#and I think part of it is that things like reading and media literacy and research are skills

[daincrediblegg]

I really wish people would stop being obtuse with their readings about things. Is it really demonizing The Thing or is it deliberately using a social perception and common tropes to frame the character in a certain light so it can deliberately subvert those things at the precise moment when it is necessary to prove that point that people are Not Like That?

[zeb-z]

the sooner badboyhalo viewers realize he’s an unreliable narrator the sooner I’ll be able to sleep at night

[peachdoxie]

Honestly I probably wouldn't find Taylor Swift nearly so annoying if it weren't for a large contingent of her fans thinking she's hotter shit than what Satan last shat.

[theultimatekamehamehavoc]

so i maaaaaay have fallen deep into spirk suddenly 👉👈 without warning i don't even know how i got here sent help

[dordey]

girl i am by no means a tswift stan but like........when you spend your free time compiling a post about her Years worth of having bangs or wearing clothes back to front, just to complain about it??? sounds kind of like you Are

[mokeonn]

Sorry about all the posts about people not educating themselves. It's a topic im deeply passionate about and have a hard time understanding the opposition on because I am a fundamentally curious person who went and practiced the research techniques I was taught so that I may research better.

Plus I have autism so "researching to understand the world around me better" comes with the territory.

[kindred-spirit-93]

HOO BOI. i desperately want to write volumes about this topic alone but ill stick to a tag rant because is have so much studying lol.

demeter they could never make me hate you. you were imo the only sensible person in the myth(s) actually and a good mum. fuck u zeus

The story of Hades and Persephone isn't an abduction romance, or even a tragedy of not being able to be in two places at the same time. It's about how fucking wild it would be to have a mother who gives a shit about whether you're dead or alive, and whether you are happy.

[gretashand]

I don't want to sound like a boomer or anything but as more and more AI gets implemented into every day tech I implore you to pay attention to what it's correcting and not let yourself become complacent and lazy in your relationship with writing and literacy. I don't care if you use it, if its correcting your grammar learn what its correcting so you might not need it as much next time, if you're asking Grammarly to word something politely or in a different tone pay attention to how it does that. If its summarizing something to you take the time to read the full thing as well and pay attention to any disparities or anything you might have missed. Reading and writing is so important, and I think it's great that some of this AI can give you access to resource to help you improve it, but you actually have to pay attention and learn. Functional illiteracy is already a problem, and this kind of tech is only going to make that worse if we let it.

In the US kids still in school are becoming more technologically illiterate because tech came out that made using it easier/more mindless and so they stopped being taught how to use literally anything else.

So many people struggle with media literacy because they decided English/Literature class was worthless and writing essays was stupid even though its entire purpose is to make you media literate and give you tools to think critically and then express your thoughts with accuracy.

Progress is great, its fantastic, but we need to engage with it mindfully. Consumerism became an American trademark and we lost Home Ec. classes. Why teach you to sew, or cook, or garden (all great life skills that EVERYONE needs) when they can get you to pay for it to be done for you. Nothing is allowed to be fixed because they want you to buy a whole new version. They trademarked parts and tech for machines so that the people who knew how to fix things couldn't do it without them and the access to that kind of knowledge has gotten scarcer.

Reading and writing is the foundation of communication and understanding in the modern world. They are some of the most important skills you could ever have, do not let our vampiric, productivity money focused shit show of a society take that from you. The ability to read and write revolutionized civilization. It was gatekept from the masses because it makes people powerful. It makes you harder to control. Do not let them take this from you, and absolutely do not give it up to them of your own free will.

[paperlunamoth]

Just watched a youtube video where a bubbly young woman discussed an indescribably fucked up hentai manga about a teenage girl getting forced into prostitution and raped by her father, and otherwise tortured and violated in ways I will not describe here, as though it was just some run of the mill piece of media, and treated it like it had some kind of profound literary value because sometimes real girls go through those kinds of experiences, while completely ignoring the fact that it was hentai created specifically for sick men to jerk off to and written by one such sick man. And most of the comments also failed to acknowledge the nature of this work, and were just things along the lines of, "yep, life sure can be unfortunate for some people that is true." I just. What is happening to these girls? Like I truly don't understand how you can get to a place mentally where all you have to say about something like this is that it's "dark" and the characters are "bad people" like girl what you read should be illegal it is literally underage torture porn with a plot that serves the sole function of providing context that makes the porn parts as depraved as possible, and you think it was an enjoyable read that had important things to say about the female experience?? The author was not trying to earnestly depict the horrors of girlhood in order to get people to contemplate the significance of such atrocities and compel them to do something to help prevent them, he was trying to get himself and men like him off to the rape and misery of a teenager! This is a level of pornbrained internalized misogyny combined with poor media literacy that I previously did not think possible. My heart weeps for this girl and for other young women like her who are so numb to this kind of visceral depravity that they don't even register it as anything other than a sad story.

[problematicbyler]

an incomplete history of byler sexuality discourse

and how widespread fandom purity culture and homophobia created a flourishing nsfw sub-fandom

some may call me chronically online, but i call myself a fandom historian. i've been a member of some fandom or another since i was about thirteen, and i've always been interested in the rise and fall of fandom discourse. though it's annoying in the moment it's happening, i think it's very interesting and telling to look back at the overall arcs and trends.

so, let's talk about the many times the fandom has cancelled people over byler sexuality, and how each level of "hornygate" has contributed to the growth of the proship/byler smut community.

(i use the term proship in its intended definition, which is to say, not "problematic shipping," but rather being pro-fiction, anti-censorship, and anti-harassment; it is a position of believing the fiction one creates or consumes doesn't reflect a person's real life beliefs or morals.)

i have been a stranger things lover since season 1, a byler shipper since season 2, and an active part of the byler community on tumblr since season 4. i'll mostly be focusing on post-season 4 discourse because that's what i've really been most present for and that was the period that really marked a turning point in the fandom.

seasons 1-3

i wasn't as plugged into fandom discourse back in the day, but the broad strokes of early discourse was mostly thinly veiled homophobia. claiming that it was sexualization to assume will or mike could be queer despite blatant queer coding, implying that analysts were no better than will's bullies to assume his sexuality, etc etc. people were criticized for shipping byler at all because they were so young (but these people naturally had no issue with mileven, so, again, homophobia).

season 4 (may-july 2022)

now, season 4. this is where byler was brought to the attention of a lot more fans, and stranger things' viewership reached wider than ever. the byler fandom on tumblr booms from 4k to 100k over the course of season 4's release.

this brought a lot of new people who have never been in fandoms before, people who never learned don't like don't read or your kink is not my kink and that's okay or ship and let ship.

or, a lot of times, people who had only been in fandoms for celebrities and bands, which tend to have different rules when it comes to shipping and sex, because they're real people. hence a lot of young antis' conflation of character with their actors, but that's a different rant.

so with a rapidly growing fandom, a show ripe for analysis, and the art of media literacy bleeding out on the ground in front of us, the hellscape of the fandom post-season 4 in 2022 followed as such:

august 2022

jo/kendra gate where two extremely popular analysts were called out for "sexualizing" byler while being adults (early to mid 20s). they were dogpiled and harassed because one of them said that will was giving mike "bedroom eyes" (he was) and one of them said mike was checking will out (he was):

pyshiie and moogate. the proship side of byler twitter rose up and started to divide itself. i'll credit my own joining-the-dark-side to pyshiie and moo, formerly barbjeanisms, who were two popular artists called out respectively for sexualizing byler and generally being proship. similarly, people were called out and criticized for even following or interacting with those accounts after this discourse.

september 2022

hosegate is the most famous across the byler fandom, and it's when some users proposed that the scene in the pizzeria uses phallic imagery to imply mike turns will on (or vice versa) and a lot of people thought that was too sexualized, it caused a divide, and more fanpolicing, etc.

october 2022

the artist noodlesandtea was harassed for having liked arguably nsfw bakudeku art (they were shirtless, it wasn't explicit) on the same account where they draw characters who are minors. they also drew byler kissing, which was a problem for some? anyone who defended them was also called a pedo, naturally. noodles also got called out for having drawn fanart of the popular e-rated fanfiction....

the unmarked mixtape. a massively popular sequel to a massively popular fic, the red envelope. for a long time, those were the most widely recommended byler fics, but it very soon became taboo to even admit to reading them because the sequel has explicit sex and the first has them making out.

sonnet116 gate is another fic that was beloved and then rapidly turned on by byler twitter because it had implied, fade to black sex scenes. it was about them hooking up but had no smut. and even the non explicit idea of that was offensive and pedophilic of anyone who dared read it. around this time, another fic was called out for having will moaning into a kiss, because writing a teenager moaning was also offensive and pedophilic.

i'm told i (jana / troublebyler gate?) may have influenced a lot of people joining twitter for byler smut after writing illicit affairs and some other smutty oneshots in rapid succession, seeing a lot of byler shippers moving to the proship side of the fandom just to discuss and write byler smut. i also hosted a little fandom gossip column on my curiouscat where a lot of folks confessed to reading or writing smut while pretending to be "normal" in the "main" fandom. it basically revealed/implied that a large amount of popular authors, artists, and accounts were secretly pro byler smut, and that many proshippers were "undercover" in the "main" fandom.

the blocklist era. around this time the "main" fandom also created a "st twt safety" account on twitter which was basically targeted harassment and mass reporting of proshippers. the account does warn of some genuine bad actors sending gore images via dms, being racist, etc. but by far, the majority of it was simply calling out proshippers for sexualizing byler, sharing screenshots they thought were "gross," which only resulted in spreading nsfw content to unintended audiences of minors that likely never would have seen the nsfw accounts otherwise.

november 2022

practice kissing gate is where a handful of popular fic writers were criticized for writing practice kissing fics (such as undertow), and in fact, any amount of byler making out, because adults "fantasizing" about teenagers kissing was "gross."

the proship corner of st twitter continued to grow a lot thanks to so many lovely fan creators, all of whom i couldn't possibly list but who have done a lot for the community! but we continued to get bombarded with endless callout posts and block lists and witch hunting. people were unabashedly policing people's following lists and likes on twitter to call people out for engaging with any questionable users or content. (if you search byler twitter now you can still see the wreckage of so many witch hunts.)

onward through 2023

over time things have mostly calmed down, or at least enough of the folks on "opposing sides" of the fandom have mutually blocked each other to survive. this is likely also influenced by the hiatus leaving the fandom to quiet down, the collapse of twitter-turned-x having many users migrate their fandom content elsewhere, and the mass exodus of many people from the fandom for political reasons. if i had to guess, the ramp-up to season 5 will see all new conflict as more "casual" fans return to the fandom. but who's to say.

which brings us to now:

spicybylerpolls gate, wherein the byler tag on tumblr collectively had to reckon with the fact that people want byler to have sex and it doesn't make them creeps to vote in silly polls about it. people criticized the blog for being overly sexualized and pure fantasy versus more "acceptable" analysis, with many making sweeping moralizing statements about anyone who dared interact with the blog.

this has kicked off tumblr's own sort of horny revolution in encouraging folks to be more open on here, whereas previously we were confined to our corner of twitter.

so in summary:

people over and over again put fan creators on a pedestal just to turn on them when they're "betrayed" when a person's views did not one-to-one line up to theirs.

teens in the fandom especially were "betrayed" by adults in the fandom they thought were "safe" (and i would argue that self proclaimed "safe" adults in fandom are far more dangerous to real life minors than the proship fans who sexualize fictional characters but dont interact with real teens)

most everything has been fueled by widespread ageism at any fan over the age of 18, widespread homophobia and puritanism in regards to exploring queer sexuality or discussing sex at all

so much hate has been over what are essentially "thought crimes", with people watering down serious accusations like pedophilia into a petty insult over disagreements on fiction

and the cycle repeats itself endlessly until things devolve back into witch hunting and policing peoples following and likes etc

the best part to me is that every single cancellation just resulted in more people flooding to the horny side of the fandom to post more freely and without shame. every time a person on twitter posted screenshots of my account to say how "gross" it was (while simultaneously exposing my 18+ nsfw content to their audience of minors) i had a surge in followers. the more the fandom squeezes, the more people slip from its hold.

but that doesn't make the harassment campaigns okay, and it doesn't mean the fandom didn't do massive amounts of harm to real people in an attempt to protect fictional characters.

my hope going forward is that the fandom can coexist as a community where people don't have to like or agree with certain content to treat the people who create it with respect and dignity. and i hope that, while this side of the fandom might grow more on tumblr, we don't have to relive the same old discourses and go through the same cycles we went through on twitter.

and remember kids, the block button is both free and fun.

[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)

[totallyjustabunchofhocuspocus]

I know "fuck canon" is always an option and generally the more sensible thing to do, but with last night's episode I had two smidgens of HOPE and now with Tim's apparent new interview I just want to crawl back into my cave again 🫥

Hi nonnie!

TLDR (cause I'm having THOUGHTS): I don't think anything is off the table, if I had to bet money I'd lay somewhat decent odds that Buck and Tommy get back together, and I don't think either side of the ship war has anything in particular that indicates victory.

I'll preface this by saying yes, 'fuck canon'is usually the more sensible option. 'Fuck canon' is where no one ever dies, people do not make stupid decisions, and couples never break up.

And I'll also preface this by saying that Buck is my favorite character (honestly one of my favorite characters of all time, not just this show) and my ultimate OTP is Buck/Happiness in this show, however he gets it and whoever gives it to him. I am quite happy being a multishipper and I started out in fandom spaces back in the mid-nineties, where the etiquette and relationship to the content were vastly, vastly different than today and that really colors the lense I view fandom through. In the ship war, I'm mostly Switzerland.

Still with me? Okay.

My main source of optimism re: Buck/Tommy is the simple fact that guys...911 is Not That Deep. It's a fun show (usually), predicated on ridiculous Situations (increasingly), and in movie terms is a cash-grab popcorn flick. Have they hit something with the characters and actors that often elevates it above its station? Absolutely. Are there parts that make you go, "whoa, this came from the shark on a highway weewoo show?" Of course! But 911 isn't fucking Inception. There's no hidden messages and jaw-dropping plot twists that No One Saw Coming.

Like...all the cries about "learn some media literacy you cretins!" really have me scratching my head because, uh, taking everything solely at face value--this absolutely is the Third Act Miscommunication in the relationship. Both parties expressed a desire for the relationship to be more. They broke up on the tried and true "I'm doing this for both our sakes'even though it hurts" and not a dealbreaker schism which they ABSOLUTELY could have done. Literally, one scene of "wow I can't wait to be a dad/oh, uh that's not something I want" and we have a reason to break up that has the exact same "no villains just circumstance" vibe.

On the other hand, it absolutely is a stopping point that is believably permanent.

They went out of their way to show how desperately much Buck wants to talk to Tommy (like we turned it into a meme, but they didn't really have to show him baking That Much) and how he's spiraling in a way we haven't really seen since Abby. In a Hallmark romcom this would be where the audience is reassured that our plucky protagonist has Real Feelings for the LI.

On the other hand, the show often uses Buck as comic relief and the keep away with the phone could absolutely be the indicator that this breakup isn't as serious as Buck thinks it is and he should move on.

The interviews are pretty disheartening, but the interviews for this show really honestly have always had a kind of weird monkey's paw quality to them. Like, they don't lie exactly, but there's a lot of misdirect.

As it stands now, the relationship 100% reads like a Hallmark romcom that is being written by people who Had a Gay Friend In College Guys, So of COURSE We Know What We're Doing...wait why are you discoursing?

On the other hand, as it stands now, it also wouldn't be surprising if this was the end. I honestly don't think they have 100% decided how it's going to go and the writing and especially the pacing this season has been so uneven that it's not hiding the flaws in the storytelling as well as it usually does.

But, if canon goes in a direction I don't like, I have no problem saying 'fuck canon' ;)

[tangerinecherrygal]

Finally I can articulate one of my main issues with acotar atm. This point has probably been made before and in a much better way than I could, but my main issue with sjm is the murkiness of her stances on certain subjects.

Authors don’t have a responsibility to their audience to spell out their intentions. Media literacy is such a buzzword at the moment, but it really does apply to every piece of media we consume. Mainly the news and what we see on social media. In literature and tv/movies it becomes a bit more complicated.

People come at texts with different perspectives, but if an author is skilled enough, their stances will come across in some way or another. Though sometimes people that have certain ideologies go out of their way to apply it to whatever they are consuming. The Joker, LOTR, American Psycho, Breaking Bad, Succession and on and on. But I’d like to think that most of us don’t have such extreme ideologies that it affects how we view media that much.

Author seems to operate in a weird area where her messages conflict with each other, and not in a way that has purpose. I just read HOEAB and what stuck out to me was her idea of oppression. To me it seemed like the oppressed only deserved their equality if they fit a certain profile. This is true to life, but the writing doesn’t unpack this in any meaningful way.

Why is Lehabah treated with sympathy, and Philip Briggs not? It’s because his rebellion is loud and violent, but Lehabah’s most radical act is still in service of those that oppress her, even if the oppression is unintentional. There is a clear link to real life class and race relations, but it’s shallow exploration means that this commentary on oppression can never be fully fleshed out.

Now for the part that has been tread and retread: the court of nightmares and it’s real life implications. The CoN is full of ‘evil’ people that must be kept from the land of Dreamers. What is she saying with this besides the obvious real life zionist/colonialist parallels? There is no interrogation of this belief, it’s just accepted.

The wing clipping is shown to be a problem, but what would be required for the true liberation of Illyrian women is not something that our dear author is willing to explore meaningfully. Instead her approach reiterates the idea that other people and races within the night court are backwards, savage and unwilling to change. Again, you can’t not draw real life parallels to this. If we view wing clipping as an allegory for practices like FGM, then it paints it as a serious issue. But this is never adequately addressed. This reiterates the message that ‘this is just the way this culture is’ and further vilifies all of the Illyrians. It never gives a true voice to the many women affected by their cultural practices, and because of this, there can never be any true reform in the text.

These little things that I’ve noticed make me question what her intention was while writing. These aren’t once off things, they are recurring in her work. My takeaway is: Liberation is good, but only if it looks a certain way?

[beardedmrbean]

[Huey Zoomer Anon]

“If the department of education is destroy, kids won’t read!”-BITCH THE RUNNING JOKE IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS THAT AMERICANS ARE SO STUPID BECAUSE HOW SHIT OUR LITERACY RATES AND CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS ARE THE WORST IN THE FIRST WORLD!

Tumblr have a lot of people from different parts of the world here…but you seen how dense they are to basically storytelling!

I mean since l was 13 and got into stories discourse I go “How the fuck you got THAT interpretation?”

Than it got much worse…seriously these cannot handle complex shit

Also the department of education doesn’t mean it a free for all. And while it was bad with unhinged millennials on social media in the 2010’s

My generation comprehension skills makes me go “KILL THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TRUMP, AVENGE THOSE WHO WAS MADE STUPID BY IT! SAVE THE GEN ALPHA!”

It not going to be a mad max free for all y’all…but would love not to have 54% of the population unable to read past, 5th or 6th grade? Seriously how are we so stupid?

“If the department of education is destroy, kids won’t read!”-BITCH THE RUNNING JOKE IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS THAT AMERICANS ARE SO STUPID BECAUSE HOW SHIT OUR LITERACY RATES AND CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS ARE THE WORST IN THE FIRST WORLD!

There's a whole lot of irony involved in saying so many Americans are stupid and thinking we should keep the DOE which has been around long enough for us to be able to chart the downward direction we've gone in education since it was put into place.

Sometimes you have to try something different, because what's going on now is obviously not working.

Tumblr have a lot of people from different parts of the world here…but you seen how dense they are to basically storytelling! I mean since l was 13 and got into stories discourse I go “How the fuck you got THAT interpretation?” Than it got much worse…seriously these cannot handle complex shit

Sad part is even when things are spelled out for people they still don't get it at times.

That and things like people saying that Tolkien's works aren't Christian despite the man saying that yes they're Christian, or the students arguing with Ray Bradbury about the interpretation of his own book and telling him, the author, that he was wrong.

The arrogance is astounding, you can read it how you like but you don't get to tell the author they're wrong about their own book.

My generation comprehension skills makes me go “KILL THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TRUMP, AVENGE THOSE WHO WAS MADE STUPID BY IT! SAVE THE GEN ALPHA!”

Nothing wrong with baseline standards being given, everyone that graduates HS should have knowledge of XYZ isn't bad, but different districts should be given more of a free reign to adapt their curriculum to the students they have.

It's a thing that people closer to the ground need to have a big say in.

DOE says, all 8th grade graduates should be able to name the 3 branches of the US government and give a rough description of what their role in running the country is.

Then they leave it up to the various state and local governments and school districts to come up with how to accomplish that.

It not going to be a mad max free for all y’all…but would love not to have 54% of the population unable to read past, 5th or 6th grade? Seriously how are we so stupid?

I would like that fixed for sure, number is way too high.

Never figured out what that whole thing means since I know it doesn't mean that people are illiterate, not like everyone should be reading Tolstoy or anything like that.

If you can make it through the new Percy Jackson book without trouble that should probably be mostly ok for anyone imho.

Voter information packet comes out and things in it make sense you should be good really.

Or maybe that's just me

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

so, outside of James Somerton being a plagiarist prick, here’s all the shitty things I’ve heard him doing:

misgendering ND stevensons and Rebecca sugar (who is a nonbinary woman I believe but the nonbinary part was entirely erased)

dismissing the cancellation of the owl house because it was centred around queer women and girls.

implying something between hunter and Gus in the same video? like no i don’t think the creators intended for you to read a sixteen year old and a twelve year old as romantic in a kids show that's just a wild thing to say when you’re going on about media literacy.

misrepresented and made xenophobic assumptions about queerness in non western countries

hates women so fucking much

ignores the discrimination against queer women

disparaged the survivors of the aids pandemic and treated them like they were somehow morally worse than those who died.

keep in mind i like watched this guys videos once and I can’t even remember it this all comes from just the fucking comments I’ve seen since the video came out and I know I’ve missed some stuff just from that. so feel free to add on or include more detail on these bc it’s fucking insane to see all gathered in one place.

[haru-dipthong]

Ep 12 of my Utena fansub is out!

私たちも今までいろいろやってきた、疲れたわね

We've been so busy the last few episodes. I'm pooped.

A juicy little indulgence on my part here - the fourth wall break here by the shadow girls does not actually exist in the Japanese (explicitly). I’ll explain why I added it.

Here’s a very literal translation of the individual words above with no thought given to context or adjusting for grammar.

We (also) | until now | various different things | have done up to this point

I believe いろいろやってきた (lit. we’ve done various different things up to this point) is referring to their various performances in a sort of meta way. If we take each appearance of the shadow girls as a semi-in-universe mini stage play, this line is referencing the presence of previous plays within the current play. They’ve played pirates, plate spinners, cowboys, an educational program, and more! Acknowledging these things is tantamount to a performer acknowledging the fact that they’re an actor rather than a character while on stage, so the fourth wall break felt appropriate.

Anya was also happy with the fourth wall break and added that it emphasises the episode as a turning point and helps close out the arc, which I really agree with!

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また黙秘するわけね。今のウテナってかっこ悪いよ。何か取られた腑抜けみたい。なんだかわからないけど、取られたら取り返しなさいよ！

Are you clamming up again? You look pathetic right now. Like you let someone steal from you! I don’t know what it was, but if someone took something from you, take it back!

Couple of little things to discuss about this line:

かっこ悪い is often translated as “uncool” or “lame”. This can sometimes be accurate, since it’s the opposite of かっこいい (lit. cool), but in this circumstance those words don’t hit hard enough. This かっこ悪い is more barbed than usual, so I kept the barbs by choosing a different word: pathetic.

“Clamming up” was an off the cuff choice because I felt I’d used “be quiet”, “not talk”, etc too many times in the previous scene to reuse them here. I think it fits with Wakaba’s personality and the current situation pretty well! 黙秘 is defined by jisho.org as “remaining silent; keeping secret”.

腑抜け means “coward” or something similar. I tried phrasing this line a few times to get that word in somehow, but in the end the whole rant just read so much better without forcing it in. Also cps (characters per second) was a concern here.

-----

元気な友達がいるね。

Your friend has quite the personality.

元気 (genki). What a word! Often translated as “energetic”. So often in fact, that even before I checked, I knew that the ohtori.nu translation would have used it, and sure enough!

Your friend is very energetic. (from ohtori.nu)

Along with “eyesore” and “confession (of love)”, this might take the bronze medal for common Japanese words that consistently get translated into very uncommon English words.

Of course, 元気 can literally mean “having a lot of energy”, or simply “well” (as in the opposite of “unwell”). But “energetic” is just such a bad translation for it 90% of the time. I wish I could convey why in words, but in most contexts, the word 元気 and the word “energetic” just feel so different.

Anyway, 元気 has quite a positive nuance, which emphasises the passive aggressiveness of Touga’s comment. The intent with this line is that he’s giving a vague compliment to Wakaba, indirectly (talking about her as if she’s not there), and making it clear that he wishes she wasn’t around. Everything else about the line should be secondary, including the specific meanings of each word.

I think this is emblematic of my general approach to translation — to identify the author’s original intent of a line/scene/work and then write it in a different language with the same intent in mind. Every line, every scene, is trying to do something — I believe it’s the translator’s job to identify what each line and scene is supposed to be doing and preserve that, so media literacy is very important. Sometimes that line is doing exposition, in which case a literal translation of each word is often ideal. Sometimes that line is trying to evoke a feeling, establish a character, or make the audience remember similar experiences, in which case the individual words used matter much less. In this case, the line is attempting to invoke memories of similar experiences of passive aggressive, dismissive comments. And frankly, “Your friend is very energetic” does not do that, so I consider it a poor translation.

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Thanks as always to my ride or die @dontbe-lasanya for their awesome editing this episode (and every episode!)

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