unfortunately and it's sad.

in other words, im so tired of people acting like they are superior over ships. I truly am.

[cross-d-a]

you know… now that I’m thinking about it. I think what makes The Acolyte feel so non-canon to me is that it really DOES seem like someone’s rpg or self-insert fic. Which isn’t inherently a bad thing!! Bc so much can be explored and analyzed and you can have SOO much FUN with those things!!! I guess my problem is that at the heart of it, The Acolyte doesn’t feel like it perfectly fits into the Star Wars canon. And this IS supposed to be canon, which is the Problem, for me. If this was a fic I’d have some questions but be mostly satisfied, because it’s just someone playing with the Star Wars canon and emphasizing the parts of it they like. I’d enjoy their take on it, even if I didn’t agree or it felt out of character for canon.

But again. This is Canon, and it doesn’t wholly feel like canon. It feels like someone who’s extremely passionate about Star Wars focused only on the things they cared about, and waved away certain parts of canon to support their own desired story.

Which is an issue because Star Wars is a Shared story. It’s a shared, beautiful universe that SO many people have had their hands in. And when you’re given the chance to dig your hands into it and shape something of your own, you can’t just think of your own wants. You have to think about the needs of the overall GFFA. It’s your responsibility to emulate the heart and soul of the universe that George Lucas created. You have to respect the already established canon and all the creators who have come before you and all the creators who will come after. That’s what creates a good, strong universe where everything informs and supports each other.

Not that the creators of The Acolyte don’t respect other SW creators, I just think they lost sight of the greater GFFA in the excitement of creating a uniquely placed story within an already established timeline.

I think Darth Plagueis’ appearance really brought this home for me, because after the initial shock of OMG ITS HIM!!!! I realized..Oh. So the creators are doing the fanfic kind of thing where you write in the blank holes to explain what happens in pre-established canon, but they’re doing it with an RPG flare. The creators have a very specific story they want to tell. And it’s this very specific storyline that they desperately want to fit into a very limited number of episodes that makes you realize: Oh. The plot is leading the characters instead of the characters pushing and informing the plot. It feels far less organic this way.

Like “Oh, we need to explain Darth Plagueis and how he led to Palpatine so we’re gonna fit some spunky characters in there to play out a very confined and specific storyline where we get to have some fun with things!!” Except it’s hard to have a successful story when you somehow both limit yourself and give yourself TOO much leeway. Because again, you need to respect ALL of established canon even when you don’t like it. And if you don’t like it, write it so it makes sense to you, write it so you can Explain it to yourself. I’ve done that with plenty of characters and canon plots, where I play with canon rules but expand it in a way that I’m satisfied with (I’ve come away from these fics liking characters I absolutely hated before!).

But I digress. I don’t really want to be negative about The Acolyte, because everyone involved with the obviously has a lot of love and passion for Star Wars, and there’s no way I can resent them for that. Because they did create something amazing and did a lot of super cool things and I did, overall, enjoy it (even if it broke my heart). All the actors were brilliant and I adore them. Every single person involved put so much hard work into it and I don’t want them to feel discouraged. And I really don’t want them getting any hate. They don’t deserve that. We saw what happened with Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen and Ahmed Best and I think it would be really fucking awful if that got repeated. No one’s mental health is worth a click-bait video or hate tweet. Absolutely no one.

So it’s with this in mind that I think the creators did their absolute best, but should have gotten more direction so they didn’t lose themselves in the process.

Ultimately, it’s an enjoyable show for me personally. They explore some cool concepts and I lost my mind over Plagueis. I just wish the characters had time to grow and feel Real. I wish the actors got more TIME with their characters, too, because they really put their hearts and souls into it. I wish it hadn’t felt like they were completely focused on explaining how the High Republic declined while Palpatine and the Empire rose to power. There’s ways you can do that in a story that feels like its wholly its own, rather than something borrowed, or feeling like you’re cramming your story into a very narrow space in the timeline hoping it’ll fit. And even though they clearly plan for a second season, I wish we’d had a much longer season, so we could feel more emotionally connected and involved with the characters and storyline. I wanted a story and characters that feel less contrived and more real and whole and like actual living, breathing people. Like a story I’m devastated I cannot change, because it DID actually happen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

I have more specific thoughts about the portrayal of Jedi and Sith and the regular galactic citizen— because the use of perspective and bias and unreliable narration is actually SO incredibly fascinating and skillfully used in this show. Though I don’t necessarily approve of the corrupt Jedi storyline, because NO ONE should be blamed for their own genocide and it very much strays from the fact that the Jedi Order is based in Buddhism and not whatever Western religious (probably traumatized) perspective has informed The Acolyte and parts of the fandom. I’m not a fan of “edgy” takes just for the shock value or angst bc! again! please respect the canon as a whole. And there’s a way to handle the fall of the Jedi that both respects them and admits their faults and also!! Talks about!! How the relationship between the Republic and the Jedi warped through unreasonable obligations! And how the Sith were the downfall of the Jedi!! And how they PLAYED the Jedi!!! That’s what makes Palpatine so terrifying!!!!!!!!! But that’s a whole other post.

But I’ll leave it off here. In the end I hope they get green-lighted for a second season and that they learn from this first one. But I also hope they don’t come away from this discouraged and that ultimately it’s a good experience for them. For my part, I also hope I get to have some more favourite Jedi characters and that I get to spend a little longer time with them :’)

[zsakuva]

Hey Saku! I’ve been following your VA stories for a while now, and Alex’s audios have been such a treat to listen and analyze. Especially seeing everyone’s reactions to each one that comes out 🫢 (WARNING LONG MESSAGE) 

I saw on a post that you said you intended for others to see how the listener is a very flawed person, and clearly has major issues that they haven’t dealt with in a healthy way. But I’ve been seeing comments and there’s still people who really dislike Alex with a passion. I know some people have had situations like this in real life, and it’s a lot more complicated situation. So they may have more insight on this than me. I’m just solely judging the fictional characters here FYI. 

    I understand that he isn’t a perfect character and one thousand percent has some flaws of his own, and needs to apologize for what he has done and said, but even after we find out the listener literally followed Alex when he was with Natalie people still think he’s the major red flag that messed up the relationship? Maybe I’m being a little harsh but if I had a partner like the listener and they did everything they did- I wouldn’t have reacted to it nonchalantly. Maybe I wouldn’t suddenly resort to breaking up, but I would have to reassess the relationship. Yes, communication would’ve helped the situation but it wouldn’t have taken back the actions the listener did. And while both of them have to deal with the consequences of their behavior, I don’t think he deserves the amount of “dislike” he gets 😭

     All that to say a lot of people are villainizing Alex when he really didn’t do anything that jaw dropping except be closed off, hypocritical, and a bit of a gaslighter during arguments, which are not healthy reactions, but can happen when emotions get involved. The audience won’t ever know what the listener said back to him during the conversations so they no doubtably could’ve gaslighted him back🫡 Not a complete Alex defender, I don’t particularly like him (the two should definitely not be together) but I also don’t think he’s as terrible as he’s made out to be sometimes.

(Apologies for the paragraph) I do have a short question on it, 

  When you started fleshing out Alex and the listener as characters did you imagine the audience would see them as they do now?  Or was it a surprise to read the differing opinions and conclusions the crumpets came too?  (thank you again for creating such complex and thought invoking audios) 🫶🏻

When I decided to dive into this particular part of their relationship, I knew there would be discourse but I wasn't expecting it to be so divisive. I love reading everyone's opinions; there are so many factors at play to have them draw whatever conclusion they've settled on.

Some might draw from a personal experience, others solely from Alex, or solely from Gremlin, or a third party looking in. All opinions of Alex and Gremlin are valid, and as a writer who loves breaking down characters, it's amazing to see so many discussions about something I've created.

Of course, I have my own opinions regarding their situation, but I'll keep most of that to myself; I'm in a unique position to be omniscient so I'll observe instead!

[vxsellie]

Need you to analyze talk or de selby pt. 2 😩 those are masterpieces

ok so i already analyzed talk here! so i’ll be doing de selby pt. 2

also i don’t think u guys understand how much it means to me when people send asks like this. to think that ur asking me to do things like this bc u know i love hozier means the literal world to me & i adore u for this, even tho its such a small thing LMAO

anyway here we go

background!

the title 'de selby' comes from a character in the book the third policeman written by flann O'Brien. in this story, de selby is a mad scientist who comes up with all sorts of crazy theories ⎯ among them is his belief that the world is shaped as a sausage & that mirrors hold the secret to eternity.

de selby, however, ends up creating a substance that extracts all oxygen from an airtight enclosure, which consequently disrupts the pattern of time. this leads to de selby intending to destroy the world via his substance (known as DMP) which would rid the atmosphere of all oxygen.

de selby provides us with a rather interesting perspective on the universe and life itself as he claims time is nonexistent & life is made up of brief experiences of static.

hozier uses de selby's characterization to connect the endlessness of darkness (DMP having been referred to as 'dark air') and the relation that to human experience.

"this song reflects on darkness and night falling," said hozier. "it aligned with the thinking of the character of de selby. when you can't see where your hands and the darkness end, they literally become one and the same. part 2 is something of a descent. we are lost together in this moment with no beginning and no end."

music video!

first and foremost, holy shit??? ok ok ok so, when i analyze a hozier song i've obviously already listened to it hundreds of times, but i always sit down and listen to it twice -- once just in the background to get the feel of the beat & a second time where i follow along with the lyrics. after the two listens, i read tons of articles on hozier's statements regarding the track, other peoples takes on the song, research on references he's made, etc.

and then i watch the music video.

first of all, domhnall gleeson?! second, this video is a cinematic masterpiece????? it's the first hozier mv i've watched and i regret only one thing & that's not having watched it sooner.

the video begins with a man awaking on the edge of a cliff with memories of his own grave, recalling being buried alive. he's, understandably, disturbed. though, he only ends up doing it all over again despite his initial distress. and then, at the end of the video, it's revealed that the man had been his own murderer, having killed himself & forced to relive it endlessly as punishment. he gets caught in an endless loop of killing and dying and his only company being his cloned self.

needless to say, my jaw was on the floor the entirety of this mv. anyway, the theme of this falls in perfect unison with hozier's story of the circles of hell.

the actual lyricism analysis u asked for

"what you're given, what you live in, darling, it fines a way to live in you."

this statement, i feel, is rather straightforward despite its (as always) beautiful wording. he's saying that the way you're raised and brought into this world play a part & take a toll on who you are as a human. your past isn't just the home you grew up in, it's the blood in your veins and the rungs of your dna ladder.

"and your heart, love, has such darkness. i feel it in the corners of the room."

here he is implementing de selby's DMP into the narrator already! this is another easy line to process as it is worded to be digestible. however, the mention of his love's heart being compared to a palpable darkness is undeniably related back to de selby.

the entire point of the scientist's character is to show the connection between darkness (his deemed dark air) and humanity's tangibility and perception of life. hozier is doing this, instead using love ⎯ which is arguably the most human form of emotion one can reach ⎯ as the latter.

"after the gloom, i wanna lose me. i wanna fade away with you."

what exactly he's referring to when he said 'the gloom', is unclear. it can be relating to dante's inferno and his travel through hell, or perhaps the music video's character's descent to madness, o even de selby's intent to destroy the world.

however, to me, the lack of clarity given here only adds to the meaning. it's completely possibly i could be missing something, but i frankly find my nescience to be more insightful if anything. because to be unaware of what he's speaking of, yet knowing he's willing to lose himself for it & yearning to be with his lover throughout? yeah. i'm content in my unknowing.

whatever this 'gloom' is, he wants to lose himself in or due to it. and, by either result or his own desire, he wishes to do so alongside his partner.

"if i was any closer, i could be lost. no more than i was, or than i want to be when you fall on me like night, every time."

he's comparing again! for his lover to 'fall on him like night', he's once again personifying the darkness and dehumanizing his partner. well, perhaps dehumanize is a bit intense of working, but yk what i mean. the opposite of personification.

if he got any closer ⎯ which i interpret to mean 'if i straggled any further into the darkness' ⎯ he could be lose. he would be lost. however, this sense of lostness reminds him to the darkness that envelopes him when falling for his lover. because, once again, she's personified to be darkness itself.

"and i want to be so far from sight and mind. i wanna kill the lights."

here, he's saying that he wishes to be the bringer of this darkness. now that he's painted the image of his lover being the lack of light, he wishes to shut them off if only to see her. to feel her.

but then again, maybe he just likes the dark? who knows. he doesn't outright say he wishes to be with her via darkness. he says he wants the lights off & thats that. he's blurring the lines between his human lover and the inanimate darkness that he's willingly bringing. hence de selby wreaking havoc with him DMP.

for him to yearn to be 'so far from sight and mind' gives off an almost sedative feel to it (and no not the song). he's almost delirious in his desperation to be away from human perception. over and over, he repeats those words 'i want' / 'i wanna'. almost concerningly so.

"i wanna run against the world that's turning i'd move so fast that i'd outpace the dawn. i wanna be gone."

here's that 'i wanna' , 'i wanna' , 'i wanna' again. nothing short of pure longing for this nigh animalistic desire to be gone; unfindable.

he depicts his dream to run around the globe so fast that he remains in the darkness forever, the rise of the sun never once catching up to him. in saying this, he suggests that he'd rather be running nonstop than to be seen. to be in the light.

again, who knows if this symbolizes actual light or to be without his lover.

"i wanna run so far, i'd beat the morning. before the dawn has come, i'd block the sun. if you want it done."

the majority of this falls under the same description to that above. well, until you reach that last statement.

'if you want it done'. this suggests that his lover is still in his mind at this point. he still thinks of her and she isn't yet completely erased from his perception. in other words, she's not been completely void by darkness just yet.

okay so, for the rest of this song, i'll be summarizing it up to get the point across bc there are so many lyrics. ofc, if you want a full continuation, just ask and i'll be happy to oblige. but, for now, this will have to do.

in conclusion! this song is about taking that line between humanity and the void de selby concocted and blurring it. hozier thirsts to be embodies by this darkness as it, to him, relates to both his lover and the unattainability of perfecting perception.

de selby is a pertcfect example of this, his characterization quite literally created for this exact interpretation. also, if you ever get the time, i highly advise that you watch the mv to this song. it's so so so good. and the plot twist has me GASPING (tho i already spoiled that in the beginning).

[tadpolesonalgae]

aight, we back and we're goin in tabbatha, brace urself.

(i reread the latest chapters because a full absorption was required)

as someone who adores psychology and analyzing literature as well as having dealt with depression, you really hit the nail on the head with chapters 15 and 16.

it was super healing to read readers experience through the beginning of the chapter, with the sisters comforting each other in a very vulnerable way and then taking that comfort away. i ADORE you as an writer for making that choice, even if it sucks in the moment. i think it really shows how much youve grown as an author and i would so sososososo happily read a published novel by you. your humility regarding angst drives me a lil insane with how visceral of emotions you put your readers through tho 😂

you show SO much expertise imo with how you eased us into chapter 16 and the overall tone by beginning with feyre and rhys. by showing us how devastated she was over this and rhys' reaction being just to care for his mate, not truly caring about readers own wellbeing.

moving into readers pov and showing us just HOW bad her depression has gotten since the accident with azriel. cassian sitting outside of her door, and idk about anyone else but he came off as a little abrasive when he addressed reader? but i digress, it took literal days for her sisters to be able to get through to her and to get reader to open up to them about 💫why💫. and then the sisters curling up in bed how they used to and just holding tight, because like one of the other anons mentioned, that the born fae will NEVER truly understand the archeron sisters. and then you nail that point in AGAIN by having rhys interact alone with reader. her terror and her spiralling thoughts, and his disregard for how SHE truly is? his hasty departure where you can feel him disregard her as a loose cannon that he now has to handle the fallout of and Nesta's rescue. because she of all people know how he is with anyone but those he deems important in the moment :(

(the paragraph detailing what reader would have said to each sister respectively made me BAWL, like end of kingdom of ash kinda bawl, so massive respect for that alone.)

the ending with mor has got to be my favorite representation of her post ACOSF, just because ive always believed sjm wanted the focus of this series to be how massively flawed her characters are (and purposely so). you showed the courtier, the commander, AND the ruler of the hewn city very well in her reaction to readers actions and her newly uncovered involvements with eris. because ultimately mor has every reason to be upset with reader regarding eris, but she took her words too far because of her love for the IC. which is a massive flaw all of them possess, that you show BEAUTIFULLY throughout the series.

i also really love the decisions youve made with creating reader's character in general. it makes sense that she would be pushed to the side for so long, its been years that weve been waiting for nesta and elain to heal and so imagining a world where there are four sisters? Perfection, truly. the angst is 🥰🥰🥰

as a chronic lurker on tumblr, ao3, and wattpad respectively for the past decade. You are one of the few writers ive found that makes me want to reread ACOTAR after finding it a lil disappointing at times compared to sjm's other series (no hate, im just a tog and cc ride or die 😂) so when i felt as emotional and inspired as i did, it only makes sense that you hear just how amazing of a writer you are💖 I hope that this brings you some joy while plotting how to torture your readers next.

Respectfully foaming at the mouth waiting for the next chapter.

-🤠

‘as someone who adores psychology and analyzing literature as well as having dealt with depression, you really hit the nail on the head with chapters 15 and 16.’

Okay, I don’t want to get super personal and kind of blabber and waffle all over the place since we’re literally just starting, but hearing people say that they can relate to reader—whether through her anxiety, how introverted she is, or through the moments when she spirals—it kind of bittersweet? As a writer, I feel rewarded that you’re experiencing a connection of some sort with reader, but at the same time it’s hard knowing that those experiences are real emotions for so many people?

‘it was super healing to read readers experience through the beginning of the chapter, with the sisters comforting each other in a very vulnerable way and then taking that comfort away. i ADORE you as an writer for making that choice, even if it sucks in the moment.’

This is so interesting because I know I was quite stressed about uploading chapter 16 since I was worried the calm at the beginning would be too much of a 180° after the intensity of chapter 15? I thought it might be too slow-paced and that perhaps I should have tried to keep that tension going, but at the same time chapter 15 was written intended to be either the first or second highest tension point?

I’m flattered though that you think it was a good choice to have those sweet moments at the beginning and then to end on the angst? Personally I think that’s just a habit now to keep people engaged? 😅

‘i think it really shows how much youve grown as an author and i would so sososososo happily read a published novel by you.’

Is this payback for the angst of cbmthy? Are you trying to make me cry in return? I think it would be fun to write a book but at the same time very draining? I suppose I don’t have to write it now 😅 maybe if I make it to fifty I can sit down and give writing a go, but I’m not sure how realistic it is for me to consider writing a book at the moment :/

Still, thank you so much for such a high compliment—it kind of blows my mind that you’d be interested in an actual physical book 🧡💛

‘your humility regarding angst drives me a lil insane with how visceral of emotions you put your readers through tho 😂’

I genuinely think it might be a case of some of the stuff that pops up in cbmthy/other fics happens to hit specific emotional soft spots? I still don’t think of cbmthy as being particularly sad—it has angsty parts definitely—but to be fair I know the full story whereas you’re still coming out of one of the lowest parts? I’m sure that makes a difference :)

‘you show SO much expertise imo with how you eased us into chapter 16 and the overall tone by beginning with feyre and rhys. by showing us how devastated she was over this and rhys' reaction being just to care for his mate, not truly caring about readers own wellbeing.’

Oh my gosh please I feel like you’re assigning me way too much credit 😭

Honestly it just felt like it made sense to start with Rhys and Feyre since we haven’t really seen them at all it would be a good way to possibly catch some people off guard!! I also just couldn’t figure out how to start it from reader’s perspective since it felt too ‘noisy’(?)—a lot of the choices are heavily influenced by whether or not I feel I can make a scene work, so if I can’t I have to switch it to a different one!! I wouldn’t say it’s anything near expertise 😭 (but I appreciate it nonetheless)

‘cassian sitting outside of her door, and idk about anyone else but he came off as a little abrasive when he addressed reader?’

I think that’s a mix between me genuinely being a little unsure how to write his character and the circumstances? Cassian knows that reader tried to kill herself, that Nesta has had thoughts like those, and that Nesta cares for reader—that plus it being around the middle of the night I guess it was kind of a shift between him being unsure how to approach her since she might still be spiralling, and not wanting to overwhelm her which is why the talking was so minimal? He’s torn between worrying for Azriel who’s his brother and also reader who’s his mate’s younger sister—I think he might have it the most difficult besides reader if I’m honest in terms of conflicting feelings? It was supposed to be a little weird though, since reader doesn’t know what going on, and isn’t particularly familiar with Cassian? Comparatively with her sisters or Bas, I mean :)

‘and then the sisters curling up in bed how they used to and just holding tight’

This was such an enjoyable scene to write and probably one of my favourites so far 🧡💛 I hope it was as pleasant to read as it was to write

‘by having rhys interact alone with reader. her terror and her spiralling thoughts, and his disregard for how SHE truly is?’

I’m glad that this kind of showed? I don’t want Rhys to appear totally insensitive to reader because I think that would be too ooc for him, but he cares for her because she’s his mate’s sister, not because of her. And he still has to think as High Lord, and even putting Mor’s history with Eris aside, Eris’s a dangerous opponent because of how manipulative he can be, and that paired with reader’s more naive side that’s searching for affection from someone isn’t a promising combination?

Even then though, he’s still lost his own sister, so I feel that impedes his ability to be entirely impartial to reader’s situation, hence the mention at the end of the conversation where he tells reader to rest and that she gave them all a scare.

But yeah, he’s a little cold I suppose to her

‘(the paragraph detailing what reader would have said to each sister respectively made me BAWL, like end of kingdom of ash kinda bawl, so massive respect for that alone.)’

I’m incredibly sorry 😔 KoA level of tears shed? 🫢 I feel awful, I’m so sorry 😭🧡💛 (I did enjoy writing that paragraph and the one after it, so I guess it kind of succeeded in its assigned task 😬😭)

‘because ultimately mor has every reason to be upset with reader regarding eris, but she took her words too far because of her love for the IC.’

This is such a nice take that I hadn’t thought of in these specific terms?

I think the born-fae ones of the IC will naturally have a different kind of bond than the sisters do just due to history and experience, but I hadn’t really considered Mor’s reaction to be one that might be fuelled by love for her family because the scene was written from reader’s perspective?

On a slight side note, I find it so enjoyable to see this different take on Mor’s actions since so far I think most people have been somewhat agitated with Mor’s behaviour (and I kind of agree it wasn’t the best way to go about it) so it’s interesting that you’re speculating over her reasons and actually considering her position? 🧡💛

‘the angst is 🥰🥰🥰’

Thank you very much 🧡💛

A year ago I probably would have been concerned to hear something like this, but I guess with the majority of cbmthy supposing to be angsty, it’s good to know it’s having the desired effect? 🫣🧡💛

‘(no hate, im just a tog and cc ride or die 😂)’

We could have an entire conversation about this because I adore Throne of Glass but have struggled so much with Crescent City (I think the modern setting really throws me off?)

‘so when i felt as emotional and inspired as i did, it only makes sense that you hear just how amazing of a writer you are💖 I hope that this brings you some joy while plotting how to torture your readers next.’

Being completely transparent with you I read through your ask multiple times and took a pause in between each one because I kept getting so overwhelmed (in a good way)

I’m so flattered that you wanted to write in this level of detail about the events of ch. 16 of your own accord??? It blows my mind and I want to say just how much I sincerely appreciate you coming into my asks to chat about this story that was by no means planned or supposed to happen but I’m so glad it did 🫂🧡💛

[liamsyux]

im insane and william is the loml so this an analysis + his relationship with sherlock

a kinda long rant with my opinions on his character and some facts i think that could be true (hc) and some canon facts.

i tried to analyze him because he’s literally the love of my life and mtp is my all ass personality.

william is very smart. and that’s the pure truth. the fact that since he was a kid he was aware of his potential and used it for helping others means how charismatic he is. people tend do say it’s a bad copying mechanism using your own body in order to get things you want, and i don’t think that is totally different when you talk about how william used his intelligence (and not only that) for getting food and a home.

i think that could also count as a toxic way for getting things.

he always prioritized his brother and people before him and that shows how little he considers himself. when he was a kid he saw the world he lived in, he saw the horrible london he was forced to survive in, and decided to make it a better place. not because he wanted to live in a better place but because he wanted people to live in a better place.

he never had a high consideration of himself and never actually cared about himself and i think the only person who helped him live in a ‘normal’ way was his brother louis. but that counts for when they were kids. i think that when he grow older and actually had in mind the ‘perfect plan’ he tried on purpose to stop louis from helping him live an actual good life. all he could think was his plan, because if he did not, then all the qualities he had were wasted.

he was sure he didn’t deserve a free life because since he decided that the only way to change london was using criminality he started to hate himself. he couldn’t stand the thought of a person so awful, such as himself, who killed other people, could actually have a good life.

so, you may think, why did he do that? why did he have to ‘kill’ the people and define his own destiny?

well he did it because he knew that was the only way for a change and that nobody could ever do it.

so it had to be him.

and since his plan was to kill every vile and awful demon that lived in london he also had to kill himself, that because he considered himself the worst demon between all them, the demon who ‘killed them all’.

as i was saying, when william got older he got slowly more detached to his brother and started day after day to live in a world became at this point all dark. and it didn’t matter how the people around him were close to him or were trying to help him. he thought he deserved this and that also because all the people he had around couldn’t understand him.

and that is how sherlock comes around. a man full of mistery himself, a brilliant detective, someone who suddenly caught william attention because william himself noticed that this ‘sherlock’ was different from others. it was like he was similar to him. he canonically says that when he met sherlock for the first time he ‘forgot about his plan’. and that is, for sure, something really important.

him, william james moriarty, who lived in the dark, surrounded with nothing but his criminal mastermind plan, suddenly felt lighter, suddenly forgot about all the pression he had, just because he met him, sherlock holmes; the man who he felt a connection with, that knew was reciprocated.

when they separated he was still kinda upset but cleared his mind and decided to put sherlock as a part of his plan.

little did he know, sherlock was not destined to just be a pawn.

sherlock ended up being literally the person that saved him from the plan he himself created.

william was drowning in the darkness of his plan, he gave up on everything, even his own life, that he thought was ‘not worthy to be lived’. but sherlock didn’t agree. well actually both of his brother did not agree too but sherlock was the only one who ended up actually saving him.

sherlock became the ‘light’ in william’s life and that’s why every distraction from his plan he had was suddenly nullified unless it was sherlock. he was happy sherlock distracted him because he couldn’t stand the weight of carrying everything alone anymore.

i guess he kinda always knew about his really feelings for sherlock, but never accepted them, on the contrary he hated himself even more because he thought that a despicable human being like him should’t be allowed to feel such beautiful things.

but when he wrote the letter to sherlock he let it go. he decided it didn’t matter anymore and since he was destined to die he wanted to let the detective know everything. that because he already give up.

and sherlock, of course, didn’t agree with that.

when sherlock jumped with him, william couldn’t believe it. sherlock was actually falling with him. sherlock embraced death with william. but why? sherlock did not deserve to die, not him.

but maybe wasn’t death what sherlock was embracing with liam. it was a new life. a new life that liam thought that didn’t deserved, but when sherlock hugged him he suddenly watched the world starting to be filled with colors. (he canonically says it).

he was literally light up by a new light, that was sherlock himself. he didn’t think he deserved a new possibility, but if sherlock did, then he wouldn’t waste the choice the detective created for him.

after the final problem it can be said that william started to live again, or, maybe, learned to do it for the first time.

and that, people, all thanks to sherlock.

(sherliam canon)

[mossylittleclown]

Analyzing Mary Sues

The fact that people are specifically so harsh against Mary Sues is ridiculous considering it’s almost always just a case of inexperienced creatives creating for fun.  It’s even crazier that most of the time, they don’t even point out the correct issue.

Some of the more common definitions claim that a Mary Sue is a character that fits many of the following:

- A character that is ridiculously overpowered.

- A character that is written as “extremely beautiful”.

- A character that is highly intelligent.

- A character that is dearly loved by all of the cast.

- A character that is “over-designed”.

- A character that is treated extremely well.

- A character that is an author self-insert.

However, though these are common traits of Mary Sues, this is not actually what a Mary Sue is, nor are these the actual issue, think of it similarly to a “character illness,” these are all symptoms, but the actual issue is simply what’s causing them to show.

Mary Sues come from the writing issue of only having one character.  You may be thinking something along the lines of “but usually Mary Sues are used with other characters.”  And this is, on a more literal level true, but on the figurative level, false.

It’s an issue that, strangely enough, resembles the issue the Bechdel test was trying to tackle.

The Bechdel test resembles the same issue Mary Sues have because the issue is that characters become props instead of characters.  In works that don’t pass the Bechdel test, female characters are nothing more than props, they’re an “object” used to fill the role of a caricature.  The only difference is that what the Bechdel test is testing for is a case of male characters vs. female characters whereas Mary Sue is a case of the Sue character vs. all non-Sue characters (and oftentimes the universe itself).

For a simple Mary Sue test, simply ask, does the work have two characters who have conversations and make actions unrelated to the Sue?  More specifically, is everything in the story just a tool used by the author to make the Mary Sue seem a certain way (E.g. awesome, cute, cool, pitiful, et cetera)?

The problem of Mary Sue-ism is simply that, to an outside perspective, it is like watching the author play with puppets.  You can never more clearly see the hand of the author than when there’s a Mary Sue, because they’re making everything serve the Sue.

If you’ve made an OC in the past that’s a Mary Sue, feel like you don’t know how to not make a Mary Sue, or are afraid of making a Mary Sue, that’s perfectly okay.  Making a Mary Sue is like any mistake, it’s natural to make mistakes and recognizing that one has made a mistake is the first step to getting better.  Having made a Mary Sue character should not make you ashamed or embarrassed, really no mistake in learning how to write that you’re trying to fix or have fixed should (i.m.o.).

Personally, the way I deal with Mary Sues that pop up in my own story is simply to make more Mary Sues in the same story, then make a world separate from them that you love dearly.  After that, switch gears and try to make them fit into the story.  Can they be special?  Yes, as long as there’s an explanation.  Should everyone love them?  If you truly love your world, you probably would want to flesh out the denizens of that world as people, if they’re a beloved hero of one land, chances are they’re not for another.

TL;DR - Mary Sues specifically have the problem of seeing the hand of the author, and their issues of being “too perfect” or “too different” are only the symptoms of the rest of the story strictly being there to serve them;  The symptoms themselves are not the cause.

Sorry if this was too long, this is my first ever post.  Any critique or feedback is greatly appreciated.

[unsociableandtaciturnbarbie]

I have a confession to make (or maybe it’s not a confession because I’m not super subtle about it), I read Jane Austen and her associated works for romance; sue me! This semester I feel as if I’ve been very focused on class dynamics, stylistic choices, and historical accuracy, but somewhere in there I lost the reason why I even picked up Jane Austen in the first place: the love stories. Sitting in class today while listening to myself analyze why it’s socially acceptable for a servant to kiss someone instead of talking about why I think it’s really exciting that they were kissing, I came to this realization that I had completely lost some of the simple joy in Austen while analyzing it. Reading Longbourn has been really fun for me, and while the cool and smart reason would be because of the interesting ways in which different worlds (the world of the rich and the world of the servants) are created and traversed by different characters, the real reason is because I NEED to know if James and Sarah are going to end up together. Reading Longbourn has reminded me that, yes, romance can exist in the bounds of Jane Austen, and it’s okay if I spend most of the book living for the slowburn of James and Sarah because they’re really cute together and I’m always a sucker for a grumpy-sunshine trope.

As such, I decided to create a meme really going back to my roots. It’s based on the sad hamster memes where first someone states something and then the sad hamster is supposed to be your disappointed reaction to it. I decided to create this meme where someone, perhaps a real historical accuracy Jane-ite, is saying that romance can’t exist within the bounds of Jane Austen, and then I’m reacting to it in front of Pemberley because it’s THE place for me in Austen, holding Longbourn because it’s the book that fills my romance-loving soul and reminded me of my Austen roots, Ao3 because it’s the place to really get the mushy gushy romance content for Austen that I want, a tote bag with the hand flex and “you have bewitched me body and soul” quote to represent my favorite movie of all time which gives both the Austen content and mushy romance content (I love the US ending and will die on that hill), and a letter that has the first proposal from Darcy to represent that romance does exist in Austen and it’s legal to like those parts of the book best. Don’t get me wrong, I do love a good analysis, but I think sometimes it’s okay to enjoy a piece of fiction and not tear the romance to shreds for the sake of historical accuracy or making a point about Austen’s motivations which I have definitely been guilty of. 

On that note, I have a confession to make about a discussion we had in class like a month ago and brought up again in class today as a fact that we agreed on, but I actually have disagreed with it this whole time and I need to put it out there. I do not agree that Elizabeth fell in love with Darcy because of his owning Pemberley. I think Elizabeth fell in love with Darcy because of the Darcy he is at Pemberley. When she arrives at Pemberley she makes some comments about how lovely it all is, but she still doesn’t want to see him. She starts to feel a bit more amiable towards him only after the housekeeper tells stories of him, but up until she runs into Darcy, she’s reflecting on how glad she is that he’s not coming back until the following day. It’s easy to attribute her love of him to Pemberley, but it’s more complicated than that. After the visit with Georgiana, we get this quote: “As for Elizabeth, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening more than the last; and the evening, though as it passed it seemed long, was not long enough to determine her feelings towards one in that mansion; and she lay awake two whole hours, endeavouring to make them out”. Her thoughts were not “of” Pemberley, they were “at” Pemberley which I think is a really important distinction because the paragraph would still function with “of Pemberley”, but Austen specifically doesn’t write that here. Also, the rest of the passage goes on to list off his qualities that she’s beginning to fall for and not once does she mention his riches, even in a like, “What a good bonus!” way.

I’m going to plug the musical below here again (it’s really good), so if you start at 1:24:04 and watch to 1:28:13 there’s a song called “That’s Not the Man That I Know” that I think really captures this whole idea. The tone of the song starts very combative, like Lizzie is battling with the idea of the Darcy she knows and that of the Darcy she’s hearing about. She softens a bit for a second where we get the “oh he has a nice house” but she goes right back to the combative tone upon seeing him. If it had truly been the house, she would have completely softened to him the moment she recognized that Pemberley is quite nice. However, the tone doesn’t soften to a real affectionate tone until he’s conversed with her aunt and uncle and invited her to dine with Georgina, real evidence that Darcy at Pemberley really isn’t the man she *thinks* she knows and this to me shows that the real Pemberley effect is that of Darcy at Pemberley, NOT the riches which Pemberley represents.

[frenchkanna1808]

Before i start this Michigan realization post finished in a jopper, jancy, lumax analysis, like i wrote very long paragraphs.

Why is make america great again so popular ? Simple, it’s an obvious het ships who the GA ,who just watch the show casually, doesn't take time to realize the flaws of the relationship. But like, Hardcore minecraft shipper, how do you not see the problem in the relationship of mike and eleven. As a byler i watch multiple times scenes when they are together, do you not do the same? And if you do it are you, not to be insulting, sleeping. A lot of My Little pony call us media illiterate for analyzing the show. But do you even do it; The only proof you peeps need is “Well mike is dating El,so Mileven endgame”. It doesn’t work that way. When a ship is as great as you claim it is you can explain why they are made for one another and why their relationship works. Sometimes, even with ships i dislike/or neutral about the reasoning that two characters are made for one another make me understand the ship better, even if i don’t really like it. I can explain many ships in stranger things and why they can work.

Jancy: Nancy and Jonathan met trough the disappearance of a loved one. The y worked together to find them back. Then they realizing that they have more in common than they thought. They have similar traumas:,parents who aren't in love difficult family life; societal pressure. They start to bond about it together. In a way Jonathan gave Nancy what Nancy didn’t have with Steve, an actual bond outside of society standards. Stancy was mostly a teenage romance who was mostly physical, true Steve loved Nancy but their relationship wasn’t based on an strong bond with one another. Nancy and Steve at the time at least was completely incompatible, Nancy was in a way creating another empty marriage like her parents did. While stancy is an average teenage romance from the 80′s made from conventionally attractive people with little in common with one another, Jancy was everything that stancy wasn’t. Jonathan is poor,  a nerd, and from a pretty polarizing family in town while Steve is a jock , popular with girls; from a wealthy family. But it’s also inverse in term of actual love, Jonathan love Nancy and Nancy love Jonathan, they may not be the perfect couple, they have issues but that’s realistic.Also little point, Jancy has complimentary dream jobs( journalist/photograph), really care for each other passions and hobbies, and love each other pleasemattandroosdufferpleasedontbreakthemupibegofyou. Jancy is all about the society choice for your life and your choice for controlling your own. The logical choice for Nancy is to go with Steve, just like her mother did. To not choose her heart but her head. Steve is the better choice for Nancy to have a “normal”, conventional life just like her mom chose. But Nancy isn’t her mom, Nancy is herself. She won’t do the same mistakes as her parents not after she endured because of their loveless marriage. She gonna choose the choice that make her truly free and happy. And that is the unconditional love and freedom that loving Jonathan can give her. Or like she dumps Jonathan but like be a girlboss but don’t leave this malewife alone, well he still has argyle soo.

Jopper: Ah jopper, one of the longest slow burn in the show only second to byler. What make jopper works? Simple! Just like jancy they have a lot in common, but i will say that they have way more than jancy. Joyce and hopper are both divorced parents(rip Sarah), who have a multitude of unresolved trauma from their past life. Joyce is single mother of two boys, she love them dearly more than anythings in this worlds. But life isn’t easy for her, she’s forced to work late for gaining money for her children to have a good life. The Byers are poor i must remind you.She is still in a complicated relationship with her ex husband who abused her and her children. But i think one of Joyce biggest issues is solitude. Every time Joyce ask for help, fight for a cause nobody trust, everyone thinks she crazy. “oh it’s just Joyce being insane like always, she really a disgrace to this town, no wonder her children are just like her”. She never helped by anyone, and every time someone she care about someone, somethings bad happen to them.Joyce is alone, alone fighting for her children well being. Hopper is a cop, a alcoholic drug addicted cop, since the death of his daughter and the divorce with his wife it’s like is whole life lost it’s purpose.Even thought he the sheriff off hawking you can see he’s kind of not that liked( not that he tries to be). Hopper is clearly depressed. But in end there no chance of him healing in this condition. Hopper is alone, incapable of healing and depressed. They are both broken people from a world which isn’t kind to them. They knew each other from high school i suppose. We can see that they was always attraction between each other. Guys their literally old friend to lovers. Together jopper gets what the other needed. Love. They can finally live and love after all this years of stress and pain and grow together while seeing their kids grow too. They both lost people they care about. That’s why jopper  is beautiful, it’s all about second chance and continuing loving after the loss of people we love, its about  the continuing growth that someone can have in they life. It’s all about moving on mainly living on after the death of someone we cherished, because they might be gone but they would want you to carry on and live, live for them.

Lumax: Now we are coming into best ship territories. As you may know Lumax is in my eyes the current best cannon ship in stranger things. I lovee byler but god damm lumax really is the most developed, realistic, healthy and fantastic ship in the series. But why is that? Just like any ships that works, lumax as a lot in common. their the sassy, don’t talk no shit to me, leader type of a group. Max is more of a loner, tomboyish , sassy, brutally honest type of person. She has a rough exterior who covers her true feelings, it can be hard to see the true max. Lucas is a geek , sassy, always saying his opinion, dork. Like a mega dork. He’s like a sunshine. But i would say, while most ships have a trope that make them works, lumax trope is true love. They don’t need long love confessions or long make out sequence. The way we know they love each other isn't words, it’s actions. It’s the look in the other eyes,the shine in the eyes, the care, the immediate bright shining smile, it’s just the electricity. When they are together they still act like themselves, it is still Lucas and Max they act just like they normally are. They have their own interest and can totally live without each other, their not codependent. For teenagers i would say that they are way more mature than other kids their age. Just like Caleb said lumax love is mature, they slowly grew together learned to care for each other, love each other. Their love wasn’t instant. Against all odd, and difficulties, lumax sails up right now.             Lumax is a tale of true love, i would say a tragic one, understanding, fights and sadly pain in the end. The reason Lumax works so well compared to other ships is the realism of it all. Their relationship feels authentic. I would say that the scene of lucas with max in his arms is the scene that made me wanna kill Vecna the most, seeing his scream and tears give me the urge to punch my wall so bad. Compared to other ship it’s much more difficult to explain by words but you just know when you look at them. You feel it. They both bring best in one another and are at their brightest in each other company. So that’s why MAX BETTER LIVE OR I WILL SUE THE SUFFER BROTHER.

conclusion:

Why is Melvin so bad you would say, many reasons. The lack of communication the misunderstanding of each other personality, the lies, the very weird family parallel and more. But i think one of the main reason Machinegun doesn’t works is simple. It literally doesn't fit the core theme of stranger things Stranger things is all about the oddities and weirdness that make us unique and beautiful. The show is always following outcast of society. Every and i mean every relationship in stranger things is in a way weird or uncommon. Jopper? Two divorced middle aged parents. Jancy? Independent journalist from a good family and local weirdo boy from a badly renowned family. Lumax? Interracial couple. Rockie? no explanation needed i think. Duzie? Unusual genius girl with bright boy with facial differences( still a handsome boy but you know society sucks). Even the non cannon ships follow the theme. But Magnet is just..... stereotypical self insert bullshit for teenager shows. “Oh boy meet girl, girl weird and as super PoWers, people dislike girl because girl WEird, but boy only one who think girl cooL. Time passes and Girl develops crush on boy and become JEalous of another girl because boy hang out with her. But in the end girl is sooooo cool and fantastic and amazing and the part left of boy initial characterization is is love for girl. He is crazy obsessed with girl and it’s starting to get so toxic. Girl is just a local girlboss blank slates to be the deus ex machina of the show and is nothing other than that. When girl do something real bad she never get punished because girl is so perfect. And IN THE END boy and girl and boy love save the world or something and they still stay together even so their probably the worst option of the show.” I saw so many ships like this and it screams not only self insert to young girls who are in love with the male actor but also a very easy routes for a show named stranger things. Stranger broke the norms of how to do a “horror” show and it gave us amazing rep (even if the didn’t handle all of it that well). It’s extremely rare in current media to see a show centered around a gay man who is not stereotyped in any way. And it’s amazing! Will is my favorite character and not just because of his sexuality, he has so many layers and complexities that make me love him even more. Of course my second place go to Lucas and Eleven cause their my children but so you know. 

Back to the main topic. Making mike and el finish together is probably the easiest and stupidest choice, not only would it go against the entire logic of the to make the most plain relationship in the show and probably one the more toxic relationship we currently have as cannon but what message would this give. “Look at them they have nothing in common but you gotta ship it cause it contains the protagonist of the show, to be happy eleven gotta be with a man that so feminist of us. Oh and mike? Who give a shit about him, not like he destroyed most of his relationships to be with a girl he doesn’t even comprehend. Oh your angry because the traumatized abused gay kid never got a happy ending and that’s a “very bad message”. No one give a shit about your opinion, we hate will so much that we created an entire plot line of him falling in love with his best friend for him to be miserable. Buy our byler merch!”

Well i mean this is still my opinion so it doesn’t mean much, i’m just a random person passionate about a show, but really Melvin cannon would destroy my liking in the show. I prefer byler not endgame but melvin is separated than a melvin ending.

But anyway it wouldn't be worse than stancy endgame.

[zombified-queer]

✨ 💫🌈🌿🎀💞🤍🍭

Okay this got kind of long, so it’s gonna be under a cut. I’m also going to be recutting the questions to vibe together as opposed to how they’re laid out originally lol.

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

I love love love love comments that dig deep to really analyze things, y’know? Those five-page essays gushing about this or that. When people pick out the themes? That’s the GOOD STUFF!!!

🎀 give yourself a compliment about your own writing

OH MY GODDDDDDD. Okay first off, you manage to nail character voices and I know that takes work. Second, look how cute your little outlines are! They’re so organized (even if you don’t look at them lol).

✨ What's a fic you've posted you wish you could breathe life into again and have people talking about it? (or simply a fic you wish got more credit)

I think “Sloppy Lobby” for this one. It was super fun to try and figure out how to kill people using ONLY the setting of the Hotel’s lobby. And it let me flex my writing muscles practicing everyone’s voices.

🌈 is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?

You guys probably don’t see a lot of the behind-the-scenes but right now my current WIP (Managerboy Hannibal AU) is one of the hardest to focus on because I have a plot but it’s just making it flow naturally? A constant war between The Hotel’s own format and the flow of the Hannibal episodes. (And I’m one person trying to do a ridiculous amount of writing this month as a goof!)

💞 what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

I think it’s the mood and tone. I’m very Picky about language and while horror comes super easy to me, it’s harder to get the tone of smut right because if it’s the least bit silly I’ll hate it immensely.

🤍 what's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

Literally anything Welcome Home related. I forget they’re not the Hotelpod where people being peeled like an orange or hallucinating wildly is just Business As Usual.

🌿 how does creating make you feel?

How does breathing make you feel? It’s instinctive and I need it. That said, big projects usually eat up a lot of my energy and require a rest period after.

🍭why did you start writing?

Why does a heart beat? Because it has to.