#VRISKA SHOULD WIN

[homestuckhomestuckhomestuck]

maybe we need to actually get vriska trending to see what happens

the poll ends in 11 hours-

US: most of the US at least will be sleeping ~7 hours from now.

UK: wakes up ~7 hours from now.

Europe/Asia/Australia: Most everyone else is more or less awake til poll ends

US tumblr users, theres potential 7 hour posting period to tag posts for fandom/vriska

[jakeeeexp]

the poll is at 50/50 guys PLEASE vote vriska shes literally THE tumblr woman

[radicalreliablerandomness]

Now that the polls are finished, here's another poll I need to know the answer of:

[brothfan1997]

if you asked me on the street i would tell you my favorite troll is vriska. i would swear it up and down. and in many ways it’s true! she’s certainly the best one, it’s really a toss up between her and terezi as the fundamental axis upon which homestuck spins but i have to admit? deep in my heart of hearts i know it’s karkat. i know it. but i’m not gonna say it

[rescuerabbit]

miku might have been here for a long time, but the website is constructed around vriska. why do you think its this shade of blue?? tumblr is vriska incarnate

[s1ld3n4f1l]

at this point its so obvious that vriska is being botted that i think vriska should just be disqualified. sorry genuine vriska fans, she'll win a contest someday.

[frozenbluecookies]

All of my other predictions have been completely wiped out so take this with multiple salt grains, but Vriskasweep is happening now, yeah? There's nobody left who can challenge her. There's also nobody left who embodies the essence of a tumblrwoman like her. As much as I love Marceline (who is currently winning the other poll), I don't think she can win

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

got called an abuse apologist today lads :(

[oupydogcity]

my hatred of big obnoxious character polls leaving my body when i see vriska could win something

[elysiuminfra]

several character tournament polls blowing up and people suibaiting eachother over who votes for who is so funny to me like because. its tumblr polls. its jokes. who cares who wins, it’s about the voting itself. i always vote for who i think would be the funniest winner to me. and the hype is fun but its all jokes and always has been. if you try to take tumblr polls seriously you fundamentally misunderstand that it just doesn’t matter and probably put too much importance on how many people like the thing you like. and also how this website works. why does it even matter if its “fair” or not? it’s all for fun, no matter who wins and how! the real joy of tumblr polls is the journey we go on together and getting to laugh at people who get mad over fictional characters

[thefandomexpert]

i see in the water the shark fins of discourse regarding vriska’s voter fraud but u see, disco elysium fans, this is in fact incredibly in character and in the spirit of serket-ness to have caused a ruckus as such so i can only laugh

[redtailfins]

I think katya deserves to win the tumblr woman competition because she’s literally a woman created by tumblr

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Why The Ending Sucks

Ok I figured it out. Hear me out:

The entire comic has a running theme best summed up as "who is controlling the narrative, and why are we listening to them?"

Hussie plays a caricaturized version of himself that he describes as "buffoonish" and "oafish". Caricature!Hussie is well-meaning, but a dumb idiot who's incredibly biased in favor of certain characters and in disfavor of others (the most obvious example being his "love" of Vriska, but there's also the way he constantly disparages Eridan). As a result, you have to be VERY SKEPTICAL and VERY CAREFUL when approaching Homestuck's narration, because even when the "best" narrator is at the helm, he's not 100% trustworthy and incapable of giving the readers an unbiased view of the story.

I say "best" because, importantly, Hussie isn't the story's only narrator. He and Doc Scratch explicitly fight over control of the story - Doc Scratch, the child abusing predator who engineered Alternia's fascist murder society, whose shaping of its history is explicitly described by character!Hussie as "fanfic". He is then killed by Lord English, who is described by Hussie as embodying the "toxically masculine" and by extension, the patriarchy, and Caliborn explicitly takes control of the story. John even grapples with Caliborn's version of events, calling out how sexist and misogynistic and shitty it is.

So if we're keeping score: control over the narrative is LITERALLY wrested away from Hussie (who was already struggling to be unbiased) by fascists, abusers, and the patriarchy. It's stressed multiple times that Caliborn/LE are responsible for literally everything that ever happens; the reason the Game Over timeline ends the way that it does is because the alpha timeline is, in essence, the narrative LE is telling: the forces of fascism get to claim the new universe, thereby propogating itself, while friendship dies and all hope is lost.

Who's in control of the narrative, and why are we listening to them?

There are other minor examples of this, too: Aranea is an exposition fairy, and she's biased as fuck and wrong ALL THE TIME about her own teammates. Karkat's explanations and rationalizations are constantly tinged with his own self-loathing and self-blame. Sollux and Meulin are both prophets as per their Mage class, but are both so bogged down by their own emotional issues that the futures they pick out are actively harmful. So on and so on. At nearly every turn, you have to interrogate who's telling the story, what their motivations are, and what they're overlooking or deliberately obfuscating.

So given that this theme is so prevalent, and so thoroughly weighted toward "well, actually, maybe you shouldn't take narration at face value and should interrogate it and come to your own conclusions," it would be Really Weird for the story to go "actually, you can totally trust the narrative now because everyone gets a happy ending".

So, I know that it makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but here's my genuine take on Homestuck's ending:

The ending is shitty on purpose because the viewer is intended to take it as a dare to refute the narration and make something better.

Why are we letting character!Hussie tell the story? He's a biased idiot. Why are we letting the various avatars of LE and Caliborn tell the story? They're fascist, misogynistic, predatory assholes.

And - because Homestuck is a story about life - why are we letting idiots, assholes, abusers, and creeps dictate the story of real life? The world is full of forces that would try to take control of the story and make everyone else play along, represented in microcosm within the text of Homestuck. We cannot let those forces win.

So please go out and do something kind and hopeful and loving in the world today. Thanks for reading.

[thewertsearch]

PCG: GAMZEE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO GO CRAZY. PCG: I THINK IF HE DOES PCG: IT MEANS WE FUCKED SOMETHING UP. PCG: IT MEANS I FUCKED SOMETHING UP. PCG: HE'S MY RESPONSIBILITY, I HAVE TO MAKE SURE HE'S SAFE.

Poor Karkat. He's directing all this stress inwards, convincing himself that the current crisis is because he dropped the ball - but the truth is, Gamzee’s problems weren’t his to solve. Not exclusively his, anyway.

You may be the leader, Karkat, but you’re not your entire team’s sole confidant, and you’re definitely not their therapist. You can’t be everything to everyone. You're just one kid.

PCG: ONE TIME, ONE OF THE DOOMED ARADIAS TOLD ME SHE CAME FROM A TIME WHERE HE FLIPPED OUT AND KILLED EVERYBODY, BECAUSE OF MY FAILURE. PCG: I DIDN'T TAKE HER SERIOUSLY, BUT I SHOULD HAVE. PCG: SHE WAS CONSTANTLY FIXING MY FUCKUPS. PCG: ROBOTS FROM THE FUTURE ALWAYS COMING BACK TO TELL ME HOW SOME HASTY SHIT I DID WITH FROG BREEDING OR WHATEVER WOULD MAKE IT BE IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN.

All this Aradiabots floating around - and yet, not a single one of them corrected your mistake with the Final Frog. How could Aradia, queen of temporal micromanagement, miss something this obvious?

Methinks there was another agenda at play here. At this point in the timeline, Aradia was still a (possibly) unwitting pawn in Doc Scratch's scheme to bring about the Great Undoing. He probably needed Karkat to miss that Final Frog.

PCG: MY OWN PERSONAL MISTAKES PROBABLY ACCOUNTED FOR MORE DOOMED ARADIABOTS THAN ANYTHING ELSE. PCG: WHICH WAS SORT OF A SILVER LINING I GUESS? I DON'T THINK WE WOULD HAVE BEATEN THE KING WITHOUT HER ARMY.

Did she actually say it was your mistake? Because to me, It seems more plausible that she said it was a mistake, and your hindbrain made a quiet little edit.

Seriously, you had no way of knowing that Gamzee would flip out like this. Sure, one of the Aradiabots reported that it happened, but there were hundreds of those girls flying around the Medium, and I’m sure plenty of them arrived from timelines where Eridan snapped, instead. Or Vriska, for that matter.

How was Karkat supposed to discern the signal from the noise? How was he supposed to keep track of every real and hypothetical problem at once?

This isn't on him, and I'll argue that point until I'm blue in the face.

“Oh, hey – it’s one of those filthy Prospitians. ...wait, didn’t I give that one a bunny once?”

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

Aradia: feferi has been trying t0 c0nvince me that I'm an ai

Karkat: HUH? WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT?

Feferi: beachcause she's transparent? she can take over other seaople? that kind of stuff

Karkat: THAT'S BECAUSE SHE'S A GHOST, DIVING BELL FOR BRAINS

Aradia: thank y0u, that's what i said

Feferi: if she's a ghost, why aren't any of the other trolls turning into coasts?

Aradia: 0kay f- why d0n't we just settle this?

Aradia: tavr0s, l00k me up in the sgrub database

Tavros: yEAH, i'D LIKE TO HELP, BUT WE MAY HAVE JUST KINDA, yOU KNOW, dELETED ALL THAT STUFF FOR THE BLUE TEAM

Feferi: all of what stuff for the blues?

Tavros: tHE EVERYTHING STUFF?

Feferi: didn't i shell you not to touch anyfin?

Tavros: yES, bUT YOU ALSO TOLD US TO BREAK STUFF

Tavros: tHIS SEEMED LIKE AN EXCELLENT COMPROMISE

Aradia: alright, great, that's fantastic

Aradia: n0w i can't pr0ve her wr0ng, and i d0n't a paycheck

Aradia: fucking great, thank y0u guys

Vriska: Your ass never existed! Which means red team wins!

Vriska: Suck it, you non-existant losers >::::D !!!!!!!!

Aradia: n0b0dy gives a fuck ab0ut that

Vriska: I agree

Karkat: NO WAY, SHE'S NOT A COMPUTER

Vriska: How can we 8e sure?

Eridan: maybe wwe should ask it something only a computer wwould knoww?

Tavros: lIKE WHAT?

Eridan: wwhat's nine times eight?

Tavros, Karkat, and Vriska, in unison: SEVENTY TWO

Eridan: oh my god it's spreading

[thewebcomicsreview]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, I do not care for this talksprite.

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

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

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

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

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

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