#PROPERLY writing john now that we know he has like an. actual personality

[lostxmelody]

Ooh, they all seem so cool -- may I ask about the tango 💃💃💃

yes. that is the hanahaki fic. the title might sound nice but i can assure you that what little i have written is mostly depressing. i actually don't want to give too much away for this one because there are a lot of twists im pretty proud of so... no spoilers, im sorry.

but i can give away the cast...

kayano mikoto/kajiyama fuuta, kayano mikoto & john (milgram), kajiyama fuuta & john (milgram)

kayano mikoto, kajiyama fuuta, john (milgram), kirisaki shidou (maybe one more? i havent decided on who, though. if at all)

[ekkotimesthree]

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

an essay by yours truly

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

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

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

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

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

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

TT: Either that, or flagrant homosexuality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(trigger warning: csa)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DIRK: What… did he do?

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

DIRK: Wait. What???

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

DAVE: it was "training" you know?

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

DAVE: it didnt make me stronger

DAVE: it did the opposite

DAVE: it made me never want to fight

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

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

(…)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAVE: uh

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

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

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

DAVE: yeah maybe we should drop this

JOHN: ok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOHN: i,

JOHN: hm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[guppybibi]

𖦹 pairing: John Price x gn!reader (i think)

𖦹 content: Fat shaming:c but no angst? idk what to count as angst, comfort & fluff, mild cursing

𖦹 notes: guess what? It's self indulgent! uhh im sick so I'll probably write a pt2 with actual comfort in it once i get better

Another year, another family gathering. You’ve always dreaded this supposedly jolly reunion, and John knew that fully well. Even if you never straight up told him, the way you sluggishly prepared for the gathering made it awfully crystal clear. He wasn't blaming you either, he's been accompanying you to these events as your spouse ever since he could remember. And he's witnessed firsthand the horrid words being thrown at you, he never expected the sweet looking grandmas to call you out for being ‘fat’ the first time he came along with you. So after that, he understood why you disliked going so much.

“Are you sure you wanna go this year, lovie? We can say we got a fever or somethin’.” He questions, arms crossed while he watches you carefully comb through your hair. “You know we have to, I don't want to come but here we are..” To which he nodded in response, chuckling dryly as he attempted to help get the knots out of your hair. “Well at least the food is good.” You nodded, mind drifting off as you imagined the taste of the continuous plates of food and its aroma. “Yeah..maybe it isn't too bad.”

The two of you took your time in preparing, making sure you guys at least looked presentable. Though it wasn't just physically preparing, mentally as well. John could tell from the way your breaths were quicker, the way your chest heaved more than normal that you were internally panicking. He knew you felt obliged to come, he subtly starts massaging your tensing back, trying his best to make you feel at ease.

Soon the time came, the both of you pulling up to the reunion on time. You could already hear the women chattering, the men drinking and the children playing around. John properly parks the car, not taking any chances to get a ticket. (is that how it works??) “You ready, luv?” He questions, shoving the keys into the pocket of his jeans and linking your arms together. “Do I have much of a choice?” You question with an unimpressed look on your face, John laughs heartily while shaking his head. “Nope, no you don't luv. C’mon, let's get you in. Don't want my luvie to stay out in the cold for long.”

Then he lightly pushed you closer to the door, guiding each hesitant step you made. The closer you two got, the louder everything got. “Oh, there you two are!” One of the aunties exclaim once the door creaks open, unveiling the both of you. Unsurely, you wave your hand and feel all of the aunties surrounding you, it seems like personal space doesn't exist in the 21st century.

“Oh Y/N, we haven't seen you in ages!” One auntie comments, not so faintly glancing at your figure. “Seems like you're well fed, you've put on some weight!” Another woman remarks, pointing at your body. John could see how you try to laugh their words off, agreeing with them just for their own satisfaction. No talking back to your elders, apparently that was the right thing to do in these situations. They've said worse bullshit before, so John shrugs it off for now and keeps his temper down for the meantime.

Now (almost) everyone in the family is sitting at the huge dining table, the squirmy children already munching on the food because they could literally care less and since their family’s couldn't be bothered to sit them at a kiddie table. By due time, everyone is settled and happily eating the food prepared. Some small talks were made about how everyone’s life is doing, some well, some not so great. You and Price subconsciously engage with nods and commentary, so far they haven't asked you two any unnecessary questions that made you feel that your privacy was being invaded.

So far this was the case earlier, but now was the time apparently. “Speaking about our diets, it looks like our Y/N here hasn't been on one!” One woman spoke up, chuckling smugly while she downed a glass of wine. “Well it can't be helped, huh? It might be because of genetics, she's always been a pretty chubby kid!” Another noted, almost everyone at the table nodding along as they recalled how Y/N looked during their childhood. You could handle this, you thought to yourself. You've endured years of their countless insults, what's a little more going to do? Right?..It won't hurt as much anymore, right?

You sniffled as quietly as you could, possibly as quiet as a mouse. However, even if it was, John could hear it crystal clear. As if your feelings were a mere glass door for him, a fully opened book. Carefully, John wipes his mouth with the provided napkin. While you stare at him in mild confusion, wondering why he looks like he's about to dash out of here. “Excuse me and Y/N, something urgent came up. I’m afraid we have to leave now, thank you.” You could sense the hurry in John's voice, bowing your head slightly to apologize to your family as he drags you out of the venue.

Now John is driving you two back to your shared home, the radio playing a random jingle that neither of you cared for. “You didn't have to y’know..I can handle them.” “Doesn't mean you should endure them, if I were you I’d probably never show up ever again.” He sighs exasperatedly, the grip he has on the steering wheel tightening even further.

“They're still my family.”

“And true families don't treat family like that.”

“..You're going to have a rebuttal for everything I say, don't you?”

“No doubt about it, now sit back and relax while I take you home.”

[dontyouworrydaddy]

Can you make a fic / short headcanon of how the COD men reacts to reader riding those bull mechanical? Their usual bar/pub has installed a new attraction which is that bull mechanical. Either they dared reader or reader wanted to try to ride, depends on the character. You know how those bulls move makes the rider look like they’re grinding?? Yeah I wanna know how the guys reacts to that 👀

ᴄᴏᴡɢɪʀʟ

Task Force 141 + fem! reader

Oh I just know that Kyle and Soap would catch a little crush. And they probably wouldn’t even try to hide it😅 Price is the obviously the overprotective dad and tells them to shush while Simon is acting like it’s not funny or cool at all… but we all know this man is feeling something.. At least a little bit.

This was actually supposed to be a x gn! reader but the title destroys it and I couldn’t find a better one. I‘M SORRY😭

I LOVE THIS IDEA. I just know I‘m gonna have so much fun writing this! Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy<33🩷💝💘💖

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

It was a night out after a complicated mission. Price suggested to go to that local bar together and everyone agreed. Well, expect Simon Ghost but you forced him to come with you.

As soon as you entered the bar, you saw a Mechanical bull in the corner of the bar

"If you manage to stay longer than 15 seconds on that bull, all your drinks are on me then" soap dares you with a challenging grin.

"Bet." you both shake hands and make your way to the machine.

You make yourself comfortable on it and it slowly starts.

Let’s say the boys were not expecting that. You were griding on that bull and you definitely looked good. You were laughing causing everyone to laugh too. Simon let out a chuckle but only loud enough for only to him to hear it.

After 15 seconds of desperate to stay on that bull for those free drinks, you manage to stop and walk back to the group.

"Damn, Y/N! Didn’t know you had this in you" kyle remarks causing you to laugh. "What can I say? I‘m a super talented person" you reply and turn to soap. "So, Johnny. Free drinks, aye?"

Soap laughs and buys you drinks. "You were WILD. How the fuck can you even move like that?" Johnny is fascinated and Kyle is invested in how you did that. Both if them clearly caught a little crush on you and they didn’t even try to hide it.

As both of them were bombing you with questions, Ghost sat there, not saying anything and just swallowing down his drink like it’s water. But deep down, he was also fascinated from earlier.

"Okay now you two. Stop with the questions" John, being the protective dad of the group, says as soon as he realized that they won’t stop questioning you and just search for a conversation with you.

Kyle was tipsy but you and Johnny were definitely drunk since you both started a new challenge without letting papa John know. You both ended up being super drunk and started to laugh about everything.

But nevertheless, you won the challenge but the price was you not being able to walk properly.

Simon picked you up in bridal style and said he will drop you off at your house, while John took Kyle and Johnny home.

Simon lived 15 minutes away from you while the others had a longer distance.

You kept talking about random stuff and Simon just listend to you.

As he tucked you in your bed, he made sure to leave a glass of water and pain killers on your night stand because as soon as you wake up, your head is definitely gonna kill you. He also left a little note with a skull on it and left your home, after making sure you were okay.

[valle-de-sombra-de-muerte]

Homestuck Reread: Act 1

I'm gonna strap in and do a Homestuck reread. I first read the comic when I was 17, and now I'm gonna be 31 in a month. During that time, my opinions on it have varied heavily, so let's see if I can properly collate my thoughts about this comic that has dominated a good chunk of my life.

I actually did give it a reread back in 2021, but I never wrote down any notes about it. Time to correct that mistake.

Right away we're introduced to John Egbert, a character that I've also held differing opinions about during my time in the fandom. I've gone from thinking he's boring, to one of the strongest characters in the story, and back to boring again several times. I hope I can get a more coherent grasp on our ostensible protagonist.

Well, I think it's noteworthy that his introduction page doesn't mention pranks or comedy as one of his interests. Being a goofy prankster is one of his defining character traits, yet the closest thing to that is this mention that he aspires to be a magician.

John's "magic chest" is full of novelty items, so it's easy to see why this dream of being a magician was supplanted with a love of pranks so early on. Hussie conflates close-up magic with practical jokes, and while superficially similar, they're definitely not the same thing.

I think John's "passion for really terrible movies" is the one consistent trait he carries throughout the comic. (And yeah, Mac and Me, Con Air, and Deep Impact all suck shit. John really does have atrocious taste). I don't believe we see any further references to programming, paranormal stuff, magic, or games after this act. Both this and the love of pranks are what solidify John's enduring characteristic of being a light-hearted cornball.

The beauty of user-suggested commands leads to this funny juxtaposition. This also establishes early on that John is easily suggestible; even an absurd command like this is able to tempt him just a tiny bit. This trait (for better or for worse) is one I'd argue is also a key part of John's character, as we'll see later on.

A joke like this was only really possible during these initial months of Obama's presidency. It's funny how it retroactively dates this comic.

John (and I suppose the rest of the kids as well) only has three friends added on his chat client. That's depressing. I wasn't a very sociable kid myself at his age, but I definitely had more than three friends on MSN back in the day. All of whom I met online.

Dave is introduced in the very first pesterlog and already we can see that John is a very annoying person to talk to. Even though he opens the conversation by bringing up Little Monsters, he feels the need to name drop the movie a second time just in case Dave didn't get the reference the first time (which he obviously did, given his response). He's very eager to talk about his special interests, I guess.

This is the first time Rose (TT) is mentioned. Very interesting that the first thing we learn about her is that she apparently has been "mackin on" Dave and asking him to play Sburb with her. Even though Dave is likely embellishing for comedic effect, it tells us that they have a very close relationship, given that he's the first person she asks to play the game with. Also DaveRose Nation has been eating since Page 35 lol.

In the same pesterlog, we get this line where Dave mentions how impractical the strife specibus is, since people obviously aren't regularly engaging in combat. These video game mechanics that seemingly everyone abides by have no practical function in their everyday lives. Clearly world building was not Hussie's first priority when writing this comic.

Correct, John. It really doesn't matter what the characters select as their strife specibus, since combat becomes increasingly irrelevant going forward. Ironically prescient comment.

The GameBro article is hilarious. I love you Dennis, you huge useless tool. Did you know that Dennis from GameBro has his own tag on AO3? I encourage everyone to go read the handful of stories on there because they're all super good.

John has the audacity to call his dad a cornball for liking harlequins, all while he's standing there wearing Groucho Marx glasses and a wizard hat. It's telling of his lack of self-awareness and disdain for other forms of humor that don't align with his own (i.e. lowbrow) tastes.

Here Hussie take a Shakespeare quote and misattributes it to Mark Twain. It's kind of a whatever joke, not really that funny. But then he does it again.

And then again!

Is this gag really that funny that it warrants being done three times in the same act? I think it's fucking lame.

Rose's first pesterlog. From the context here, it seems she and Dave had an off-screen conversation where he told her about John's gift. Her incessant flirting with Dave is also so well known in their friend group that John feels the need to bring it up right away. Jeez DaveRosers can't stop winning.

Note that Rose says "John" here while in the earlier log, Dave refers to Rose as "TT". John also calls her "TT" in a later log. As we later find out, all the kids already know each other's names. The only reason they refer to each other by their screen names is because their intro pages had yet to be released and the audience doesn't know their names yet. I get it, but it does read a little silly in-universe.

Awesome advert. God bless you, GameBro Magazine. BROBLERONE

This page is funny if only because I doubt the majority of Homestuck readers realize that the last paragraph is basically describing a lazy black man. How many of them will read "tawny gent" and "listless octoroon" and think they're just nonsense words?

"Caret Cake" hah okay that's a good one.

Wouldn't it have been crazy if John's missing chunk of hair remained that way until he got a command to fix it or something? But I guess that would've been too much effort for Hussie.

After a bunch of sylladex shenanigans (which I haven't mentioned because I don't find them very amusing. They make up a huge chunk of this act too, which is annoying.) John has finally installed the Sburb Beta. We're not told anything about this game except what is told in the spotty GameBro review, which describes it as some kind of game similar to The Sims where you "play house." And yes, it does resemble The Sims build mode, but this video game affects real life! Rose sets about manipulating objects in John's room and even alters the dimensions of his own house.

John's reaction is... well...

He's not at all fazed that Rose is manipulating reality before his eyes? Are all video games in Homestuck's world like this? I mean, if every character has an inventory system with built-in combat mechanics, it might make sense? This is never properly conveyed though, and it comes across as rather off-putting.

I think this is where the flaws in John's character become really apparent. He's very... underwhelming. He's almost always in this weird neutral state and rarely expresses any strong emotions. When he's frustrated, it's more of a mild annoyance or a temporary freakout before springing back to this basic... I don't even want to call it a "positive outlook" it really does feel like he's in this perpetually neutral state of mind until an external stimulus forces him to act. No thoughts are going on in this boy's head.

Hell, even when he's excited about something, it's only sort of temporary before he moves on to the next thing. He comes across as very emotionally stunted and it's hard to connect with him.

Is there a reason Rose is fucking around with the bathtub? It's not in response to a command, she just does it. She doesn't explain what she was trying to do with it, and only apologizes for dropping it in the middle of the hall since she was intending to move it to the driveway before her connection was interrupted. (The driveway bit was actually a command, but initially clicking on the tub wasn't.)

This insanely out of pocket quote has to be a top 10 Rose moment for sure. John's uncomfortable reaction seals this exchange.

Here's where John calls Rose "TT" as I mentioned earlier. Also, no Dave, you did not tell him to steer clear of the game. In fact, you were the one who suggested he play it with Rose. So why are you acting all weird and telling him to avoid her altogether? My guy, are you jealous or something?

Planet Fucking Jupiter is a top 10 Dave moment for sure.

We get to properly meet Rose. The fact that she hides stuff from the reader and doesn't fully obey some commands tells us that she's definitely not as suggestible as John. It's also funny how she refuses to use her arms at all in response to "Retrieve arms," instead using her legs to hide the box.

Man what's up with this Sims-ass architecture? An outdoor walkway with no railing? And with the weather outside, it's a wonder she didn't slip and fall to her death.

The first "End of Act Flash" is okay. John is faced with the final seconds of the countdown while a suspenseful track by Mark Hadley plays in the background. It's okay, I don't have anything else to say about it.

Overall Act 1 is kinda dull. I know there are people who swear by it, who claim that this is "peak Homestuck," but it's not for me. There are funny moments to be sure, but I can only put up with sylladex shenanigans for so long before things go stale. The biggest issue is that John is not at all an engaging protagonist. He has no agency and feels more like a prop for both Rose and the reader to boss around.

I think this Act suffers from Hussie trying to re-implement the same kind of adventure game format and jokes he used in Problem Sleuth, but it doesn't really work in Homestuck. The characters in Homestuck have actual dialogue and are supposed to be more fleshed out, unlike the comparatively flat characters that comprise the roster of PS.

Don't get me wrong, I adore PS and I don't think the lack of character depth is a detriment. Rather, it helps to put more emphasis on the overarching plot and wacky puzzle solving. It's established that Problem Sleuth is "hard-boiled detective", Ace Dick is "dumb muscle", and Pickle Inspector is "meek and fragile" and the reader doesn't expect them to act outside of their tropes. They truly feel like video game characters that the reader is supposed to control, using their different strengths to progress through the story.

John's problem is that he is ostensibly supposed to read like a 13 year old boy with hobbies and aspirations, but his suggestible nature makes him read more like a robot that blindly follows orders. Homestuck Act 1 wants to have both the wacky adventure game story and more fleshed out characters, but the end result isn't nearly as impressive. Either commit to making another PS-style story where the characters are vessels for the reader's control, or a plot where the characters have actual agency. Taking half-measures like this only creates bad results.

Hoo man this reread is getting off on the wrong foot. Hopefully the next Act is able to salvage things!

Read the next post here.

[oaxleaf]

as promised: s4 retrospective now that the finale is out.

season four is easily the most similar to season one. even the finales are similar. that's good, narratively. it's easy to get carried away with a story, especially one with any level of audience control, so it's reassuring to get confirmation that all of this ties back to the beginning. it also opens up a lot of opportunities for seasons five and six. really, season four is just season one, but arthur knows what the fuck is going on and he and john don't have the most scathing arguments you've ever heard every other episode, and although seasons two and three did a lot of visible character development for the two of them, season four shows the actual result and proof of that development. i know that i predicted a major blow-out between them because only a couple of episodes in i felt they were getting along a little too well. but i was proved wrong! it would have been easy to set up an argument between john and arthur after it's revealed he's lied to him, but i'm glad it didn't happen, and i hope it's not going to, because i do think this was the season that properly established that they are beyond that cycle of vicious arguments.

on individual levels they've also developed a lot. john is, for plot reasons of course, kinda vague through-out the season, but i like that with his increasing humanity he's also gained traits of jealousy and petulance. although with the revelation of his being stuck in dark world, there'll be some real interesting character exploration to do next season. john also got to do a bit more interaction towards the end of this season. i think i've always been partial to arthur because he has more relationship anchors in his life (even if most of them are dead) and i like looking at a character through the lense of how they interact with others. and so far, john's mostly only had arthur to play off of. meanwhile, arthur hitting rock bottom, first in part 26 and then in part 31, really did a lot for him too. him making up with daniel and reaching out to help oscar was heartwarming, i guess, but most importantly it showed how he's determined to actually do something to be a better person and not just wallow in guilt and self-blame. still doesn't change that almost everybody he cares about dies or dissapears, but hey. it's good development.

on a personal level? i'm kinda meh on the season. i was on season one too, so that's not a surprise. it's less to do with the actual writing or narrative and more that i dont care much for fetch-quests or detective stories or, to be honest, plot in general. i like malevolent for it's character aspects. it's my personal indulge to be emotionally punched in the gut by this show. and obviously a story needs to have a plot, and i'm not saying i have issues with the show. just that so far nothing has been able to dethrone season two yet, lol.

let's talk about that finale, then. it's really amazing how kayne dominates with his presence whenever he's there, even if this only, what? like the fourth time? that we see him. i always want to get more kayne, but these occasional doses are really perfect for him. he needs to keep that veneer of mystery and insanity, and he needs to mostly be stagnant in his personality, i think, even if his motivations are unravelled. it's what makes him so entrancing whenever he appears on screen (in ear?). so i hope we don't get too much of him next season, even if he's the one setting up whatever happens next. and speaking of what happens next? an advantage to tying up a lot of old threads this season is that i have very little idea of what season five will be about. jesus fuck am i excited though, though!

[zilabee]

- The first time I watched Get Back (which is the only other time I've watched Get Back) this was the day where I realised how much a mish mash mess the entire editing of it was, because obviously I know the tapes of day eight much better than the tapes of other days. (on account of it being the day where Paul and John use George as nothing but an excuse to talk about their own broken up feelings and confused affections.)

- Wonderfully, @inspiteallthedanger and @get-back-homeward posted about the cuts and snips in the lunchroom tapes, and how frustrating and impossible it all is, here. So I don't have to kill myself trying to explain how WEIRD the resulting 'conversation' Peter Jackson came up with is. What a strange strange thing he did.

- I'm aware that the art of documentary is cutting bits out, and I know they couldn't put it all in. But I do find it tiring. Even not lunchtime, but all the conversations, all the days. I just want to know what they look like at the appropriate points without having to double guess and think and disregard. We're not allowed that though, until some kind soul steals the full footage and gifts us pure wonder, so unless you can really see their lips move, it's only a mirage.

- But! the full 20 seconds that is given over to watching Paul looking sad where nobody says anything at all is the best 20 seconds Peter Jackson ever spent.

- Paul explaining that obstacles aren't obstacles if you refuse to acknowledge any sadness in your life think about obstacles. I mean he's not untrue, it's not not true, he could make a motivational poster.

- So proud of his terrible news bulletins idea. I actually do think ending a massive spectacular show by having a quiet man come on and quietly announce that you've broken up could be nice though. But really I'm just in love with the fact that instead of worrying about breaking up, Paul has been turning it into a project they can all work on together. (And thinking about how to make it suitably big and show-off break up, because it's the Beatles - I love that he worries about their legacy. George and John are so weighted down by legacy, and Paul's just like 'it's only hard if we don't live up to it, so we should just live up to it'. He's such a lot, but he's true.)

Linda: But you were saying yesterday, you know... you make good music together whether you like it or not. John: I like it. Linda: And making good music is also... John: But it's just... Linda: It's really hard working in a relationship. John: I know.

- I love that they call it feeling guilty about each other.

- I love that when John is talking about how hard it is when Paul won't give in on arrangements, he specifically says that he wants it to work more like it works when they're writing. It soothes me in its easy acknowledgement that the writing is good. (even while he's destroying it I know)

- Paul jokingly saying 'You stay out of this, Yoko' to Linda when she is joining in the conversation is probably one of the first times that joke was made, where it's now a recognisable joke to almost every english speaking person in the world.

- SHUT UP I CANNOT STAND IT. (Literally no idea at what point of the thing I wrote this down but I stand by it.)

- I hope they didn't tell George they only wanted him back as a matter of policy. <333333333

When we're very old we'll all agree with each other and we'll all sing together.

- I love him talking about how it all works better if they sing properly instead of just singing half. I love that they just need to be young again and they're not young, since Brian died they haven't been at all young.

- Love John wanting someone to fact check Paul in case Tucson wasn't actually in Arizona. His surrealism does not stretch to inaccurate geography.

Ringo: The meeting was fine. A lot of good things, but then you know... they all sort of fell apart in the end.

Ringo accidentally writing a perfect little synopsis of the Beatles.

- "I don't feel like the Beatles revolve around the four people. It might be a fucking job." John trying to invent The Plastic Beatles. Or make it a bit like national service for rockstars. Everyone dreading the fucking letter that means they have to leave their families and their homes and their happy bands to go and live in a cauldron with Paul and John for a few months.

MLH: I think at some point we should talk conceptually about the show. Everyone prepares to leave.

[squidsandlanterns]

Wick Head Cannons for how I think the twins came to be and the shadow entity (?) probably being involved- (Actually this is just a ramble-)

Ok so.....

This is really just a thought that has been rotting and scratching in the back of my mind from a year and some months now and it's just......

So you know how most of Wick's lore is basically left up to up to interpret? Well a lot of people seem to lean into the "Mary cheated when John left for war" but..... explain when in the audio of Mary begging God to "forgive her of her sins, she was evil from the day she was born,and she hopes to be released from her sins" (that part has me questioning some things-) and the babies crying we can literally hear what seems to be a demonic growl at the end....

Now, I know that the possible theory of her cheating may be true but....what if the twins weren't of a regular father? But a demon? Like we hear in John audio when he was going to kill himself that Mary had "Invited the devil into their bed" and she blamed her problems on the church she loved so much.....

Now that may mean that

Speculation one:

Mary probably slept with a demon and in turn face birth to the twins (and they may be actual changelings), she freaks tf out, goes to the church about it (well more like the pastor) and he like "no bae I ain't fixing that shi you throw those devil spawns TF out, and get yo ass in here after and start repenting" and she may not have she keeps them, John comes home, find out his wife fr cheated and all of a sudden when he's arguing with her Tom starts crying (because the shadow entity came back for them to place a curse of sickness) and shi starts down spiraling. LIKE FAST. Benny at that time knew what was going on but not to a great extent until he died and Mary at one point use to actually care and love her children but with John probably isolating himself, the pastor pressuring her about the evil she brought into the world and the shadow entity seemingly lurking around in the forest (I think it was in one of Calebs audio John was telling him that he's not strong enough to fight of the evil in the woods or smth-) probably waiting for an opportunity to strike.And it did get one. All because of Mary. She starting neglecting her kids, probably even starved the twins and Caleb (look at them, I mean seriously why do the look so malnourished??? Even when Caleb was alive he looked like a skeleton already-). I think the only person that got a little attention was Benny (Old Man Edwards audio about Benny). So when kids started dying (She most likely killed the twins. Probably suffocated and burnt Tim (in his NWO design and mask) and for Tom it was more brutal like.... Chased her kid around, beat him and then probably shoved him off the bridge or in the well.... I'll save this for later) And when she died the pastor peiced together that "Oh fuq this placed is cursed ASF there's a demon fr fr" tries to perform an excorsim but the entity shows up and is like "Nawh today you gon die" and the cue his death by the twins....huh.....now that I think about it maybe the pastor helped Mary kill the twins-???

Uh that's it I guess, please send me your ideas on what probably went down in Wick......Jesus that was in my brain for so long....I didnt even write this properly-

Oh well-

Thank you for reading my spiral into insanity.

[onward--upward]

WIP wednesday*

*it's not wednesday here anymore shh i'm SORRY i have problems with time <3

thank you for tagging me @cowboy-buddie !! for once i have been actually working on fic, everybody clap for me! it is not buddie but it is SOMETHING so here is some firstprince for you all <3 sticking to their roots and writing an email fic, but like, as an AU

But Alex is too wired to sleep now. Instead, he’s sitting upside-down on the couch, his feet slung over the back, writing an email on his phone over the odd sensation of blood rushing to his head.  This entire night has been full of odd sensations. What’s one more? Dear HFM,  It’s the middle of the night, so please excuse any nonsensical grammatical errors.  First of all: how fucking dare you? I don’t know how I got here, but I’ve been reading your writing for hours and it’s upsetting to me that you manage to be both very competent  *and* eloquent? What the fuck? Pick a lane.  Regardless, I did actually have a question. If I, a person who has considered myself to be entirely heterosexual up to this point, just cried four times while reading your queer histories, do you think that means something? Additional information for your expert, professional consideration… One: I like women. Love them, even. Two: I am very good at sex with women. Three: When I was in high school my (male) best friend jerked me off and we never spoke about it again. Four: I connected deeply with the way Alexander Hamilton wrote to both Eliza *and* John Laurens.  Objectively, I am aware that you – a stranger – cannot tell me my own sexuality any better than I can, however... Can you, please? Tell me? It’s 4am and I have been thinking about this for hours, and I can’t sleep.  Warmest regards,  ACD

i shall not tag anyone since i have managed to miss wednesday altogether, but i promise i'll do it properly next time

[helluva-dump]

Hey guys… so I wanna take a break from critiquing Viv and just want to share some art for fun.

Though, I’m actually nervous to. Because part of it is mainly gonna be oc x canon stuff as well as ummm… writing dark headcanons of stories of certain characters….

So I had want to tackle the serious topic oc co*rcion similar to blitzo and Stolas, but it involves one of my ocs. But I also wanna talk about purity culture, it’s harm, and I’m basically wanting to do my take of Heaven and headcanons I have for it.

And ummm these dark headcanons I have involve Adam… yes admittly I thought the idea of Adam being the leader of the executioners was extremely stupid and the leaks I’ve seen were eh… But let’s just say he somehow warmed up to me and I found a way to make him slightly intimidating.

Actually my friend @samiliy4me has been doing headcanons and ideas of Adam and we’ve done a lot of roleplays and omg… the way she writes him is so sinister yet fun. We’ve done roleplays of him with our Angel ocs and it’s been giving me content to do things with my Angel oc

She also did amazing headcanons for Mammon and keeps him an asshole in our roleplays which also gives me content for my hellhound oc.

Now that being said with things concerning Adam, my main thing with him is to criticize toxic masculinity within Christianity and all the Republican Christins that use religion to harm others. While my Angel girl and others badly want to help restore heaven with the New Testament. I’ve been watching history of Christianity and how is slowly because something republicans used for evil (when it wasn’t always like that )

So yeah… I may touch on a sensitive topic with Adam and one of my ocs… but here’s the thing, I am NO WAY gonna romanticize this relationship. Some of this is based on personal experience to help me cope with trauma.

And I know how many antis in the critical blog tend to act like babies over things like this.🙄 Thing is I get it, Viv doesn’t know how to properly discuss this topic without separating her n*nc*n kink. Besides, he’s not even the oc I’m gonna have my Angel end up with.

But I’m also scared shitless of the fandom taking mine and a friend’s take on Adam super personal because me and her refuse to sugarcoat him or do draco in leatherpants. Like the idea of him fascinates us and I rather actually write him being A villain Same with Mammon since we refuse to woobify them.

Now don’t get angry fandom…. I actually may redesign Adam…. BECAUSE GOOD LORD HE IS A PAIN TO DRAW. THIS IS WHY FANS REDESIGN. ITS NOT ALWAYS IF MALICE ITS JUST HARD TO DRAW SOME DESIGNS. I’m gonna do the same for Lute since she also looks tedious.

I won’t change to much of his design but I may change his horns and give him some skull mask.

Also I’m gonna make Bee into a bug/canine hybrid and make her be a princess while her mom is the actual queen since I love that idea Lovearts made.

And possibly do shippy stuff with her, Tex, and Loona… I’m mainly an oc x canon and self shipped but idk I feel like this OT3 can help me develop Loona as a character.

Do you guys care to see these ideas I have? I really don’t want this fandom to get the wrong idea of me as well as the critical community.

I don’t always agree with critical takes and I try not to jump the gun with every allegation if the evidence is flimsy. BUT this doesn’t mean I like Viv as a creator and the spindlehorse as a company since I do believe there’s mistreatment and Viv is kind of toxic.

But hey, I love Ren and Stimpy and hate John K. Been a Catscratch and earthworm Jim fan and hate Doug TenNapel so separating art from the artist is not gonna he that hard for me.

I’m still a fan at the end of the idea and these roleplays and such I’ve done with friends gave me fun art ideas.

But yeah would you guys care if I share this stuff?

[worrywrite]

If this is still up in the air in a year and a half when I tick off my current two projects (hopefully) I will do this. I will write the story. Better yet, I'd write the pilot for a TV show. Now that Holmes is properly in the public domain it can even joke about that. Make it a sort of satirical detective show leaning more comedy than drama.

The whole main arc is that Sherlock is just desperately bored and very tired of all of his past portrayals in media and would very much like to set the record straight, but the only young person he knows he can trust is a Lastrade (since they all know about him) and the last Lastrade he bothered TM was back in London and that Lastrade had made it a hobby to try and kill Holmes when given the opportunity and was getting a little too good at it for their own good. But Sherlock wants to sort of document his actual methods and process for posterity while actually debunking a lot of things about him.

I would also like to add in Mycroft to this vampire version. Mycroft is largely untouched character wise. The only difference is that, upon becoming a vampire Mycroft realized he could move his coffin to the basement if the Diogenes Club and simply never leave. He's still there. No one bothers him anymore but everyone kind of just "knows" about him and he's quite content with that. Every now and then he'll just sleep for a few years and then come back out and maybe the staff at the club is changed but they have all been trained on what to do. Also Mycroft technically owns the club now, or has to on paper to keep his coffin there.

It'd be fun to have a scene occasionally involving Mrs. Hudson where the thing is you just don't look her in the eye. Just a "oh, yes that's Mrs. Hudson. Don't make eye contact, she's terribly busy. Oh dear you've passed out. John, come here. Young Inspector Lastrade here has made direct eye contact with Mrs. Hudson."

John, ambling over, checking vitals, "duration of contact?"

Sherlock, "about two seconds."

John, "goodness, two whole seconds?"

Sherlock, "I'm out of cocaine. Do you have some amphetamines we can use to revive her?"

John, "I'm between pharmacists at the moment. Have you tried slapping her on the face?"

Sherlock, "... Are we allowed to do that?"

John, dropping her hand on her face and startling her awake, "ah, there we go. Se did it herself."

Sherlock Holmes modern adaptation but the main characters (Sherlock, Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler, and maybe even Lestrade) are all vampires and they’ve just been doing their thing since the time period of the original books

Irene gets to be from New Jersey like she is in canon and she’ll occasionally show up and help Sherlock with a case but they don’t ever date or hook up or anything

[hautsreadsmarvel]

Don’t Mess with "The Amazing Spider-Man"! (issues 1-4)

“Amazing Spider-Man” (1963, issue 1)

We’re so back… and so are the armpit webs.

The issue starts w/ a very brief recap of Spider-Man’s current situation, then tells us the Parkers are in dire financial straits since Ben was the breadwinner. Peter briefly considers using his powers to steal money because he can’t afford it, but then realizes it would break his aunt’s heart if he were arrested. In just two pages (half of which is a recap), Peter already exhibits more personality and goes thru more character movement than almost any of the other heroes so far. Spirits, no wonder this guy’s so popular.

I’ve heard of the “Parker Luck” (that is, Peter’s life is a conveyor belt of suffering) but damn, that’s quick. Can’t make money w his powers legitimately and J Jonah Jameson is already libeling the fuck out of him in his very first solo issue!

Funnily enough, a parent I know raised this concern recently - one of her younger kids was trying to be Spider-Man and jumping around 'dangerously'.

J3 seems nutty, but maybe that’s just because I hear JK Simmons’ barking voice when reading this. Scratch that - actually, right after John Jameson’s rocket malfunctions and Spider-Man makes a daring aerial rescue, J3 proves himself to be nutty by going on tirades about how Spider-Man must’ve sabotaged the flight to hog all the attention. Even the FBI and Aunt May buy into this!

In the second story in this issue, Peter breaks into the F4’s headquarters bc he can’t figure out how else to meet them. They scrap, and he shows off w the intent of impressing the team enough to join, as well as demonstrates for the first time his spider-sense… er… his “spider instinct” which “senses danger behind [him]!”

Peter being more concerned about money, while for Good reason, helps enrich the F4 here, as their high-minded expressed altruism is no longer just a simple fact of “that’s how heroes be” and can now be properly put into contrast.

Meanwhile, the Chameleon catches wind of this altercation, infers that Spider-Man must be desperate for money, and so decides to use him as the fall guy for his own heist.

Ngl, I spent a couple minutes mulling over what a “multi-pocket disguise vest” could possibly be before I realized it was literally just a vest full of disguises.

There are radio frequencies only Spider-Man can detect. Remember that the next time you write a fic w multiple Spider-people.

The web-slingshot is foundational Marvel canon! Whoa! I thought the games made that up. The web-parachute, on the other hand… that looks real jank.

Love these plots, altho I’m not sure whether to attribute that to their own true merits or just bc I’m tired of issue after issue of “strong hero wins by using their heroic strength to be too heroically strong for the dastardly villain to handle in a direct confrontation”.

“Amazing Spider-Man” (1963, issue 2)

I don’t feel like I need to cover these in as much detail, since these ones are almost straightforward “strong hero beats dastardly villain” plots. Just know that I’m still gushing inside.

Peter starts his career as a photographer after overhearing that nobody can get a good pic of the Vulture, a robber in a suit that flies via magnets. He decides to sell his pics to J Jonah Jameson specifically because it would be funny for him to be paying Spider-Man.

Imagining working on a suit like that has me giddy. We love a hero with a Tinker rating - er, wait, the "Tinkerer" is a villain in this issue.

I can’t stop hearing JK Simmons! And that scene at the end w Aunt May is so sweet.

The other story in this issue is good, but not really worth discussing in detail. An electronics repair shop is secretly run by invading aliens who bug the radios they fix on the cheap. Peter defeats them while the professor whose lab he’s interning(?) in goes on a brief break, and is back in time to debug the lab’s radio.

“Amazing Spider-Man” (1963, issue 3)

Spider-Man has a belt light. Is that still around in modern-day comics (spoiler policy relaxed on this one)?

Y’know what, that’s as good an explanation for the extra arm tech as any. I dig it. And his villainy is at least explained as “brain damage”, rather than intrinsic egomania villain reasons which you, dear reader, wouldn’t understand. Meanwhile Doc Ock’s mech arms actually gained super strength thru a radiation infusion - apparently it’s just a thing that radiation can inflict upon affected animate objects in the Marvelverse.

The action scenes in this story are pretty easy to follow, the hero and villain are quite evenly matched (rather than it being a stomp as soon as there are no traps in between the two), Spider-Man’s quips are zingy, and Spider-Man continues to prove a different breed of hero in that he actually gives up after being beaten. It takes an address at his high-school from the Human Torch to inspire him, which again also really puts some shine on the paragon qualities of the F4 which I’d priorly taken for granted.

“Amazing Spider-Man” (1963, issue 4)

Spider-Man stops some guys who are casing a jewelry store, but he stops them so early that he cannot, in fact, prove they committed a crime, and so they walk free. (You know how cops hate to arrest people and take measured actions only when they have proof, right?)

Obviously Spiderman defeats the Sandman. Highlights, though:

Garry’s Mod-ass attack.

Actually, this is just a really fun “fighting style” in general.

Hm. Uh. Wow. I, uh… damn. You know how cops love putting their lives on the line and rescuing schoolkids, right? You know how cops are notorious for their rigorous trigger discipline, right?

You know how cops cause no collateral damage when taking action on school grounds (or in general), right? Also, J3 puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder here…

…so he should at least know that Peter is yolked. That’s not any reason to suspect him of being Spider-Man, of course, I just wanted to point that out. “Say, kid, you might want to lay off the trenbolone! It’s got some serious side effects!”

Actually, if anyone were to press Peter on how such a notoriously lab-confined bookworm got so jacked, how would he excuse it?

I won’t usually bother screencapping any of the fanmail, but I thought this was interesting to include. So that’s what the first Spider-Man story’s cover meant by “the new Amazing”... he was straight-up replacing one of their multi-story mag lines!

Yeah, these Spider-Man stories, they’re pretty good. Hope they keep the trend up, and hope that the other heroes’ stories approach par.

[xtestament]

So I've Started Reading Vast Error

Let me just say, I have ideas and interesting thoughts, especially between the Sylph of Rage Taz Pomme and the Bard of Breath Arcjec Voorat, I mean I have thoughts on the whole bloody thing and the dynamic of each troll and how it fits so nicely together piece by piece by how their aspects both clash and compliment each other but let's take it slow and heck maybe you'll see more from me on the topic of the best spiritual successor to Homestuck I have ever laid my eyes upon.

Anyways, so from my understanding Slyphs are kind of a healer/support type of class for lack of better terms they help or try to help through their aspect, so seeing a Sylph of Rage in here is very interesting because oftentimes you don't see Rage as being well... helpful honestly. Yet from my reading and understanding Rage players tend to be people who get things done, people of passion, people of emotion, people of anger, people of rage, and most importantly people of Focus. And yet here we are with Taz who apparently is in probably one of the most unhealthy states a Sylph of Rage could be in as stated by her Denizen whose interaction suggests she needs to be broken down before she can actually help through her aspect keep this in mind for later.

Next up we have the Bard of Breath, you know the Class that passively destroys things specifically their aspect, now in the case of Arcjec I feel like he's already destroyed that "freedom" and his bard abilities are well on passive display of which he is coming to terms with because it can be used for good when not let to go off on its own... like he was... for several years. From what I've read this is a Class aspect that needs to either be contained, put on a kind of metaphorical leash, or... OR and get this be given focus.

I don't know what's happened in their past, nor do we all, the story is still ongoing and the pieces are still being put together but, we know something bad happened between Taz and Arcjec. Part of it could of him passively destroying the freedom they once had, part of it could be the things Taz did that caused the whole fallout amongst most of them, we don't know, but we can clearly see the negative traits of the Bard already at play here, unlike in Gamzee's case where he started off chill and then WENT TOTALLY OFF THE FING CHAINS. This causes me to think that due to being a Bard of Breath and hey there could be more pieces to the puzzle and more negative things to play here, and heck he could even potentially when utilizing his power properly destroy the freedom that the antagonists currently have thus screwing them over, but we don't know how that'll play out yet.

So here we have Taz and Arcjec, who surprisingly compliment each other as dysfunctional as they may currently be it seems to be, amends are being made to some degree as the story progresses, and He like the Previous breath player in Homestuck John both seem to be the first ones who actually enter the game, so that's interesting but besides the point. Anyways, the person giving him focus, the person forcing a change onto him, a person forcing things to happen is none other than Taz, who btw is the only one who I believe could get him off of his butt and get him moving whether he liked it or not. She in a very Rage-like manner did, in fact, end up helping him through well... Rage. Unlike the others who can and will move on their own Arcjec needs motivation, he needs direction he needs a push, he needs an eye to be kept on him, otherwise, he destroys the freedom around him as well as to some degree identity but that's more of a heart players thing.

Their dynamic is fascinating and it seems wounds to some degree are starting to mend, and I want to see more of this dynamic because when you look further it is almost like the perfect pairing in this regard and it has me kind of floored. I could talk about the other perfect pairings and how they fit and then start writing up a shipping wall of canon and non-canon relationships like the heir of heart I apparently am but what am I? Nepeta? Meulin? Heaven forbid... although... I wouldn't be against it. Needless to say, I am fascinated and desire to see how all these dynamics play out and heck I may even end up talking about personal character issues like what is currently going on with the Heir of Light but that is not for this time, it's just so fascinating and I want more.

[princesscolumbia]

Okay, I unironically love this, but it's been nagging at me since yesterday; where the hell did Gideon get a cradle beast in Canaan House? My "could write a short story but nooooo, gotta do 4.5k words of worldbuilding" mind has been whirring away at this to somehow make it canon compliant and I've come up with this:

So John "I never met a molehill I couldn't make into a mountain" Gaius is chilling with Alecto on the corpse of her previous self as the whole damn planet kinda just sits there dead, not even able to properly process all the corpses 'cause even the fucking bacteria are dead ('cause Jod is a greedy motherfucker) and they come across this dead cat. And Alecto has the knowledge of what this is from a, "I spawned this life" perspective what a cat is, but has no real concept of what a cat means to humans, and Jod, well-intentioned-road-worker-busy-working-on-that-highway-to-hell that he is, tries to explain what cats mean to human and realizes that this is a good chance to try experimenting with bringing something back to life and boom, one resurrected cat.

And naturally, he never bothers to name the cat, jawing on at his captive and only audience of one (1) anthropomorphized planet about how the person who owns the cat must choose a name that matches the personality and the cat is Alecto's now and fuck if she has the first foggy clue what to do with a cat, so the cat goes un-named.

Alecto, angry barbie doll that she is, doesn't realize that John screwed up monumentally when the cat doesn't eat, doesn't use anything resembling a litter box, and doesn't die because it's John's first real attempt it's an overpowered little shit and just kinda starts shadowing the only two living people left.

John promptly forgets about keeping an eye on the cat, and Alecto just lets the cat wander around, doing nothing to give it any attention and not even thinking of giving it any other aspect of "things living creatures need" because she's Earth and she just makes and consumes life, she doesn't manage it.

So 10,000 years later this cat is still kicking around, and along comes The Ninth for the new Lyctor trials and Griddle decides to absolutely fucking NOT be anywhere near Harrow if she can help it and winds up inadvertently stealing the cat's favorite napping spot for the last millennium and the cat, now being the Platonic Ideal of Cat, promptly does a "fuck you" and just lays on Gideon while she's asleep, and Gideon, Goth Jock Lesbian Himbo that she is, falls in love with this little night creature with disturbingly(affectionate) familiar behavior patterns.

The cat, experiencing actual human affection for the first time in 10k years, practically glues herself to Gideon's side. Harrow is, at first, absolutely, 100% against this little creature, but just like every cat-hating-dad on the Internet "secretly" falls in love and would kill everyone in the Empire and herself if anything bad happened to ickle Marrow and her beans.

Jod never sees Marrow 'cause she knows when to hide from Johny Abomination And The Lyctor 7 6 5 4 3, having learned to avoid being spotted during the first Lyctor Trials and having 10,000 years to perfect the craft, then when the Edenites airlift the non-Lyctor survivors out of there, they have acquired one (1) cradle beast that refuses to leave Gideon's body.

We don't actually see the cat again until Nona the Ninth. By this time little Marrow has bonded with Camilla/Palemedese (somehow knowing who's in charge of Cam's body at any given time and behaving differently for each) and the necromancer/cavalier don't really seem to notice that the cat doesn't need nearly as much Life™️ things as an animal normally would because they don't have the consistency of presence to notice. Nona somehow just knows that Marrow is a cat, but since she's got an innate understanding of cradle beasts she doesn't cotton to Marrow being at all unusual until after The Angel discovers Nona's drawing of a different cradle beast, and of course by then it's basically a running firefight/stealth-op/violent-revolution, and it isn't until Paul...instantiates and their memory merges that they finally start putting two and two together to get 48.

Marrow's just happy to finally be able to sit in Gideon/Kyriona's lap again, even if it's, at best, room temperature.

okie so griddlehark prompt: them adopting a little black cat?🥺 i love your art btw !!

sillies 🥺

[dreamylyfe-x]

Your trevor meta is making me realize how weird it is that the writers and cast were so insistent that mickey wasn't coming back, because I don't think theyve ever really known what to do with ian's story without him. They put him in these lukewarm relationships and tell us they're so much better and healthier, but then have ian straight up admit that he still loves mickey and nobody else has made him feel the same way. How do they set that up and then have him go back to trevor? They set up ian moving on with "I'm not that person anymore" and follow up with season 8. It's like okay...who he is now is gay Jesus? Lmao. He's always been the shows forgotten middle child and after they wrote mickey off "for good" they could have taken him in a million directions but they chose one so shitty it basically made cam leave lmao. Sometimes it feels like fan insistence kind of forced mickey back but in actuality, the seasons where he's gone just hammer home that he was always the inevitable end to ian's story. So bizarre how little the showrunners understand their own story sometimes.

Ok. I’m going to be a little more Doylist here than I usually am, because we’re talking about what the writers are thinking. And I’m also going to take this opportunity to share this fascinating article from the AV Club in 2016: When Fan Engagement Goes Wrong. Everyone beware, it contains significant spoilers for The 100. But it’s also largely about Gallavich, the fact that online promotion of Shameless leaned hard into the popularity of the couple, and were up against it when Noel left. I’ll quote: 

“[Supervising Producer Shelia] Callaghan’s choice to be honest and straightforward when engaging with fans is admirable, and yet also on some level futile. She can’t tell them exactly why Fisher chose to leave, she is (logically) unwilling to spoil future storylines outright, and she can only speak her own mind as part of a collaborative process over which she holds only some influence. So while many fans respect her effort to maintain the connection to this now marginalized community, others attack, reinforcing that attempting to manage these situations is a full-time job that no one has been properly trained for.” 

This article links some tweets and the one I find the most interesting is this one:

“But the actor left.  So...what to do? Have them just break up?? Felt way less true to me than a forced separation!” 

That tweet is from Krista Vernoff, who wanted to convey that they tried really hard to come up with what they do with Ian now that he’d lost Mickey. And I’m sure they did try really hard. And.... People hated it. Mostly. 

Here’s what I think, based on what I’ve read and the interviews I’ve seen, on deleted tweets and Tumblr rumours and YouTube clips: The show didn’t want Mickey to leave the canvas. At all. Noel wanted more money. The show could not come up with both that money and the money they needed for everyone else. The show let him go. And hoped they could solve the creative problem their budgetary problem had dumped in their lap. 

I actually think Ian’s story in season six is decent. I miss Mickey, of course. I find the last scene with him really painful -- but it’s not painful because the show is trying to diminish him. They write and then cut together a scene where Mickey is DEMONSTRATIVELY still deeply in love with Ian. He’s carved his name in his chest. He is looking at Ian like he’s the most beautiful creature ever given breath. And Ian can barely meet his gaze. They tell us Mickey is being sent away for 16 years but when we see the last of Mickey Milkovich in season six I think “God, this is so sad. They love each other so much and this is so fucked up.” 

I do NOT think “We are NEVER EVER EVER getting back together.” 

The show always knew what it had with Ian and Mickey. They leaned into it promotionally. They gave meaty storylines to the characters, particularly given that Ian was the fourth lead on a family dramedy built around six children. John Wells replaced Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing. He knows how hard it is to follow a phenomenon. 

The more I think about it, honestly? I don’t think they tried. I think they knew that they couldn’t bring in Mickey Milkovich, the sequel in season six, so they brought in Caleb. And maybe they meant for him to be a LITTLE more viable than he was... but I think there’s a pretty good chance they were just throwing something at the wall to see if it stuck, while being fully aware that the important storyline in season six was getting Ian from despair to a fulfilling career. Caleb was just there as a catalyst. 

Season seven if more interesting, because Trevor is brought on and it’s very much... “Hey, let’s do something new. Let’s bring on a transmasc character and put him into a relationship with Ian and explore those complications.” 

“Great! Put it up on the board!” 

“Also. Let’s call Noel Fisher’s people and see what we can work out because we can do better with Mickey’s send off and people are yelling at me on the street about it.” 

Quite honestly, these are not equal tasks for his writer’s room. You have one story -- Create a whole ass new character. The only thing we know is that he’s trans. Figure out the romance from there. You have six episodes to get them together as an established couple. 

Then: Bring back the well-established and beloved character for an epic romantic two-episode arc where he reunites with his true love and they run away together and then ultimately realize it cannot be, and say goodbye and it all feels like I Will Always Love You should be playing in the background. They actors worked together for five years. They have a great professional partnership. They like working together. They have a ton of history so there’s lots of juicy subtext. The longing and sexual tension comes pre-established. See what you can do. 

HOW do you make both those things work out so that they are equal? You need lightening to strike. And that already happened on How I Met Your Mother. They squandered their good luck and now there is none left for Shameless. I do not disparage Elliot Fletcher at all when I say that for Trevor and Ian to really work he’d have had to have come with scorching chemistry with Cam, rich material that really gave them a good opportunity to build rapport between the characters, and A wizard standing by to cast spells in the wings. They had SIX episodes, a pretty average connection between the actors, and the “these are the LGBTQ+ people in your neighbourhood” scene. 

I just can’t believe that someone with as many years of TV writing under his belt as John Wells has expected that to work. He hoped the Trevor story might be good, and was certainly going to break some ground in terms of telling trans stories. And the Mickey story was going to be the highlight, because he knew people wanted it and he also knew that they’d had something pretty special to start with. Which is why people were yelling at him at Comic-Con. I DO think he hoped it might placate fans a bit. But... he wasn’t going to completely close the door on Mickey this time, either. 

So... I don’t really think the show every intended to write Mickey off “for good”. I think they wrote him off “for now, and we’ll see what happens...” -- and they did that with Karen, Shelia, Jody, Steve and Fiona, too. They only brought a few of those people back... They brought Mickey back three times. They ended Gallavich FOUR times. Noel is in ever season except eight. I don’t think they wanted Mickey gone -- but I KNOW the fans also made it pretty hard for them not to know his value, so absolutely I think that played a role. But when you create something people love and you get that lightening in a bottle like they did with this story, I think writers are always going to be excited to get that back. They like praise! They like people to be excited about their show. And Gallavich was always one of the things that got people excited about Shameless. 

I think they also wanted Gay Jesus to be a great story. But that’s why the lightening in the bottle is so valuable. You can’t just get it anywhere. 

[clear-as-starlight]

Nathan Hale’s Death vs the Primary Sources

(aka did William Hull actually know anything?)

“The first the Americans heard of Hale’s death was on the evening of the twenty-second [September 1776], when Captain John Montresor…an aide de camp to General Howe, approached an outpost…under flag of truce. His main business…did not concern Hale, but was to transport to Washington a letter from Howe offering an exchange of high-ranking prisoners. Joseph Reed, accompanied by General Israel Putnam and Captain Alexander Hamilton, rode to meet him. After passing over the letter, he casually added that one Nathan Hale, a Captain, had been executed that morning.”

This passage comes from “Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring” by Alexander Rose and it, along with the wonderful @queerrevolution1776 inspired me to go on a (brief) primary source deep dive of Hale’s death. A challenge, given the lack of primary sources surrounding Hale’s spy work, and the tall tales that grew up around it.

I started here: Why was Hamilton there? He was not an aide-de-camp at this point, why would he be present? And that question, my friends, led to a whole host of others!

(Info under the cut because there is a lot, and it’s fascinating :))

The (Un)reliability of Recollection 

The idea of Hamilton having been present to hear of Hale’s fate, so far as I can see, is first related in “Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull”, a biography based on Hull’s unpublished memoirs, and written by his daughter, Maria Hull Campbell:

“In a few days, an Officer came to our camp, under a flag of truce, and informed Hamilton, then a Captain of the Artillery, but afterwards an aide to General Washington, that Captain Hale had been arrested within the British lines, condemned as a Spy, and executed that morning. I learned the melancholy particulars from this officer, who was present at his execution, and seemed touched by the circumstances attending it.”

William Hull was a friend of Hale’s from Yale, and they were both in the 19th Regiment, before Hale transferred to Knowlton’s Rangers. A lot of what we know of Hale’s death seems to come from Hull’s memoirs, right down to his (possibly incorrect and/or exaggerated) final words: “I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Hull was a close friend of Hale’s, so it does make some sense that he’d know something of it. However, the above biography was written in 1848, and related conversations that had taken place a long time earlier. Campbell herself admits she includes conversations not even present in her father’s memoirs.

Though her book is not the only 18th/19th century one about Hale’s death, it quickly became clear that all of them were based on conversations with Hull. The first time the name ‘Nathan Hale’ even entered the public conscious properly after the war was in 1799, in Hannah Adams’ “A Summary History of New England and General Sketch of the American War” where she writes: “The compiler of this History of New England is indebted to Gen. Hull of Newton for this interesting account of Captain Hale.”

Hale isn’t mentioned again until 1824, in a book by Jedediah Morse, who says he got his info from Adams, who in turn got it from Hull. It seems likely, then, that the idea of Hamilton being there (and indeed, that most of what we know) came from Hull’s supposed recollection, 20+ years after the event took place.

Now, this is not to say that Hull was lying. Return records show that he and his Regiment were certainly present at “Camp near to Harlem Heights” with Washington’s forces at the time that Washington would have been given the information about Hale, and we know Hamilton and his Artillery were present also, as it is at Harlem Heights that he apparently first came to Washington’s notice (according to John C. Hamilton). It did seem a bit strange though, to both me and @queerrevolution1776 , for Hull or Hamilton to have met with an official flag of truce, when they were both only Captains, and not on Washington’s staff (he’d only just become aware of Hamilton’s existence, after all).

Washington makes no mention of either of them in his correspondence, instead writing to Jonathan Trumbull Sr. that it was Colonel Joseph Reed whom Howe’s aide, John Montresor, met with. It makes sense that Reed would have met with Montresor, given his position on Washington’s staff. Reed is mentioned in Rose’s book, but not Hull’s account, and I thought that was a discrepancy worth a look. Hull, writing after the fact, mentions only Hamilton, who by then was a well-known, and scandalous, public figure. Reed, on the other hand, was nowhere near as popular, and perhaps did not serve as such an interesting figure in a story about Hull’s friend, one of America’s earliest spies.

Sure, Hamilton could have been nearby, or overheard the discussion, and in turn told Hull what he had heard—which could explain why Hale’s last moments have been exaggerated, or perhaps accidentally falsified, given that a British officer who was present apparently heard: “It the duty of every good officer, to obey any orders given him by his commander in chief” and not what is so often recounted. Even a newspaper (The Essex Journal) publishing an account five months later, quoted Hale as having said: “If I had ten thousand lives I would lay them all down, if called to it, in defence of my injured, bleeding country”—No one seems quite able to agree exactly what he said! Hull may well have also told his children he was there to make the story seem more personal, and exciting.

(And I’m really starting to doubt that Hamilton was at the meeting at all. It’s never mentioned in any of his writing, or in the John C Hamilton biography)

There’s no “official” reports of Hale’s death either (excepting the noting of his death on the 22nd September casualty list) which is why so much has relied heavily on what Hull claimed to have been told. When Washington wrote Trumbull about the flag of truce meeting the next day, he was mostly concerned with the fire that had engulfed New York the day before, and the claims that Continental soldiers and spies had set it. The only possible reference we have from him that concerned the meeting between Reed and Montresor, with perhaps an oblique reference to Hale, is as follows:

“On Friday night about eleven or twelve o’Clock a fire broke out in the City of New York, which burning rapidly till after Sunrise next morning, destroyed a great number of Houses—By what means it happened we do not know; but the Gentleman who brought the letter out last night from General Howe, and who was one of his Aid De Camps informed Colo. Reed that several of our Countrymen had been punished with various deaths on account of it. Some by hanging, others by burning & c. alledging that they were apprehended when committing the fact.”

Howe himself never mentioned Hale explicitly in official correspondence between him and Washington, and Washington never did either. In fact, neither of them mentioned the spies or the fire to one another at all, concerned with prisoner exchanges, and the accusation of ill-treatment of British prisoners (Howe to Washington 21st September 1776 and Washington to Howe 23rd September 1776). Hale, and his fate, was unfortunately left to Montresor’s verbal account, and Hull’s dubious reporting.

Tench Tilghman on Hale’s Death

In terms of other primary correspondence that might reference Hale’s death, even remotely, we have accounts from Washington’s aide-de-camp, Tench Tilghman.

Firstly, Tilghman wrote his father, James Tilghman, on the 25th September 1776, of the events and executions surrounding the fire. He was sent to deliver Washington’s reply to Howe’s camp under another flag of truce the day after Montresor’s, and spoke with some men in Howe’s camp then:

“Reports concerning the setting fire to New York: If it was done designedly, it was without the knowledge or Approbation of any commanding officer in this Army…every man belonging to the Army who remained in or were found near the City were made close prisoners. Many Acts of barbarous cruelty were committed upon poor creatures who were perhaps flying from the flames, the Soldiers and Sailors looked upon all who were not in the military line as guilty, and burnt and cut to pieces many. But this I am sure was not by Order. Some were executed next day upon good Grounds… I went down to the Enemy's lines yesterday with a Flag to settle the Exchange of prisoners…I met a very civil Gentleman with whom I had an Hours conversation…”

In Rose’s book, he mentions Hull & Colonel Samuel B. Webb going with Tilghman to the camp to further question Montresor about Hale. Webb, another aide-de-camp to Washington, may well have gone. But it seems a bit strange for Hull to have done so. And Hull’s account did not mention Webb, or Tilghman, which is also a bit odd. Rose made no note of his source for this, but I’d like to find it! Perhaps it’s mentioned in Webb’s journals, something I’d have to travel to Yale to see :(

Tilghman did, eventually, mention Hale explicitly, though not by name, when he wrote to Egbert Benson on 3rd October 1776:

“I am sorry that your Convention do not think themselves legally authorized to make examples of those villains they have apprehended…The General is determined if he can bring some of them in his hand’s under the denomination of spies, to execute them. General Howe hanged a Captain of ours belonging to Knowlton' s Rangers, who went into New-York to make discoveries. I don’t see why we should not make retaliation.”

So he definitely knew of Hale’s death by then, and it seemed to anger him greatly.

Miscellaneous Reports of Hale’s Death

There were also reports made by various others, that mention explicitly, or might imply, Hale’s death:

“Friday last we discovered a vast cloud of smoke arising from the north part of the city, which continued '‘ill Saturday evening…those that were found on or near the spot were pitched into the conflagration, some hanged by their heals, others by their necks with their throats cut. Inhuman barbarity! One Hale in New York, on suspicion of being a spy, was taken up and dragged without ceremony to the execution post and hung up.” (A Letter from September 28th 1776)

“We hanged up a rebel spy the other day, and some soldiers got, out of a rebel Gentleman’s garden, a painted soldier on a board, and hung it along with the Rebel; and wrote upon it, General Washington, and I saw it yesterday beyond headquarters by the roadside.” (Kentish Gazette, November 1776)

“A spy from the enemy (by his own full confession) apprehended last night, was this day executed at 11 o’clock in front of Artillery Park.” (General Howe’s diary)

“The Enemy charged some stragglers of our people that happened to be in New York with having set the City on Fire designedly and took that occasion as we were told to exercise some inhuman Crueltys on those poor Wretches that were in their power.” (Committee of Secret Correspondence to Silas Deane 1st October 1776)

What does all this mean?

Hamilton probably wasn’t there (but I can’t make a call on that for sure!)

basically, it’s clear that the primary sources on Hale’s death are few, and somewhat contradictory in places. I found it super interesting, and thought y’all might too! Please keep in mind I’m not calling William Hull a liar (and I definitely haven’t done anywhere near enough research to say anything conclusively!)

But I definitely think it’s always worth examining what we think we know from primary sources. And it’s very fun!