#Good homestuck starting conversations

[justmewondering56]

do you have a notebook to record bioeffective acts of natural chemical growth?

[thewertsearch]

Anonymous asked: You: "Wow Homestuck is my favorite comic ever! Kanaya is the best :)" Hussie: "LOL, LMAO" @morganwick asked: (Try not to think about the idea that the conversation future Jade alluded to where Kanaya got the password was the one with past Jade that immediately followed that conversation, and that Jade is waiting for a password from Kanaya that'll never come…) @bladekindeyewear asked: [...] regarding the password Jade said earlier she had been patiently waiting for… unfortunately, I think we saw Jade give her said password just before the walkaround… and in hindsight, it’s quite a regrettable one. “GG: the password is…………… GG: CROOOOOOOOOOOAK”

I had the same chilling thought over the weekend.

Yes, it's very possible that Kanaya closed her password loop in her very next conversation, which means the timeline doesn't actually require her to be resurrected. This removes the main piece of evidence I had that she's coming back - but even so, I still don't think she's gone for good.

What it boils down to, basically, is that Kanaya still has a lot to do.

First of all, her arc surrounding the survival of her race is still unresolved. Sure, someone like Karkat or fellow Space girl Jade could pick up the baton, but this arc isn't theirs. Jade has no personal investment in it, and Karkat, while obviously motivated to save his species, isn't connected to the Matriorb or Mother Grub the way Kanaya is. This revival plotline is hers, and right now, it's dangling like a loose thread.

If that was the only narrative issue, I could look past it - but it's not.

Guys, this was her last conversation with Rose. And I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that one of the longest-running ships in the comic would end here. Kanaya's romantic arc with Rose is really just getting started, and their last conversation really doesn't scan as a goodbye, even in retrospect.

Like, sure, these last words would be kind of ironic, but is this really how you close the door on one of the most kickass compelling relationships we have? Rosemary deserves a better death than this.

Speaking of which...

This is how we're disposing of Kanaya? With an (admittedly kind of funny) SBaHJ reference?

Bro, a significantly less important character, gets a dramatic death pose, framed by one of Karkat's best lines, and Kanaya - Kanaya Fucking Maryam - gets a sparkly Hope wand and a meme? I'm calling bullshit.

Now, Homestuck is more than happy to give its characters undignified deaths. Tavros certainly got one - but Tavros also died at the end of an intense, dramatic flash animation, and his murder served as the culmination of the Vriska/Tavros arc we've been following since early Hivebent. Tavros died without dignity, but the narrative weight of his death was enormous.

Kanaya died in the middle of multiple character arcs, in a manner that lacked dignity or narrative weight. She was essentially collateral damage to an unrelated feud between Eridan and Feferi. She died like a secondary character, and she's not.

I'm self-aware enough to admit that this is partially wishful thinking. It's not like I'm an unbiased observer - Kanaya is my favorite character, and I dug deep into the comic for evidence that her death doesn't make sense. But, that said - her death doesn't make sense. My narrative instincts are telling me that Kanaya is coming back - I just don't know how.

[some-triangles]

I've been on tumblr since 2011, and this is technically a sideblog. My creative focus shifted over here, to - I guess what could loosely be referred to as fandom space? It was Homestuck's fault - many years ago, and I more or less consciously decided to shift the original blog's purpose from writing little bits of poetry about weird birds to finding bird videos on other platforms that I thought could go viral and reposting (stealing) them. (Always credited, of course. I'm not a monster.) This worked pretty well, and now I have 6000+ followers over there. Since I never use it to promote anything or for any purpose beyond birdposting I feel OK about this as an experiment. I mostly use it to people-watch.

The latest video I have gaining traction over there is one my friend Rat sent me (one of many friends who either found me through birds or Homestuck and each is equally plausible) in which a pelican at a petting zoo is forced to cough up the gosling it was attempting to swallow by a handler who has clearly had to deal with this many times before. She then frogmarches (birdmarches?) it away by its beak. Good stuff, and very on brand, as I've been warning people about the horrors of pelican vore for ages. (I even got my very own pervert for a while, an anon who kept badgering various bird blogs to write about what it might be like to be swallowed.) When something I post starts doing numbers I like to watch the notes and tags, because it fascinates me how people like to make the same jokes, over and over and over. Not even their own jokes. I have never fully understood this but it's undeniably foundational to the way the internet works. Like, I get dropping References in conversation - social glue and all that, fun and funny - but in a public forum? Where you could literally check and see how many people have said the same thing before you got to it? Baffling. Universal.

Anyway. We started slow with this one, and we had some discerning folks doing Democracy Manifest bits - succulent avian meal, and all that. As references go it's a pretty good one, as it has its own wikipedia page and everything, and it's timely with Jack Karlson's recent passing. There were a few I am Forcibly Escorted From tags, which is nice, since you don't hear that one much these days. A bunch of quotidian "she's so done" or "like a toddler being dragged by his ear" observations, mostly uninspiring, although the specificity of one person's "my mom dragging me into the church bathroom to whoop my ass" was worth sharing. A little bit of the classic concern trolling you get with any animal video - why indeed is this bird being kept in the same place as all these edible little guys? But, inevitably, because it is the perfect time to use it, most people went with "put baby in pelican mouth."

And the thing about this is that I know the person who wrote the original "put baby in pelican mouth" post. We met through tumblr. She was absolutely inspired by my pelican posting to write that piece, and I know that because we ended up dating. It ended badly, and I still have regrets about it, and now, every time I make a pelican post, I am treated to a choir of strangers - literally hundreds of them - repeating a joke which was written by my ex-girlfriend. It's straight from the ironic punishment division, really. But birdpost I must, and tagwatch I must.

Anyway, Nikki, if you're out there, hope you're doing well.

[thewebcomicsreview]

I'm hardly the first person to notice this, but good god webcomics are the least time-efficient possible way of telling a story, aren't they?

I've been trying to figure out a better method of telling a story so that I could finish it before I die of old age (or, perhaps more relevantly, before everyone loses interest). It seems like no one really wants to read prose on the internet, but also people don't really like a comic that takes a year to go anywhere.

The main bottleneck is dialogue. You can only get 2-3 lines in a standard comic panel, so even a short conversation of character texture can take several pages. It makes me wonder if the Single Panel With Text Beneath It style (like ForEach) isn't just the Objectively Correct™ way to tell a comic on the internet. It's very efficient on the art, you can include narration if that's your jam, and it's very easy to make it work on mobile. (Also the art being separate is a boon if you want to make marketing materials). But everyone will correctly call you a Homestuck rip off.

Though the other thing Homestuck did was make these sprites of the characters that could be used to crank out a bunch of panels for scenes where nothing visually interesting was happening. You don't really see that copied as much

Not openly, anyway. There's a stigma. I've thought about rebooting Legend of the Hare as a visual novel, where that kind of thing is arbitrarily more accepted, but it does start raising the question of why you're bothering with the visuals at all. I don't think the kind of person who makes webcomics is usually looking for an excuse to get out of drawing, even if it lets them increase their page output dramatically. Making sprites that don't look like absolute ass is also really hard. Homestuck sprites have a really specific janky charm to them that I've never really seen any other comic pull off.

And, yeah, you could always just use a simpler art style, like Order of the Stick does, but it's super hard to get anyone to read a webcomic with great art, let alone simple art designed to maintain a high page output. And, again, why are you making a comic if you don't want to draw, unless you just naturally happen to draw that way and be really fucking good at it like Rich Burlew is?

It seems like the only really good way to tell a story in a reasonable amount of time as a webcomic artist is to make enough money off it that you can work full time, and, um, that's not really feasible either.

I don't have an answer I like. I guess just kill yourself in the content mines working webcomics as a second job that doesn't pay you anything.

I don't have a conclusion, capitalism is a nightmare.

[bubbleddisasters]

Stupid Shit I’ve done/Gotten myself into by accident/been dragged into as Twisted Wonderland Characters:

—————-

Ace : Heard my sister screaming bloody murder downstairs and didn’t do shit because I assumed she was watching a horror movie. Turns out there was a fire in the oven.

Bonus: Sniped my friend in the eye from across the Cafeteria with a Ketchup Packet, Meant to hit his glasses, but he repositioned them at the last second.

Deuce: Answered Maine four times on a Historical Geography test and was wrong all four times.

Cater: Threw my phone out of the window in a panic after seeing one of my Idols followed me back.

Bonus : Accidentally convinced a transfer camper from Wales I was from London after I quoted something in the accent to myself in the showers and was too awkward to tell them I wasn’t when they struck up the conversation.

(I am from America, and the camp is in America.)

Trey: Accidentally created a puddle of Dark Red Icing and Stepped in it four times in a row while making a cake at 2 am.

Bonus : Befriended and helped out the owner of a French Bakery down the street when they started out, they ended up becoming really popular (rightfully so, her stuff is amazing) and now I either get free shit and/or Friends and Family Discounts.

Riddle : I have read the dictionary on multiple occasions out of sheer boredom.

Bonus: I once read the bible and marked down verses. Im not religious I just needed to win an argument.

Leona: Slept through an earthquake and 3 ambulances coming to my house bcs my sister was hurt.

Ruggie: Waited for families going inside to pass by and asked them to hold the door for me so I could sneak into a VIP rooms for free food. (Usually only at fancy hotels but luckily this strategy is flexible when your 5’2 with a baby face.)

Jack: Used to Smash open large rocks containing Crystals or Quartz at the beach as a kid, and now I have a large collection of them.

Bonus: I have extremely good hearing, to the point I hear into the negative decibels up to -15 - -20 (according to the audiologist this is rare but i literally don’t know shit about audio and decibels) so my old dormmates used to try and bribe me to tell them what I heard about certain things or themselves.

Bonus 2: Almost got shot by an illegal hunter while in the woods with my sister.

Floyd : Cracked my skull open at the pool, lost consciousness for a few seconds and woke up in the water calling for help, then got confused on why I was calling for help.

Bonus : A Sea lion once came up to me while I was scuba diving and did little circles, bumped its snout on my mask and just followed me the whole time in a very gleeful manner as a temporary homie.

Bonus 2: Apparently ate / took bites of my moms library books as a little kid (????) according to the librarian.

Jade: Taught myself to untie my hands with my hands behind my back, tie by hands behind my back with my hands behind my back, deciphered, translated and memorized a fictional hieroglyphic language, Read from Act 1 to Act 6 of Homestuck, and accidentally discovered how to disguise Chocolate Ice Cream as Pistachio; all within the span of 2 weeks. (I had covid and was A-Symptomatic)

Bonus : Lived in the Woods for 7 months (in total), had a large bag of mica and Almost Drowned in a tent when there was no moving water nor rain. (Basically, I was asleep, Woke up underwater, nearly went back to bed, then shot out of my tent screaming “My Tent Titanticed!” )

(It was like 3 am don’t judge me)

Azul: Somehow ended up with $2200 dollars in $100s in Monopoly at the end of the game. Also have been stuck between two identical twins while talking with both and boi that shits TRIPPY. (I also almost died with them later but it was fine)

Bonus: I lived on a middle of fuck knows where island during the spring and summer up until covid, yet I absolutely despise eating fish or Shellfish, and the smell often makes me nauseous.

(Bonus 2: I love shiny things, but very specifically fancy looking keys. I also had a weird obsession with signing a shiny contract after watching Ariel. Another tiny thing Is I own a Flotsam and Jetsam Scarf which I chuck around when Floyd or Jade pisses me off ingame.)

Kalim : Got distracted by a cool leaf while at a fancy resort in Xatapa, Mexico, and waddled off from my parents and explored around to try and find more, somehow managed to get extremely far and ended up lost in a whole different city for 6 hours while trying to find my way back.

Bonus 1: I had an obsession with Kiwis for awhile as a kid, and our neighbors house had a Pangium tree that reached over to our yard. (It was planted before either families moved in so we didn’t know) I thought it was some kind of strange Kiwi and ate one. I didn’t like it and was like “Oh maybe its not ripe” and waited 3-5 months then tried it again, same reaction, repeat process one more time.

I went to my parents out of curiosity and asked them what it was, and so after some process I am unaware of but I think my mom brought one of the fruits somewhere, we discovered what it was.

Pangium contains Fatal amounts of Cyanide if not properly prepared. I was fine but for the love of anything please don’t try eating it like little me did.

Bonus 2: I’ve Almost died more times than I can count on both hands and feet. Im not an heir or something fancy I just have wackass luck.

Jamil: Once had to talk my sister out of jumping off a tour boat because our cousin dared her to.

Bonus : Managed to make French Toast in the middle of the woods with Dehydrated Milk, Cinnamon, Three Eggs I stole, and a loaf of bread we got once a month. Also made 3 kinds marinated chicken in the middle of the woods.

(My Cooking Style is literally “just trust me bro.” I’m like Lilia except it actually works and is edible)

Epel : Whenever we went applepicking at my Grandfathers house, I’d climb into the trees and throw or pass the apples down. Sometimes I actually wish I could sit in trees more often shits comfy.

Bonus: My Mom was a Champion Horseback Rider as a kid, and sometimes took us to this Ranch I shall not name for my own privacy, but I’d run around with this group of kids and this one herding dog like a damn movie protagonist, sometimes go riding horses, or the one time we stole a tractor and near crashed it (THE REGRETS I STILL HAVE-) etc.

The WHIPLASH from that to going back to a whitewashed Northeast suburban town is insane.

Rook: My Cousins and I, and sometimes the kids at the priorly mentioned ranch, would play the most intense games of manhunt (basically really intense hide n seek at night) ,

I mean wearing camo if you had it, alliances, little dollar store walkie-talkies, code words, binoculars, climbing in trees or hiding in bushes/tall grasses/Hay to “scout”.

I hid in a large pot/vase more than once and another time on a roof, and (ONLY ONCE, DO NOT DO THIS IM STUPID) under a car.

I still remain the top in last man standing points. Mostly bcs I’m stingy with rescues but shhh

Vil - Accidentally poured a lot of liquid eyeliner into my eye, was literally crying out Eyeliner for 30 minutes. Also taught myself to run and jump in heels as a kid because I thought it looked cool in movies.

Ortho : Unknowingly was Hacking my Elementary School Databank for several years,

I genuinely thought it was normal to go on the school website, press a few buttons and be able to find a friends address if I had a playdate and needed to tell my mom where the house was, a parents phone number if needed communication with my friends parents , and mostly ignored the other general info.

I didn’t even know I did this until my dad told me a few months ago that I almost got suspended for it but by the time they found out it was the end of my last year there. ;—;

Edit: I feel I should elaborate that my dad had somewhat recently told me that I almost got suspended for that in elementary school, but all that happened 5 YEARS ago. Hence why I was so surprised because I was never told back then.

Idia: Accidentally acquired both a Nahida and Eula in Genshin and was genuinely annoyed at the time, they are now my most powerful DPS’s…

Bonus : I own a shit ton of original Japanese first edition Pokemon Cards my cousin gave me, (they are probably worth more than me which is neat), and I have a giant pile of Pokemon plushies I have infact fallen asleep on or in on multiple occasions.

Bonus 2: I was playing Breath of the Wild, and my very first thing I did after getting off the plateau was beeline for the castle. I actually got all the way up and took out 2 blights but the Wind one kicked my ass.

Bonus 3: Got confessed to and asked out by a guy I did not like nor knew very well, and I panicked, said “Maybe, Sorry no.” And ran into a wall. Also have crawled through a chute to avoid an awkward situation as a kid (do not recommend its dusty and definitely not safe)

Bonus 4: Once didn’t sleep for 5 days.

Malleus : Accidentally attended a Private Party and a Private Funeral in the same week. I was not invited nor knew anyone present. Stayed there for most of it because I was too nervous to say I wasn’t supposed to be there. Whoop.

Bonus: Got nicknamed the “Trip Curse.” By my Old Dormmates because everytime I went on a trip with them everything seemed to go to shit or get hella chaotic.

Bonus 2: Another camping one: Once woke up at night with a shit ton of fireflies just chilling in my tent. It was serene but also I genuinely thought I was hallucinating for a few minutes.

Lilia: Literally will hang upside down anywhere I can, its so fun bro.

Bonus : I know an extremely large amount of useless historical information, and once genuinely realized I know more about poison than what flour and eggs are used for in baking.

Silver : Once befriended a wild horse ( Im like 90% sure he was a Chestnut).

I called him Clover the Dog like horse because he was honestly just a golden retriever in the body of a horse.

This is great and theres alot of sweet moments, but then theres the times you have a giant horse galloping full speed at you for attention or trying to nudge you affectionately and nearly pushing you into a creek in the process.

Sebek: Got groundstruck by lightning once. Also I am often told I have a loud voice.

Che’nya : a good friend of mine and I have an inside joke at school where if we see eachother through a window (my school has alot of indoor windows for some reason?), we’ll text the other “Behind you.” Or “To your left.”

——————-

Theres more things I can think of but I have run out of characters and this is getting too long, so ye!

[relaxxattack]

hey i apologize if you've been asked this a thousand times already but i am looking to get into homestuck & am unsure of where to start ? of course the obvious answer is to Read It but i was curious if there is a primary archive or anything of the like where other important information may be stored ?

sorry for the intrusion, you are the only homestuck blog i'm familiar with x-[ thank you for your time !

aa this is such a good question!!!! i am SUCH a fan and advocate for good archiving and im really glad you came to me with this lol!

because, you should NOT READ HOMESTUCK ON THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE! not only are the games and animations all broken due to the death of flash, but there are also spoilers scattered around the pages both in edited bits and in the ads that are on the site itself

if you would like to have the true archival experience i could not recommend the unofficial homestuck collection enough!

not only does it run all of homestuck as it was originally posted, but there's ALSO settings you can turn on that will hide any spoilers and then notify you when changes to the site were made in 'real time'! (such as pages being edited, OST being posted, author QnAs, etc!)

it was even endorsed by the author herself! basically it's an insanely good resource and i don't think homestuck should be read any other way.

and here's a really good post about reading homestuck if you want to be all Educated about it.

personally, i think you just have to go into it ready to have fun. homestuck gives back to you what you give into it-- so much of it is in direct conversation with fan culture, fan theories, and so much more, and it's SO fun to read it while getting invested in certain ideas so that the story can talk back to you about it.

so basically just.... have fun!

[somberauthor]

Could you write some sleepover headcanons for the beta kids(homestuck) please?

I kinda based these off of me and my friends, so I hope its not too out of character!!

JOHN

Obviously in charge of the movies (much to everyones dismay).

He occasionally brings snacks too. (Snacks meaning full sized cakes that his father made.)

He is the one who usually stays quiet when discussing sleeping positions. He doesn't argue, or make it sexual when sleeping next to someone. He may make it awkward, but not sexual at all.

He'd wake up at the same time as rose would, so before anyone else.

ROSE

Her house is usually where they go for sleepovers, but if her mom is having an exceptionally rough night she'll make an excuse.

She has Kanaya make the pajamas, because everyone agreed it would be nice to have matching pajamas when they have sleep overs.

If there is an extra mattress, she'll insist she take it. She enjoys sleeping on separate beds, because she takes over the entire bed.

As stated with John, she and him wake up first. She usually goes to make food for everyone while John stays and wishes the two left good morning when they wake up.

JADE

She is usually the one who asked everyone if they wanna hang out. And she helps keep conversations going while John starts them.

She sleeps wildly, but doesnt know it. She can and will sleep on top of someone. (She also enjoys cuddling with whoever is nearest to her) ((in a non-romantic way of course)

She also brings stuff so they can have some activities to do. (Like beads, yarn, coloring books, and so on)

She wakes up last, and sleeps like a log. So once she's out she's out

DAVE

He's the one who gets the nitty gritty information. Like when they should arrive, when they'll leave, what they'll be doing, and all that jazz

He sleeps like a log. Not like he sleeps deeply, no, he sleeps without moving. He's scared everyone because of how still he is when sleeping.

He's the one with stories to tell when everyone wakes up, because his dreams can be fucking WILD.

He is pretty easy to wake up, so he wakes up at the sound and smell of Rose cooking.

Also, to everyone being so kind in my ask box thank you!! I teared up reading some of the compliments you guys gave me!

[homestuckreplay]

The Final Homestuck Update of 2009

(page 1082-1088; some general Dave and Rose thoughts)

I can’t believe Dave would pour some apple juice out for Cal. That’s his favorite drink, the king of juices, and not easy for Dave to come by. But Dave sucks unfortunately, and I was such a hater reading this update for the first time, because this absolute idiot is more concerned with his relationship with a torn up puppet who he only pretends to like than with his actual close friend who is in danger. Dave is okay in the small doses of pesterlogs and flashes, but I genuinely think part of the reason I’ve loved Act 3 so much up til now is because I haven’t had to deal with Dave’s bullshit, and I really hope this isn’t the start of an extended Dave section.

It’s good to get a glimpse of Rose on page 1088 – and Vodka Mutini, the tiny sleeping void – right at the end. She’s spent this entire comic so focused on getting people to play Sburb, helping John play Sburb, and finding ways to reconnect to John in order to play more Sburb. She’s basically always doing something and trying to solve a problem, and seems happiest when she’s busy, even if being busy involves actually making things worse (see: ripping out crucial parts of John’s house or dropping them into the abyss) and now suddenly she seems hopeless. There’s more she could do – it would be smart to create defined spaces for the cruxtruder, totem lathe and alchemiter, and mark them out for Dave, for example – but this feels like a moment where when she stops crisis response for even a second, the reality of the situation sets in and she can’t spring back into action.

The thing is, having seen Rose work really hard for hundreds of pages to at least try to help John, Dave on the surface looks really bad by comparison. And I’m trying to figure out how much of that is real – how much is Dave messing around with his sylladex, thinking about his possessions, and texting his friends more than Rose did – and how much is just their self-image. Rose definitely wants to seem like she’s smart, competent, level-headed, and capable of saving people from world ending threats, so she plays up those aspects of herself, and it’s easier to overlook a moment where she plays the violin for 40 seconds of the two minutes she has left (p.222) or reads her grimoire for no practical purpose (p.301-5) or considers passive-aggressive ways to get back at her mother (p.373-4), etc.

Conversely, Dave wants to seem like he’s cool, detached, ironically self-aware, and like he’s not overinvested in his friendships, so a scene like today’s where he’s fucking around with his sylladex reinforces this, and works like confirmation bias. It’s easy to skim over the fact that Dave just put himself in danger of physical pain and social ridicule from an authority figure, just to get these games for Rose, just on her word without evidence of her situation. Dave said ‘if you ever find yourself in the position where your life depends on me playing that piece of shit game, then ill play’ (p.333) and he didn’t say that ironically, he meant it when the time came. So it’s frustrating that he’s still talking about his bro’s ‘mysterious ways’ (p.1085) and that he wasted so much time gathering weapons that he didn’t end up using, but looking back, I don’t think Dave is actually handling this situation worse than Rose is. She was just more attuned to the specifics and urgency of the situation.

I think that all four kids have their surface image, and that Dave and Rose consciously construct theirs while John and Jade don’t realize they’re doing it. I think all four have a deeper layer to their personalities that is specifically intended by the author, although different readers might make different inferences about what that is. And I think that all four kids are really convincing with their surface image a lot of the time – they fool each other, they fool their guardians, and they fool the reader, because so much of Homestuck (including the narrative text) is written in their voices without much external commentary. I know I’ve fallen into the trap with all of them at times where I take them at their word and I’m sure if I was actually friends with them, I’d do it even more, so it’s a clever reflection of actual social relationships and the disconnects that actually exist between people. Especially when those people are young, traumatized, and have such different lives that it’s hard to fully comprehend each other’s.

And I can remind myself of this stuff all day but it does not change the base emotional response of: I love Rose and I don’t like Dave.

So overall, this is not my favorite way Homestuck could have ended 2009, but there’s always going to be disappointing updates and characters that I like less; we can’t get a page 1073 every day. And I know that some people love Dave and are thrilled to see him back. Even so, tabbing to the next page in Homestuck and getting Dave feels to me like biting into a delicious looking cake and getting mayonnaise instead of frosting, and holy shit, now I’m wondering if Dad did that to John as a prank once and that ties into his bad experience with cake. That’s totally an Egbert style prank.

> Dave: Make an April 14th’s Resolution to be an open and honest person.

[divineerdrick]

Homestuck Beyond Canon Upd8 for October 8, 2024

Here we are! This might be the end of the current story arc, and we'll finally get to see if Vriska successfully makes it out of this. I was also informed a while back that today is the one year anniversary of the HICU taking over the comic.

Before I jump in, I had a theory I wanted to put out there. I was thinking more about how Vriska was always destined to go down these two paths and what that might mean. Now we know she had different fates than the two we saw. In fact, we saw a third indirectly. We saw it when an Aradiabot from a doomed timeline where Gamzee snapped early revealed a surprise final piece of Doc Scratch's code. That reveal was a book Gamzee made in the blood of the other trolls. And Vriska's blood is in there.

But only two Vriskas are ever seen in the bubbles, probably because the Vriskas that survive to their creation are always the same. Do any Vriskas lost along the way matter? We don't really know. They might still be important, but the lion share of Vriska appears to be split into two fates.

Now, thinking back to the epilogues (I know that can be hard) Dirk describes the process of becoming a fully realized or ascended God Tier.

And some of you just saw where I'm going with this.

Dirk became a full God of Heart first because of how connected he was to his splinters. Rose followed as her continued explorations of fortune connected more and more of her deviating paths through Paradox Space. And Dave . . . well he got a very Dave ascension. Honestly with how well he handled the multiple version of himself running around, an Obama pep talk was likely more than what was needed.

But there's only two Vriskas that need to come together.

If Vriska can accept herself, the team on Candy C will have a fully realized and ascended Thief of Light on their side. One that has already exerted narrative control before! That might be enough to help fix a lot. And if Vriska has anything to say about it, and you know she will, things might really start moving.

News Upd8

We get a team post this time! They're mostly just excitedly gushing about the milestone and some of the things that have happened in the past year. But they also reminding us the first big flash is coming. I honestly can't wait!

James mentions that this is not originally what was planned and that they were just going to make a bunch of connected shorts originally. I still like stuff like that, but I'm glad they were able to get this going again.

There's a lot of thank yous from the team. But I still feel like I want to thank them for continuing this in such a wonderful way. This comic and this community has been really important to me for a while now, and I'm eternally grateful there are still "semi-official" things coming from it.

James does give us a bit of an outline on the progress for EOA1. It sounds like things are still early, but they're hoping to hit one of the "funny numbers". The next one will be 11/11 or one of the kid's birthdays. But 413 sounds like a good project deadline to me.

They're continuing with two upd8s this month, so I'll need to try to make sure I catch the next one in a more timely fashion.

Upd8

We've cut away from Vriska. As the news said, no more VN for us. We return to Candy Earth C and our stressed out adults.

Kanaya has left on her own for now. Her fury has not yet been satisfied it seems, with what Rose took as an implied threat from her. Also, I just noticed the subtle space symbol in Jade's shield. Nice touch!

Still a lot of justly tense and uncomfortable conversation going on. Jade really wants to fix things. She feels like she's the one to blame and she needs to make things right. But Rose doesn't particularly seem receptive. I don't think she wants Jade's help. Also, there's a mention of Rose losing her temper over a conversation about her mom. I think it's mostly meant as a little nod to how much older they all are and that things have happened that we never got to see. But I can't help but wonder how things went down.

Yeah, this is pretty painful. Jade really wants to do the right thing, but Rose has formed her own opinion of the best course of action. And now she's trying to convince Jade it doesn't involve her.

Hamster guy? I'm pretty sure I'd remember hamster guy so this has to be something new.

Honestly, Jade is sounding a bit more mature than Rose here. It's painful, but she's right. Reality has very little to do with a person's "truth." The only sensible path to change a person's perspective is usually the empathetic one where you focus on understanding where they're coming from. Even then, all you can usually accomplish is being someone they might turn to when an external event breaks the reality in their head.

Speaking of personal truth's, Jade has been feeling that so many of her friends haven't really cared about what's going on. That might have been a little true for Dave, but I think she got a completely wrong read on John. John very much cared, he just wasn't good at doing anything about it. That's one of the reasons he suffered from depression, one of the reasons he was always trying to fix something or do something important. But between the glimpses of her in the epilogues and the credits, I get the impression she was constantly trying to reach out to him. From her perspective, John's depression might have seemed to be apathy.

But big surprise the one that grew up so isolated is having the hardest time getting a read on people.

THE ART!!!

Urgh! Oh this is bad! Rose is just suppressing everything she's dealing with. Admittedly, there's a lot going on right now. But it sounds like she's not trying to process any of the stuff that's been occurring on this crazy version of Earth C. She especially can't seem to deal with Roxy, and that's apparently been causing more problems than we've seen.

I'm not sure I agree with Rose here. I don't believe an absolute truth has to be derived from authority. But then, to the best of my knowledge, I don't live in Paradox Space. It's hard to hold to the truth of observable reality when it can be so easily changed and manipulated.

Interesting . . . Rose has turned to her powers as a form of coping mechanism. As things get hard, she begins trying to sort out all the "meandering side-paths." The rote of it, the monotony, is soothing to her the way a "cozy game" is to me. And if she's successful, she gains insight and even something to look forward to.

Oh no! Rose has seen a future where Calliope will sacrifice herself to try and save everything! And worse it doesn't work! Things are apparently more dire than we thought, and that's with Jane running around in Condesce mode!

Huh! If I'm parsing that right, Rose is going to suffer a mortal wound but one that won't trigger the God Tier clock. Instead she'll have to recover like a normal person will. Ouch! This immortality really isn't all it's cracked up to be.

And the other shoe drops! The reason why Rose agreed to something like this, the reason she's been so cold and distant. While she's recovering from the bullet wound, Kanaya will be alone. With what she's done, Kanaya will have the impetus to seek independence. She hasn't seen the end result, but she believes Kanaya will have a more fulfilling life this way. She's been driving her wife away so this Kanaya won't be left in paralyzed mourning the way Meat Kanaya seems to be. That is a horribly dangerous game, and one almost guaranteed to backfire.

But apparently Rose doesn't think any of it matters. Like Dirk, she thinks this universe is irrelevant and doomed. She knows what John needed to do, and here John didn't do it. She's hasn't quite gotten to the optimistic point of nihilism, but the apparent lack of meaning is providing her with some relief.

Do I honestly need to say anything here!

Rose has been able to play the rain for a while now. But as her powers have matured, she's gotten better at it. Though this makes it sound not so much like she's playing it, as dancing to a tune beyond her control. But then, this Rose doesn't feel the need to control anything.

Can you imagine accidentally bumping head first into a figure of myth and legend?

Karkat and Kanaya have a bond that goes well beyond anything they ever developed with their human lovers. Even if Karkat's power wasn't literally over the bond of Blood, they've survived so much together it honestly wouldn't matter. And right now, Karkat's opinion of the humans that sat on the sidelines while their Troll friends needed them isn't exactly high.

COME ON!!!

Jane is still processing her conversation and some of things that came of it. Does Jane think she could have convinced more of her friends to stand with her? Does she think she could have saved Dirk from the fate he chose?

Also in a very real way she doesn't quite look human in that image. Even though I think this might be a human moment for her, she's made her visage, consciously or not, monstrous. The Condesce's crown is a collar around her neck.

Unfortunately she's decided that rather than learn from her mistakes, she might as well just plow on and build something new and better. She is a god after all.

Love how they're teasing out the reveal of what has come of Jake's epiphany.

I'm not posting that image. Even with my heavy use of spoiler tags, I'm not risking it.

Oh come on! You didn't make it a clean shot! Goddammit Jake!

Well that's one way to cut from that. I mean HOLY SHIT!!!

Jake appears to not be out of this yet. This almost feels like a callback to Vriska sitting on the beach after a failure. Can the big man recover from it?

And we end with Rose having just left Tavy and Yiffy with a letter and some snacks.

Wow! That was intense!

It legit seems like nothing, not even a bullet, is changing Jane's mind. And I mean, I know Jane is a god, but come on! Could Jake seriously not get a good clean shot off? Wow!

Y'know, honestly I can see it. Despite his awakening, he had to play it out like one of his movies. That was just enough time for Jane to realize what was going on and quickly dodge out of the way. Then, rather than quickly ending it, he had to quibble out an apology.

Honestly, I just don't think he was truly capable of doing it, so he sabotaged himself. He's just lucky that all the pummeling he's gone through has toughened him up enough that he might get another shot. That is if he doesn't get wiped out in whatever that cake-shaped, doomsday device she has in orbit does.

Fuck that was a ride. And a really tense one at that! Guess now we're waiting for next upd8 this month!

[hms-no-fun]

i have an intense love/hate with godfeels because it is beautifully written but it also makes me viscerally uncomfortable. something something disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed probably. engaging with that discomfort teaches me more about myself and is definitely worth it for something like godfeels. any advice for constructively engaging with media that Pisses You Off, by no fault of the creator? what would you say to your haters in good-faith, if you could?

well, to be fair i have said plenty to my haters in good faith previously, but that was a very direct response. if you and i were having a polite conversation amongst the two of us, my first question would be "how far did you get?" godfeels has been going for six years now (!!!), and it's gone through many phases in that time. i'm at a point now in my life where if someone tells me gf2 didn't click with them, i'll probably nod and say "yeah it's rough around the edges, there's a lot of stuff i'd do differently today." the most vocal contingent of haters i've ever gotten were the handful of people who dipped at gf2.2 when june got superdrunk and accidentally murdered a bunch of people, assuming the story was going to be about how cool and based that decision was. anyone who's actually read gf2 to completion should find that misconception laughable. it also makes a difference if you finished gf2 and stopped there, or started 3.1 and fell off, or if you got through chapter 8 and fell off, or if you're currently reading Double Album. each of those is a slightly different conversation with its own pros and cons. whether or not i'd try to talk someone into continuing their read depends entirely on those questions (and also how self-confident i'm feeling in the moment).

i guess i would say to someone who is not enjoying godfeels that they should stop reading godfeels. it's an extremely heavy story that digs into a wide variety of traumatic subject matter. it is also deeply personal in a lot of ways, which is perhaps a weird fit for a Homestuck fanfiction. so i can understand someone from the wider fandom hearing about godfeels as "the June Egbert fic" being disappointed that it's not fluff. i've documented in the past how gf2 emerged out of my dissatisfaction with the image of "Hairclips June," whose transition exists off screen and whose acceptance by her friends is an obvious expectation. i kind of feel bad for how that shook out in the long term since, between the lengthy hiatus of hs2 and the broader strangulation of the post-canon movement during the pandemic, the canonical "Hairclips June" story (or at least "June Who Doesn't Suffer 100% Consequences" story) doesn't seem to exist. i don't mean literally canonical, i mean "seeped into the fandom's collective unconscious" canonical, like Detective Pony. there are plenty of fanworks that do a good or at least interesting job with June, but they're not *about* June in quite the same way godfeels is. it's entirely possible that such a thing DOES exist and IS popular (i freely admit to being out of touch with modern fanworks), but for better or worse godfeels still seems to be the thing that comes up most often-- and not always in a positive light.

for a while now i've been working on an "Author's Introduction" which on the surface is an attempt to contextualize the phases of godfeels for new readers, but in actuality is more of a history of/commentary on the post-2019 fandom and the so-called "Homestuck Renaissance." i see this as necessary because godfeels is an extension of that moment, in particular the loudly recuperative pro-Vriska boosters and their exquisitely galaxy-brained VrisRezi meta. then gf3.1 responded to the fandom backlash, chapter 8 responded to my experience watching every foundation of my post-transition life crumble during the pandemic, and then Double Album is an exploration of building yourself and community back up in the aftermath of tragedy.

it's not that this context is necessary to understand or appreciate godfeels, just that i think it helps put things in perspective. when i started gf1, i hadn't written fiction in nearly 7 years. today, the series is sitting just shy of the 500,000 word mark. at every step of the process, the quality and ambition of my writing has increased exponentially. there's a reason i've written Double Album as a jumping-on point for new readers-- besides being better in virtually every way that matters to me, it's also largely shorn free of the baggage that can make godfeels a hard sell for folks. whether or not it actually SUCCEEDS as a jumping on point is another conversation entirely.

so i guess all of that is to say, if we were having a private conversation just the two of us, i freely admit that godfeels is a wildly disjointed story on top of being extreme and often emotionally masochistic. i am proud of this work from start to finish, but it fundamentally is the process of its authorship in a way that a thoroughly drafted and edited novel simply isn't. i used to publish chapters the instant they felt done to me, with only minimal revisions. these days i let chapters bake a lot longer and put much more thought into how they fit into the larger whole. i kinda miss the old way but the new way results in much better work.

i'd be curious to hear what exactly it is that Pisses You Off about godfeels, and why you nevertheless feel it's a worthwhile reading experience. you ask me for advice on how to constructively engage with media that pisses you off, but i don't have any because in general i don't engage with media that pisses me off. i stopped reading fanworks after 2020 because everything that survived seemed to cater only to the sector of the fandom that harassed my friends out of their jobs and platforms. i found their interpretations/extensions of canon lacking, their tendency for straightforward fluff rather grating. i COULD have made that everyone else's problem, but what would be the point? i wasn't the target audience. i didn't enjoy the work, so i stopped reading it. i'd rather move on to media i enjoy than suffer through media i don't.

BUT. there's a fine line here, because it actually takes a lot to Piss Me Off. i don't really believe in rules or standards in art as Inviolable Laws Of Nature. my measure of whether something is good has a lot less to do with its inherent quality and a lot more to do with the balance between intention and execution. it rarely matters how amateur something is, if it meaningfully accomplishes the thing it set out to do then i'll probably like it (or at least respect it). i look for expressions of authenticity, moments where the artist and the medium are in perfect sync. there are plenty of critically praised pretty-looking movies and games with big production values that i don't particularly like. sometimes that's because they're a naked moneymaking enterprise disguised as art. sometimes it's a problem of too many cooks in the kitchen. and then sometimes an artist is just full of shit and doesn't really know what the hell they're talking about (i like to call these people "Californians"). mostly, i just embrace that art-making and art-viewing are inherently subjective experiences, and i find little value in numbered rating systems of any kind.

a lot of my favorite movies and albums underwhelmed me my first time through. they challenged me in a way that i at first interpreted as incompetence, but have come to see as brilliance. there's stuff i found alienating in high school and early 20s that i find deeply relatable in my 30s. as a film student i've had so many conversations with so many people who have wildly different takes on the same movie that i've completely given up on the idea that anyone is an objective arbiter of what's good and what isn't. the only real thing is if it works and if it works for you. i search for the best in everything, because at the end of the day i'm just here for the love of the game and i don't much enjoy hating things. for media to really Piss Me Off, to elicit a genuine I Hate You response, it has to be more than just, like, poorly edited or whatever. it has to embody a repulsive worldview, be a tool of jingoistic propaganda, or otherwise act as an extension of corporate greed and wealth extraction. these days i reserve my hatred for that which has connection to real Power and exerts a mass cultural Influence, or that otherwise blindly reproduces the same problems.

i think it's far easier to critically engage with work you don't like when you search for the things that work, rather than the things that don't. when it works, when it really clicks, you see what they were going for, and only with that perspective can you see why what doesn't work doesn't work. all i ever ask is for readers to take my stuff as it is, good and bad, and judge it on those terms. i find your use of "comforts the disturbed, disturbs the comfortable" funny and fitting. art that wants to be for everyone is art that cannot be for anyone. it is a perfectly round grey sphere that all who gaze upon it can agree "exists" and "succeeds at what it's trying to do." good art is imperfect, because it is the result of a perspective you may not share. i've never wanted to make art for the masses. i want to make the kinds of things that i wished existed when i was younger. there are a surprising number of people who feel that godfeels positively affected their lives, and i know that i have very little to do with that. godfeels is an object that exists in the world. i had ideas of what it was when i wrote it, but i can't control what anyone else sees no matter how much digital ink i spill trying to explain my original vision. if it truly comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable, then on some level i must have succeeded in what i was trying to do even if the path to getting there was spotty and rough.

i did the best i could at every stage of writing godfeels. i would do things differently today, but i also wouldn't be here at all if i'd done it differently back then. i try to extend this grace to other artists as much as possible, that we're all just figuring it out as we go along. but i also know that everyone goes to art for different things, and finds value in different aspects of its expression. really, all i ever want is to have a conversation about the object without the looming specter of Respectability Politics and Moral Hazards. it's when people start acting like godfeels is Dangerous, and that i'm dangerous by extension, that i start having opinions about where critics are fucking up. tell me what it does or fails to do. point at the text and show me you've read and comprehended it by citing your sources and arguing through the text instead of around it. absolutely fuck off with the moral hand-wringing about Transgender Representation and Glorifying Violence and Perpetuating Toxic Stereotypes. it's a fucking Homestuck fanfiction, for god's sake.

but anyway you're not doing that, so, good job! i'm glad you find the experience of reading godfeels illuminating even if it pisses you off. i hope you found this lengthy answer enlightening, and maybe a bit annoying also. consistency is key, or so they say

[valle-de-sombra-de-muerte]

Homestuck Reread: Act 5-2, Part 3/5 (p. 2236-2391)

Read the previous post here.

Apologies for the long delay in between posts. I initially wanted to have these reread posts be on a weekly schedule, but that just ain't happening now. The combination of work and fatigue from constant Homestuck exposure is starting to wear on me. So I'm just going to write them when I can find the time. Thanks to everyone who likes and reblogs these posts, I appreciate all of you.

I also went back and added cuts to all my past reread posts because I realize scrolling through these long ass walls of text/images when on my blog isn't an ideal browsing experience. Let's move right along.

Vriska really wants to make it seem like she'll be redeemed for all the bad she's done by reconciling with Aradia. In the meantime, she would very much prefer it if everyone else stopped talking about her terrible deeds. The only way she can think of to make them shut up for good is to do this performative gesture of goodwill. She's not trying to change as a person and atone for her actions: she just wants to rehabilitate her awful reputation.

Terezi's comment about Aradia is noteworthy because she's the only troll who seems to actually care about what happened to her. Everyone else kind of ignores Aradia, but Terezi expresses distress over how Aradia has "changed" since the incident.

From her earlier conversation with Sollux. Terezi will consistently remark how bothered she is that Aradia isn't the same person anymore. It's a shame how their fractured relationship isn't given that much attention outside of these throwaway lines. Like even after Aradia becomes God Tier and regains her love of life, she and Terezi could've bonded and repaired their friendship. Maybe they could've if Hussie wasn't so fixated on forcing this "doomed yuri" dynamic between Terezi and Vriska during the later stages of the comic. Aradia was part of the FLARP group with them too, so why sideline her?

I don't think many people talk about how Terezi was an active participant in helping Vriska kill all those trolls. I'm don't want to sound like I'm drifting into "Vriska Did Nothing Wrong" territory, but it's not like Vriska was wantonly killing people just for the hell of it. She was essentially forced to do it because if she wasn't feeding her lusus those trolls, she would've been eaten/gotten culled for having a dead custodian. Either way, she would've died if she wasn't killing others. A real "kill or be killed" situation.

What was Terezi's motive for helping out? To live out her dumb vigilante fantasy? For Vriska, securing victims for her lusus was a matter of life and death. But for Terezi, it was nothing more than a game. "Oh, but only the bad trolls would've been executed!" Bad according to whom? The Alternian law that sentences people to death for any arbitrary reason? Sure, okay Terezi.

Vriska does call her out on this, at least. But I wonder how many people actually take her words seriously. Too often I see this reductive reading that Vriska is always sinister and deceitful, and Terezi is positioned as her foil by being honest and noble. So by that logic, we as the audience must distrust Vriska and take Terezi's words at face value. That's laughable.

You know, maybe Terezi is a great manipulator after all. She successfully manipulated a good chunk of the fandom to perceive her as trustworthy and one of the moral backbones within the cast.

Terezi actually reaches out to Aradia, both to ask about Tavros's condition, and also to check in on Aradia herself. She repeatedly warns Aradia not to escalate the situation with Vriska, three times in fact. She really doesn't want her to suffer the same fate as Tavros.

I can't help but wonder how much of an involvement Scratch had in the Team Charge Debacle. Vriska draws a line between her friends and the trolls she sacrifices to her lusus. Her victims are a means to an end, but her friends hold sentimental importance to her. She seems hesitant on actually harming them, only giving in after Scratch insistently pushes her in that direction. Killing her friends definitely seems counterintuitive with maintaining a rivalry with Aradia and her long-term aims with Tavros, after all.

Vriska's whole fixation with Tavros is obviously based on what she read in Mindfang's journal. She projects herself onto her ancestor so hard and wants to be just like her. She named her FLARP character after her, models her in-game self as a ruthless pirate, and aspires to have the same romantic relationships as Mindfang once had. She forms a relationship with Eridan (Dualscar) and wishes to do the same with Tavros (The Summoner).

But Tavros is not the Summoner. While the latter was brave and inspirational, the former is cowardly and unambitious. He is not the troll Vriska wants to be her "future matesprit," so she seeks to mold him into someone who can meet her standards.

She hates Tavros for not being the troll she's "supposed to" fall in love with. Scratch uses this hatred to convince her to kill him. She throws Tavros off a cliff, but when he ends up surviving she claims it was for his own good, that she was "toughening him up" and trying to help him be more like the Summoner. This is one of many instances of Vriska performing mental gymnastics in order to justify her actions, even if she doesn't sincerely believe her own explanations. She's trying to convince others, as well as herself, that she is always right.

Vriska is shitty and intensely messed up, but Scratch is much more insidious for using a broken child to do things she wouldn't do otherwise. Even though he is omniscient, he should not be treated as a reliable narrator since he does have his own ulterior motives.

Mhm. Such a waste of her amazing talents. Talents we have yet to witness firsthand. If Vriska really does brag to Terezi about using her magic cue ball to predict the future (and knowing just how obsessive and paranoid a person she is), it really doesn't take a genius to know that's exactly what she'll do when faced with a cryptic threat.

It's interesting that Terezi believes Vriska "went too far" only after killing Aradia. It's her death that spurs Terezi into murderous action, when before she simply wanted to talk to Vriska after what she did to Tavros. We can see who Terezi's favorite member of Team Charge is.

Even though Vriska admitted to Scratch that she didn't want to kill her friends, she puts up a front with Terezi and claims that she was simply eliminating their rivals like a good FLARPer should. And again, she really doesn't want Terezi to keep bringing this up. As long as she acts appropriately guilty, she believes that should be punishment enough for her crimes.

Vriska flips from expressing self-loathing to acting justified and deserving of praise in an instant. She's in a constant state of feigning the emotions that she thinks is most appropriate for any given situation. She'll exhaust every angle she can think of to try and get someone to respond in the way she wants.

Of course, Terezi doesn't back down because she is adamantly set on avenging Aradia no matter what Vriska says. Even though she says she's hoping Vriska can change her mind, she knows her well enough to know that won't happen. It's all part of the bit of framing her revenge plot as dispensing justice.

Vriska becomes increasingly paranoid and indignant when her plans fall apart. She can't accept the fact that all her efforts had been undermined by forces beyond her control, so she's convinced that Aradia had been planning to sabotage her in secret. It's more palatable to her if she's the victim of a worthy opponent's schemes, rather than admitting that her plans were doomed to fail from the very beginning.

I do relate to Vriska a bit when she says she's "not very good at acting like a friend." I hardly ever reach out to people I consider friends, even though I value their companionship a lot.

But in Vriska's specific case, she's so full of herself and doesn't realize how her actions impact others. Whenever someone is close to her (Aradia, Terezi, Kanaya), she takes them for granted and assumes they'll always be by her side no matter what she does. When she does find out they're angry with her, it comes as a surprise to her and she doesn't know what to do to mend that relationship. She's fully aware of what she did to Aradia and her friends, but she thinks she can rectify all of that just by offering an apology and a gift.

Perhaps, on some level, she really does want to go back to the "good old days," but she's too emotionally stunted to understand why her performative apologies don't work. No matter how cunning or charming she attempts to be, she truly does not know how to interact with others because she cannot be honesty. She's always putting on an act, never realizing that people see right through her insincerity and are rightfully put off by it.

If Aradia won't be Vriska's friend, Vriska tries a new angle and tries to re-ignite their "rivalry." And she's absolutely livid that Aradia does not put as much stock in this one-sided dynamic as she does. This reads as an unrequited pitch crush more than anything else in the comic. It's too bad Hussie never really gave that much of a shit about developing troll romance (especially the pitch and ashen quadrants), otherwise he might've done something more with this.

It's a little sad for Vriska, honestly. She can't have Aradia as a friend or even a rival. She's obviously obsessed with Aradia and sees her as a big fixture in her life, but Aradia doesn't view her as anything except a minor nuisance.

Equius initially wants to assert himself as superior to Aradia in accordance with their positions on the hemospectrum. But her overall indifference to his racism, her superior psychic powers, and her ability to manipulate his surroundings as his server player all give him pause. He quickly drops the domineering act and allows Aradia to "do whatever things" she wants (all while under the pretense of "ordering" her to do so, because he can't allow himself to drop his act for a moment).

Because Equius views Aradia as a filthy commoner, a member of their society's lowest social class, it sets his submissive fantasies alight when he realizes the true power she holds over him. The one thing that rivals Equius's love of highbrow culture and maintaining class order is his desire to twist and pervert those same institutions in the name of sexual gratification.

Equius, eternally obsessed with appearances, wants to keep the nature of this "vile" arrangement with Aradia a secret from the others. He is very repressed and feels deep shame for going against the class structure he fervently idealizes. He doesn't want this "degenerate" side of himself to be known, even though nobody else cares about the hemospectrum as passionately as he does and Aradia even points out that her status as the "secret leader" was already an established fact.

Equius acts as if it didn't occur to him that she'd be angry at him for trying to manipulate her emotions. Who would've thought lowbloods had feelings?

Fun fact: This page was actually the newest page when I first started reading Homestuck back in July 2010.

This whole sequence is about the full extent we get about how a pitch relationship would look like. Anger suddenly shifting into passion. What a stupid concept. Troll romance really is just the most unintuitive, markedly unromantic model for relationships and people eat that shit up anyway. I think it was Hussie's intent to design this system to be overly complicated, emotionally draining, and borderline abusive because trolls are supposed to be weird and misanthropic. Yet nobody really comments on this in the text other than a brief "this sure is weird!" before moving on.

Even the trolls themselves don't seem convinced that any of this is "normal." There's never a point where there's an attempt to develop the quadrant system to make it appear normalized in troll society. Instead we get shit like pale relationships that either are doomed to fail or come across as one-sided and dominated by a mentally unwell partner, and pitch relationships that are unfulfilling and end in one partner ditching the other after things get too dysfunctional.

I'll never cease to be amazed that people online will still claim they have real-life "quadrants" despite all this. What sort of brain poison did Hussie inject into this work that affects peoples' behavior like this? Where can I get some to put in my own writing?

Another instance of the early establishment of GamKar in this page. We haven't even reached the quadrants section yet, but we see them being placed in the same relationship category as Nepeta and Equius. Using context clues from the conversations we've seen thus far (both dynamics involve characters with polar opposite personalities having a dysfunctional yet close relationship that is described as "friendship") it's clear to see even at this point why they'd be lumped together.

One detail I like is Nepeta writing "oh nooooo" under the Vriskat panel. Does she think Vriska has feelings for Karkat, and would therefore see her a rival? I mean, considering the last log between them, she might be right to think so. And Nepeta is pretty good at detecting the sincerity behind peoples' words and actions, so... there might be something to that.

Speaking of Vriska and Karkat, let's proceed to the very next page...

In their previous log, we saw Vriska governing the conversation by acting smug and overconfident. Now the tables have turned and Karkat has the power to boss Vriska around. This is a rare occurrence in their dynamic, and Karkat seeks to relish it as much as possible.

But even though he was making a big display about mocking Vriska and acting superior, he does stop and show sympathy when she tells him about her dead lusus.

Karkat describing his hate potential as a "finely tuned instrument" is laughable because he treats everyone with the same amount of aggression and rudeness. Hell, Eridan mistakes his insults as pitch flirting at a later point. So it really seems that Karkat isn't too dissimilar from Vriska when it comes to hating up everyone.

Karkat acts like he wants nothing to do with Vriska, but here he is dumping a whole ton of information regarding her romantic aspirations. Although he frames most of this information in the form of dunking on Vriska and saying she's too immature mentally to handle a romantic relationship, it does come from a place of sincerity and seems to be an earnest attempt at helping her understand her own psyche. Karkat may be empathetic and willing to help others, but he's also tactless and blunt in his manner of speaking. He doesn't shy away from being brutally honest.

Even though Vriska acts uninterested in his ramblings, it's worth noting that she implements her romance scheme with Tavros soon after this. It's almost like she took some of this to heart and really did want to see if she could forge a matespritship with someone, to prove to Karkat that she isn't broken.

Vriska has just received a well overdue lesson in humility and a complete verbal thrashing regarding her entire mental state, but Karkat still offers her a chance for her ego to recover by telling her that he needs her powers for his plan to work. Vriska is surprised at first, but seizes the opportunity to resume being her arrogant self.

The Mobius Double Reacharound. Stupid shit. Hussie never makes good use of this "two team" dynamic because everyone seems to cotton onto the session's true nature pretty quickly. At no point does this supposed competition between them ever feel genuine. There's no real rivalry between the teams, there's no threat for what might happen when one team loses to the other, and there isn't a big climax when the mystery is revealed. It's all just pointless fluff.

I think it would've been neat if the Red Team was framed as these underdogs pitted against an insanely stacked Blue Team. Equius, Nepeta, and Feferi are physically strong; Aradia and Sollux are powerful psychic; and Eridan is an expert marksman. Aside from Vriska (and Tavros, despite not making good use of his powers), nobody on the Red Team has any noteworthy abilities. Karkat could've been aware that he was in charge of a band of misfits and undesirables and use that as motivation to be a stronger leader against a much more powerful opponent.

Have I mentioned already how much I hate the pacing for Act 5-1? At times I feel like I'm reading some idiot's abridged version of a better story that doesn't exist.

Dear, precious Kanaya... Let's try and set the record straight with you.

I think it's funny how Kanaya's intro lists topiary as one of her principal interests, yet this is never alluded to after this point. It's just a flimsy excuse for explaining why she uses a chainsaw as a weapon. And then it goes on to say that the chainsaw would be an ideal weapon to hunt the "broods of the undead" that stalk the planet during the day (another detail that is never relevant), but she never uses it for that purpose either. I don't understand why Hussie gave her this weapon when, in reality, she never uses it for either of its intended purposes. She really doesn't have much of a reason to own one at all!

No, her real passion is her interest in dark, romantic literature. She loves reading stories to indulge in her thrilling and illicit fantasies. Despite the fact that she could easily experience the kind of intrigue depicted in her stories just by going outside and fighting zombies (a task she even has the perfect tool for), Kanaya is much too cautious and afraid of danger to actually do anything aside from holing up in her hive, reading books, and decorating.

It's this trait, not her love of fashion, that has the most bearing on her character. Her risk-averse nature and love of forbidden danger is reflected in her relationships with Vriska and Rose. She admires their confidence and willingness to take risks, but also naively believes she can rein them in with her sensible and calm nature.

Also, can I take a moment to point out that this is yet another parallel between Kanaya and Tavros? Both of them use fiction as a means of escapism. Tavros reads fairy tales because he wants to be whisked away to an idyllic fantasy where he has no responsibilities and the government isn't trying to kill him. Kanaya reads dark fantasy romance because she wants to read about daring, dangerous lovers taking her on thrilling, erotic journeys all while remaining within the safety of her own hive.

But of course the difference is that Kanaya's taste in literature makes her erudite, cultured, and a perfect match for Rose. While for Tavros, it just makes him look juvenile and like a total sissy because Peter Pan is "gay." Totally not a match for Dave, the manliest and coolest character in the comic who totally doesn't have any insecurities to cover up...

Kanaya has a changing wardrobe just like Jade. But since Kanaya's big special interest is fashion, it makes sense that she'd be constantly changing clothes. Does Jade give a shit about fashion? It wasn't part of her laundry list of hobbies, so I say no.

We really needed more chats between these two. Feferi's excessive hyperactivity pairs well with Kanaya's deadpan responses.

Out of everyone, Feferi is the most excited for the world to end because it means she'll finally be free of the responsibilities saddled on her. She'll no longer be expected to inherit the throne and try to reverse the Condesce's cruel regime, she won't be perpetually bound to her hive in fear of assassins, she won't have to constantly keep Gl'bgolyb fed, and she won't have to be responsible for Eridan anymore. She truly believes the game will usher in a fresh start for everyone, herself included.

Eridan is an exhausting person to deal with. Even though Kanaya loves to tout herself as helpful, she really doesn't like Eridan at all. Eridan wants instant, tangible results that coincide with his grand delusions. These are not what he'll get from Kanaya's vague platitudes and take-it-slow mindset.

Even though Eridan is often socially unaware, he correctly infers Kanaya's true feelings for Vriska. Must be from all the romance talk he and Karkat indulge in.

Despite Kanaya's dislike of him, Eridan considers her a friend simply because she's one of the few trolls who will bother to talk with him. He's so desperate for attention that he'll just laugh off her passive aggressive insults as witty banter.

Kanaya really wants to prove to everyone that she's helpful even though she's actually ineffective at best and bothersome at worst.

Far from being the sagacious mentor she wishes to be, Kanaya is really more like an overly cautious busybody who just wants everyone to take things as slow as she likes. Nobody takes her seriously because she has no power to enforce her will. All she can really do is stomp her foot and be passive aggressive if no one listens to her.

To the "Vriska Did Nothing Wrong" crowd, how on Earth do you justify this? "Say you're sorry for being a cripple" there's no excuse for that!

It's funny how Kanaya very slowly moves objects around because she doesn't know how to work the controls.

Kanaya constantly trying to worm herself as a positive influence in Vriska's life is motivated by her huge crush on her. She never actually acts on this crush in a proactive way. She really only talks with Vriska to "keep her out of trouble" but never admits to how she really feels. She sort of blindly thinks everything will work out for her, until she sees Vriska kiss Tavros. And then her response is to act cold and distant to her once they're on the meteor, much to Vriska's confusion.

Like Kanaya really had no business being that mad at her. It shows just how shallow Kanaya's true feelings for Vriska really were if she just ditches her as soon as it becomes clear that she won't get laid.

Can I get a "so true" for Vriska? All the planets are so insubstantial to the overall story that I couldn't be arsed to care about any of their "hidden lore." Most of them are only around for two or so panels before we move on. Medium cosmology continues to be superficial window dressing, what else is new? Let's continue.

Vriska getting agitated that Tavros won't easily roll over and do what she says. She has a plan in her head and won't stop until she sees it come to fruition.

This whole sequence is so twisted. It only really serves to show how badly broken Vriska is and how she doesn't know how to connect with others even when she earnestly tries. She only ends up causing more harm than good. No matter how crafty and elaborate she makes her schemes, she cannot force people to see her in a different light just by willing it into existence.

Anyway, this is pretty much the end of the stupid ass Tavros/Vriska romance plot. It feels good to finally flush that shit down the drain. This section of Act 5-1 is kind of a slog to get through since it has two of the worst romance plots of the whole story. I think the rest of the Act goes along much more smoothly, so I guess we'll see when I get to that (however long that takes).

[mistyheartrbs]

vengeance would have been a perfect special if not for doc's death, and i think the reason for that is like. it changes vengeance from a fun sort of "optional" epilogue tv movie (that also doubles as a sizzle reel for andras to pitch a fifth season) to something that irrevocably changes the directions of the characters' lives. if this is the last entry in wynonna earp then doc is dead, wynonna has lost the love of her life, alice grows up without her father. it changes the beautiful ending of s4 - something that was so ruthlessly, defiantly hopeful when it was borne of a genre and a timeframe in which shock value and grimdark character death were the norm, when it was filmed in the middle of a devastating pandemic - into something much more cynical.

now, let me tell you about homestuck.

i love it when stories engage with their role as stories, and two projects that have done that (which also not so coincidentally had massive tumblr followings) are steven universe and, yes, homestuck -- specifically their followups, steven universe: future and the homestuck epilogues/homestuck^2: beyond canon.

steven universe future is a series that posits, "what happens when there's no one left to fight and you have to face yourself?" it's something that existed to tie up the loose ends left by steven universe's hasty cancellation/ending - and so it looks at an action hero's struggles with ptsd when he isn't saving the world anymore. it recontextualizes everything we thought was just another action scene, just another monster fight, just another thing he won with love and kindness and great, great injury to himself, and says, no, this hurt him, you cannot take on the world for yourself, you deserve a good life too. it's in conversation with steven universe's endless empathy and self-sacrifice and doesn't ridicule it but acknowledges that it's a philosophy that you can only hold for so long before you crack.

it's a lovely show that, while much darker than the original series, still ultimately ends on a hopeful note. of course steven isn't going to drive off into the sunset and never have any problems again. he's a person. he's going to drive away when it's already nighttime, and he's going to phone his therapist, and he's going to have good days and bad ones and he's never going to have some clean break from the things that still haunt him but he'll be okay.

the homestuck epilogues are bad, and they're mean-spirited, and they spit in the face of audiences who wanted happy endings for the characters. they're written to mimic ao3 fanfiction, and pretty openly mock the fandom and the people who got homestuck to this point in the first place.

creator andrew hussie thankfully seemed to realize that and changed course with homestuck^2: beyond canon, where they started making it a visual webcomic series again, and it started grappling more directly with homestuck as a story.

the first shot of homestuck^2 is of a spaceship with "theseus" scrawled onto the side. the title itself isn't "homestuck 2," it's homestuck squared. homestuck multiplied by itself. it's a writing team - people who started out as fans of homestuck and are now arbiters of it - with only minimal involvement from the original creator. who determines what is and isn't homestuck? is it the god-creator who wrote himself into the story, then wrote himself being killed off? is it this new writing team? is it you? after all, homestuck itself started with audience prompts. somebody who is not andrew hussie named john egbert. somebody who is not andrew hussie gets to decide how it continues, and if it ends, and why.

"misty, what the whiskey-shooting hell does any of this have to do with wynonna earp?"

what's weird about vengeance is that it doesn't do any of that. and in fact its very existence is antithetical to doc's death speech - it, like doc, is something that's dodged death. it's a followup to a show with one of the most satisfying series finales in recent memory. it's nothing so cynical as a cash grab (as i've seen people on the tag posit) - everyone involved genuinely loves this show. but it's basically a ninety-minute wynonna earp episode. aside from a few brief references and nods to the fans - waverly saying "welcome home, wynonna" - it's not interested in the three and a half years between the end of the show and this new special. it's not interested in whether it should exist, or how long people fought for it to exist. it does explore avenues that the series didn't have time to look into - wynonna's traumatic childhood, the lack of support from the adults in her life - but it's not looking at What "wynonna earp" is. it's not a story about Wynonna Earp (2016-2021), a SyFy Original Series that crafted lifelong friendships and conventions and stories and art and romances and careers and acted as a beacon of hope for thousands of young people during dark times. it's a story about wynonna earp, the character, who doesn't know if she can be a good mom to alice, who hurts the people she loves, who loves those people so, so fiercely she'll literally go to hell and back for them.

and i don't like that her ending is one full of grief. that doesn't feel fair to me.

but that's what season 5 is for, right?

[alienssstufff]

have you ever read this classpect analysis https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960270

it's not really in conversation with wider class analysis but it has some neat ideas and drops the passive/active binary which is +++++++

[ CONTEXT ]

I started reading through the aspect one this morning. I laughed a lil at this part its like those self-help books

to disclaim im never the expert at classpecting (not smart enough for that) a lot of my knowledge comes from others to form a solid agree-disagree reaction to this. However i did find it really helpful with the diagrams and op makes it so much easier to understand aspects (then classes) by grouping them up like this

like i like especially with the categories, they explain the practical (in homestuck terms) use of the aspect in a session which im grateful for cuz a lot of the explanations kinda just... expects you to know these things

Anyway good collection if u really want to get into classpecting. would recommend so far

[thewebcomicsreview]

Hate to tell you this, but the HSBC update just got updated.

I get that they wanted to keep the Hell Arc confined to page 666, and it'll make the archival experience pretty cool, but hard refreshing the site didn't let me see the update to the page due to cache bullshit, I had to use a different browser. So let's liveblog now before it breaks again:

Looks like we're back to Tavros. I guess it makes sense that the first path to update would the one where they could reuse the talksprites.

So, as directly stated by Davepeta, Vriska is trapped in a time loop, where Tavros doesn't remember anything that happened the previous day, just like in the movie Groundhog Day. That Davepeta called out the movie explicitly in-universe as the reference makes me wonder if events will follow the rough plot of that movie. It's clearly what Davepeta wants to happen, but...Vriska....

Anyway, Vriska offers to let Tavros decide what to do today, for the first time. It took two whole years for her to try that, but she is the Thief of Light and not letting anyone else decide what to do is literally her cosmic role and stuff, so I guess that tracks. And what Tavros wants to do is....play a game.

Last update I said that Vriska saying she's done some things wrong while shrugging and laughing is the ultimate distillation of Vriska, but her having won everything and being miserable about it is also the ultimate distillation of Vriska. She's a woman of contrasts, that Vriskers.

The use of the phrase "session" here outs this line as having Deeper Meanings. Having SBURB sessions over and over so we can play forever is literally Dirk's plan, and most of the fandom is assuming a Candy session is coming.

So, even though they're talking about playing FLARP (the troll DnD game, which is apparently PvP), this is also an argument over whether or not Homestuck should continue. You can't really "win" if the game keeps going, but that doesn't mean you're stuck doing the same thing over and over.

I know Vriska is Problematique, but I'm still taken aback by her 2000s kid usage of "gay" as a general-purpose insult, and not just because trolls don't have a concept of "straight" or "gay". Apparently she doesn't even know what it means and learned the word from Da-

Oh, it was just to set up this line for people to screenshot. Alright. Fine.

brb, gotta go post this in the hard to use reaction images channel on the discord and have someone complain it's easy to use.

Tavros accuses Vriska of projecting her own fears onto him, and then gets into a tangent about being a "soft" female fairy and Vriska takes him up on playing this new "game for girls" and he panics and changes the subject. There's a...lot....going on there.

Vriska starts to have an actual breakthrough, when suddenly Aradiabot appears. Wait, is this where Aradia and Ult!Dave went?

We fade to black and I thought that was it, but apparently not. This being a visual novel makes it feel like a much bigger update than it is, and also kind of makes you read each line a bit more carefully. It's a good way of having multiple meaty (or, um, candy-y) updates in a short stretch of time, and that's kind of an important part of the "feel" of Homestuck that no one can really replicate.

Oh, I do not care for this talksprite.

The downside of this format is that it's harder to liveblog, I think, but basically Aradia is complaining about the Vriska Cycle of "Do bad thing, self-flagellate to be redeemed, repeat".

Vriska justifies it because she has to take action and set people straight and stuff, and if this conversation/game isn't leading to the return of "(Vriska)", the OG timeline Vriska who died and got a ton of character growth before post-retcon Vriska stole her girlfriend, then what is it building towards?

A lot of these lines make good single-panel memes. Yes, Vriska, you are the problem in nearly every situation, even (especially) when you're also the solution.

Aradia sa- oh for fuck's sake this is unreadable, guys. Anyway she says that getting into a routine leads to stagnation and slow death, which, mood, but also is about Homestuck itself as much as it is about Vriska.

Jesus Christ, how long is this update? This page is a full on Pesterquest game when the other five routes are finished.

Oh, okay. That's it. Vriska levels and we get a bunch of fire-themed pun ranks for her, of which Skinner's Bane is the best

[xyxofspades]

Laurence Zvhal Classpect Analysis

Hello everyone and welcome to “Xyx mashes the mythos of their first fandom with the characters of their other first fandom because they’re so normal.” Wherein I classpect the characters of MCD to better analyze them, their actions, their relations to other characters, and their individual values, as well as their place within the canon. Classpecting is a typology originating from a webcomic called Homestuck. It is a wildly complex and intriguing system and can be learned standalone, meaning you do not actually have to read Homestuck to learn how to classpect yourself. I highly encourage anyone who loves character analysis to look into the intricacies of classpecting. This is a good document to start with, giving a general overview, but some nuances and teeny tiny minute details are left out. You can find more by doing a quick Google search and there’s tons of videos on YouTube. Introductions aside, let’s get into it-

Why not start with a fanatical fan favorite? You know him. You love him.

The Casanova of Meteli, The Mage of Rage, Laurence Zvahl

In Laurence’s introduction the very first thing he ever does in the series is try and flirt with Aphmau. Confused and taken aback, Aphmau immediately screeches for him to cool his jets, after which he introduces himself properly. His flirtatiousness is a behaviour he keeps up throughout the series. However, he himself identifies it as a mask. A character he puts on rather than himself, telling Aphmau “I guess I act this way because I’m not really interested in any of them. I just don’t know how else to conduct myself.” There is a common theme within the Rage aspect of the theatre. Alongside this mask he’s created for himself, Laurence often uses flowery, performance-like language. He uses pretty words like “alas” and waxes poetic almost as if it’s a part of him rather than an extension. He is a person who lies for the greater good. When Cadenza goes missing he says, “We’ll come up with some kind of story to keep everyone safe from the wrath of a father and lover.” He even uses the word story himself as though he’d rather put on some semblance of a stage play than tell the people nothing. 

The Ragebound are defined as bringers of chaos but in Laurence’s case, I don’t think he does it on purpose. The Ragebound are known to be “bringers of confusion and doubt.” While Laurence’s first ever action was to flirt with Aphmau his first words to her were actually “Oh my.” That is such a non-specific statement but it dredges up a sort of confusion and sinking feeling deep in your stomach if a man you had never met were to start a conversation with “Oh my.” It could be a good thing, maybe you look especially nice today. Or it could be a bad thing, what if there’s something stuck in your hair you didn’t know about. It turns out to be a positive comment when Laurence then proceeds to liken Aphmau’s beauty to a pearl of Atlantis, but for a split second, you’re unsure. 

The Extended Zodiac states that the Ragebound can be “frustratingly difficult to convince otherwise when they have attached themselves to an idea”. Laurence is a shining example of this trait. He attaches himself to the idea of Aphmau to haul himself through the process of becoming a Shadow Knight. He latches on to the idea of Aphmau so hard that when forced to say he does not love her by the king of the South-Eastern Wolf Tribe, he is physically incapable of doing so, leading to the order of his execution. 

The Ragebound also deal in absolutes. The way Laurence perceives Aphmau’s love for him is an absolute. He knows she will never love him the way he loves her. The way Laurence decided it was immoral for Garroth to keep his relation to O’Khasis a secret was absolute. You either tell her or I will, which resulted in a fight. His absolute conviction to staying by Aphmau’s side. The absolute madness of The Calling and the slaughtering of the wolf tribe. All of these things are things that Laurence cannot comprehend being undefined, uncertain, or ideas that need compromise. To him they are all solid entities, not necessarily easy to define, but most certainly definable. 

There is a common idea that the Rage aspect is when you add limitations to yourself and your decisions through fear, anger, or skepticism, and are prone to paranoia. Laurence does this constantly with his thinking of “No, I can’t be around these people. I’ll hurt them.” Laurence consistently and constantly lets his status as a Shadow Knight define what he can and/or cannot do. It’s honestly frustrating to watch. He pushes everyone to a distance because he believes that he has fundamentally become a pretty bomb. The Calling ready to take him at any given moment and him fearing that he’ll let it. 

But Xyx, doesn’t Laurence have a lot of Time-bound traits? Yes, he sure does!

Following the theory of overwriting aspects (such as Rose’s Light being infected with an overcharge of Void in the Homestuck source material) it can be theorized that the Shadow Knights all suffer from an overload of Time thanks to Shad practically pouring it down their throats like motor oil into an engine. Time is just as much an aspect of… well, time, as it is an aspect of death. The steady clockwork of one's heartbeat or the decaying of a body over infinite hours. 

The Extended Zodiac defines those bound to the aspect of Time as “fighters, full stop”, and that their lives are “often marked by struggle”. While this is true for Laurence, this is true for every Shadow Knight. The Timebound are also described as relentless problem solvers at their best and ruthless, defensive, and impulsive at their worst. Sure, these are all traits that can be applied to Laurence, but these are general traits that can be applied to plenty of characters. Laurence does not have the bigger traits of a Time player. Not without Shad’s influence. Laurence does not partake in any metamorphosis or reinvention. Not without Shad’s influence on him as a Shadow Knight. Laurence does not have a hand in death and decay without the death and decay Shad gives to all his Shadow Knights. The Timebound’s need to move to their own rhythm. For nearly all of season one Laurence crafts a persona to move deliberately to other people’s rhythm. Albeit his persona is different before and after his experiences in the Nether, he still creates one based on other’s view of him. First for the women of Meteli and then later as a strong, infallible protector when in reality he’s suffering through the confusion and frustration of what’s happened to him. 

I think we can sufficiently call Laurence a Hero of Rage. But what about his class? I think Laurence would best be described as a mage.

A mage is one who understands their aspect and who understands through their aspect. As such, mages experience their aspect differently than other classes. Unlike most classes who have to learn and fiddle with their aspect, mages just know. This is my biggest reasoning for the whole ‘Laurence doesn’t use Rage on purpose” argument. He’s so intrinsically locked into it that it’s a part of him. To him, the use of Rage is perfectly natural. 

Mages often suffer tragedy at the hand of their own aspect. In an incredibly small sense this is the confusion and bewilderment he causes everytime he flirts with Aphmau. It’s the turbulence from Garroth whenever he, again, flirts with Aphmau. In a more major sense this is the distress of Ungrth’s death and the unsettling choice Aphmau is forced to make when he comes back as a Shadow Knight and Garroth insists he upkeep the Guard’s Oath, putting Laurence’s life in her hands. 

Mages are also predisposed to be selfish. Laurence continues his advances towards Aphmau not because she reacts positively towards them, but because he finds them entertaining. He pokes at Garroth in Malachi’s castle because he wants Aphmau to know what Garroth is hiding. A mage is someone who uses their aspect to their own benefit and Laurence, for all intents and purposes, did benefit from those decisions. 

Classes are all connected to archetypes. The mage is connected to the archetype of the Prophet. This is the part where I remove us from MCD and into some real world connections. I’m talking about Laurence as The Blind Prophet. The Blind Prophet is a trope that shows up in many stories, the most popular of which being Tiresias in Greek mythology. 

Most of Tiresias’s mythology revolves around his sex change, which, hey. Trans Laurence? But putting that aside, Tiresias was a prophet of Apollo, who presides over music, song, dance, and poetry. So various aspects of the theatre? 

I am very confident in calling Laurence a Mage of Rage.

There’s a missing third thing though, his lunar sway. 

Lunar sway is far easier to determine. It’s based in how you see the world. Whether you lean more pessimistic or optimistic. That’s a bit oversimplifying, but compared to what the hell is going on with everything else it’s allowed to be simple. 

Laurence is pretty easily dropped right into Prospit. He’s personable, intuitive, and incredibly trusting of those he’s close with. Extroverts are often Prospit dreamers and his default temperament is nonchalant and amiable. 

Laurence’s debut episode was posted on May 5th. We don’t have any canon birthdays so for all intents and purposes I’m going to be using their debut date as their “birthday” to determine their zodiac. 

The Extended Zodiac puts Laurence, a Ragebound Prospitian Taurus, under the label of Tauricorn, sign of the Gratified. I didn’t talk about blood castes because it doesn’t exactly translate cleanly into MCD, but for all intents and purposes I’ll relay some traits of the Bronze caste copy pasted from the web page itself. 

“Bronze Signs have a warm and generous disposition, but you might not accuse them of it the first time you meet. They have a tendency toward being withdrawn and slow to open up with new people. This can make them come off as arrogant and cold, like they think they are too good for everyone, although the reality couldn't be further from the truth.They crave stability and safety, and if they have the means, their homes will be full of beautiful things. Some might accuse them of being hedonistic; they would probably just claim to know what they like. As lovers they can be quite needy, wanting assurances that the affection they feel is reciprocated.”

While a lot of these traits apply to Laurence, I wouldn’t call him withdrawn and cold upon introduction. That guy came in hot. I wouldn’t call him arrogant either. Also I wouldn’t quite know where to place the adjective “gratified” on him. 

Personally, even though Laurence doesn’t necessarily strike me as a Libra, I would put him in the Teal caste. This would make him a Libicorn, sign of the Dismantler. Once again pasting in some teal traits from the web page;

“Teal Signs are natural charmers. Social and flirtatious, they are great at parties and public speaking events. They aren't afraid to use their many engaging qualities in both personal and business ventures. They have a strong moral sense. Right and wrong are very obvious to a Teal Sign, and it can frustrate them that others don't see the world the same way they do. They have vibrant imaginations, and enjoy fiction and roleplaying, and often those games will resemble the lives they want to be living. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to get involved with people who are very obviously wrong for them out of a desire not to be alone.”

Laurence is an incredibly natural charmer. His strong moral sense drives a lot of his decisions. The way he interacts with Aphmau like it’s a game is a mockery of a life he would love to be living. If you have an interest in LaurGene then that last statement of getting involved with the wrong people is obviously for you. Lastly, dismantler is an adjective that is very easily applied to Laurence. I bring it up a lot, but again at Malachi’s castle, dismantling Garroth’s secrecy. Dismantling what it means to be a Shadow Knight. Hell, even his current plotline is whatever rebellion he’s got going on in the Nether to quite literally dismantle it. 

Laurence is a brilliant example of “not all Rage players are evil.” This is all speculation. If anybody has a different take on classpecting Laurence please hit me up on it! I would love to hear any counter arguments. I almost called him a Rogue.

[mindfangfun]

Okay, I know this is like kind of an awkward ask but do have any advice when interacting with the homestuck community?

I've been reading this comic on and off for months now and I haven't really interacted much with people that much.

Or if you can't help with that just tell me some neet facts. I'm about 7500 pages in right now.

:>

HELLOOO !!! i love questions like this it isn't awkward at all, my main advice ( but not only advice ) is just to try to be open minded when it comes to the homestuck fandom!

the fandom is really fun and enjoyable as long as you keep a open mind to other fans opinions / theories and ships its really fun to see everyone's favorite characters, acts and whatnot! there's such a cool variety of fans from all over the world and imo what makes this fandom so great is other opinions that fans have that may be different than yours!

another great way to start interacting with the homestuck fandom is just engage in conversations about it online! like asking / telling favorites characters always works well . If your more artistic  another GREAT way to interact and contribute is making fanart , edits , cosplays and what not!

social media platforms I recommend for meeting other homestuck fans that are pretty nice and interactive is twitter or of course tiktok ( although i find twitter to be the easiest one for me )

a good way to get reach on twitter to find like minded fans is adding hashtag #homestuck to your posts or simply just following some homestuck fans until some follow you back!

that's all i hope that was somewhat helpful , i know these seem pretty simple but that's really all it takes :).

A little Homestuck fun fact for you is that most of the homestuck characters ( specifically the trolls ) were named by fans as the comic was organically coming out ! 

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reblogs & questions appreciated !