#and I think part of it is that things like reading and media literacy and research are skills
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questionablecuttlefish · 1 day ago
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Okay Fine Let's Talk Timebomb and Season Two.
I do want to talk about this because I have a Lot of thoughts and feelings and it has been building up and building up, not only based on what's happening in other social spaces, but what people keep bringing into mine despite my best efforts to avoid it.
This isn't any kind of hatepost, I don't think I could hate Ekko or the ship if I tried, I just want to explain my very mixed feelings about the whole thing.
My likely-to-be-very unpopular take on Season Two's Timebomb romance is that it left me feeling uneasy and uncomfortable.
Not with what was in the show itself, I feel like that was perfect. Powder and Ekko sold me completely. They made me feel things. I even liked how Ekko and Jinx's story ended. I think it was beautiful, poignant, perfect...
...until.
'The Discourse' since, the way the fan culture has exploded around it, and particularly some of the creators' commentary on it, has made me sour on the whole thing.
It feels like I'm suddenly part of an increasingly small subset of people who saw what they did with S2 Timebomb and applied our media literacy to what was on our screens and got something very different to what the fandom consensus seems to be.
For context, I semi-shipped TB before this. Though I've always been Team Lightcannon, I had a lot of respect for timebomb, I understood it, I had read a few very good fics, I was just in the space of "Jinx has hurt Ekko too much for him to ever fully forgive her for murdering his friends, they might come to an understanding, and there will always be a silent undercurrent of love beneath the hurt, they may fight together on the same side again someday, but whatever bond they had as kids is broken and they can't go back, and both know it."
I respected, and still do, people who shipped them romantically, but I've always seen them as a broken childhood friendship being a much more interesting dynamic, and being hot for each other lessening that to an extent and not really adding anything to it.
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All of his interactions with Jinx in season one are violent; she murders five Firelights point-blank in front of him in her intro scene, and Ekko reacts particularly upset to the pink-haired girl, Eve or Eva, whom Jinx shoots in the back. It's clear this isn't even the first time she's fought them. We don't know how many of Ekko's found family she's put on the Memorial Wall or how close he was with any of them.
Ekko is clearly convinced that "Powder" is gone, and the person who replaced her is a cold-blooded killer who can't be reasoned with. Leading to the Bridge confrontation, and this:
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This is the first time Ekko catches a glimpse of "Powder", yes, but more importantly, this is the first moment he recognizes Jinx's humanity. He's hurting her, killing her, and he can't do it.
....and she knows he can't do it.
So, to save him the weight, she pulls a grenade, with the intent to kill them both, foreshadowing quite neatly where Ekko/Jinx (but not Ekko/Powder) is going to go in S2.
Fast forwarding from Season One here, Ekko disappears for 2/3rds of the second season, completely offscreen.
When we catch up with him he's woken up in the S2E7 AU; the Powder Timeline.
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Here's where I start to get a little confused by the fandom take. Because, you know, I've seen enough Star Trek and Stargate and Supernatural and Batman the Animated Series and Quantum Leap to know exactly what this is.
This is the 'bottle episode', this is the 'Perfect World' trope, where the protagonists find themselves in an alternate universe - or trapped in a dream - or they've died or think they've died and this is their 'heaven' - where they have everything they ever wanted.
This is familiar storytelling and E2 follows a familiar pattern, the protagonist struggles to adapt to the surreal new circumstances, they are seduced by the illusion, particularly falling in love with someone in the Perfect World, but eventually, they start noticing something incongruous - something isn't quite right - (In this case, it's Vi's death, and Powder holding back her genius and hiding her grief to be support girl for others) - that reveals the Perfect World to be not as perfect as it seems.
And the hero has to choose to go home, because he realizes that this isn't real, it doesn't belong to him, he doesn't belong here.
Which is exactly what happens with Ekko in E7.
Which brings is to AU!Powder and Jinx.
And here's where I really start to struggle with the seeming consensus that the romance between Ekko/Powder automatically leads to Ekko/Jinx, like you can just transfer the one to the other.
I'm sorry, fam, I thought my basic media literacy was telling me that this girl:
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Is not the same person as this girl:
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....and I am not getting into any debate about "Jinx" vs "Powder" as identities within our current Jinx. I'm talking about Powder in the E7 AU.
AU!Powder is literally a different human being.
She may have been the same person up until the explosion in Jayce's laboratory, but from that fork in the timeline, she becomes a FUNDAMENTALLY different person to Jinx, shaped by different experiences, different relationships, different life events.
Powder's physicality with Ekko, as you can see in those GIFs, the casual intimacy, the clear affection, the way she touches him, looks at him, her awareness of him in her space, is so utterly opposite to the way Jinx interacts with him that if anything, it nailed home to me how savagely absent this kind of feeling is from his relationship with Jinx.
Powder loves Ekko. She leans on him, snuggles into him, touches his hands, dances with him, kisses him.
Jinx cares so little about him she barely makes eye contact and would casually kill him without blinking.
And I thought that was the point.
I really thought that was the whole point of E7. Being in the perfect world, getting his perfect love story with his perfect Powder, the girl Jinx could have been, but can never be, drove home for Ekko that his feelings for Jinx, both romantic and resentful, were tangled up in his illusions of "Powder", and it took living those illusions as a physical reality for Ekko to see his mistake.
To be true to himself, and true to her, Ekko had to let that go and go home.
To face his world's Jinx, and be there for her in her darkest moment, even if it meant giving up the love he'd found with Powder, a love that belonged to a different Ekko, for someone who could never love him back.
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To me that was Ekko's most heroic moment, an act of selfless sacrifice. But that's what it was - a sacrifice.
Meanwhile, Season Two Jinx is not aware of any of this. The last time she saw Ekko was on the bridge where she nearly killed him, and for all we know she might have thought she succeeded.
She never talks about, thinks about, refers to, or even has scribble-nightmares about Ekko, not even once.
Season Two Jinx is, instead, having a love story of her own.
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And Isha was and is a PUZZLE to me. Because she's more plot device than character, she isn't necessary except as a way to give Jinx a villain-to-hero arc and a way to reconnect to her humanity.
But she could have been Ekko.
If they really, really wanted us to have Timebomb Canon, instead of confining the entire arc to a bottle episode in an alternate timeline with a literally, physically different girl, they could easily have given all of Isha's considerable screentime to an Ekko and Jinx romance.
I'm sure Amanda Overton would have been on board with that. But that's not what we got. It's almost like reading two different fix-it-fanfics for the same character, put into the same show and running in parallel.
I'm not crazy, this is what's happening for Ekko in s2;
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While this is happening for Jinx at the same time.
But Jinx's love story, too, ends with a tragic sacrifice.
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And here's where the two stories finally intersect.
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When Jinx is in her darkest moment, her absolute rock bottom, Ekko comes back into her life, a miracle, impossible, a Boy Savior.
But she's still ready to kill him.
Because she didn't dance with Ekko. She didn't invent a time machine with him. She didn't sit and watch the city lights with him and share a tender kiss and a heartfelt gift.
That was Powder.
Jinx and Ekko are resuming right where they left off on the bridge, right back to "I pull this pin and we both blow up".
They've both loved and lost, but their stories are absolutely unknown to each other. Ekko Doesn't Know About Isha. Jinx Doesn't Know About Powder.
It's only when Jinx (a genius, a reminder here) sees monkeys of her own design inside the Z-drive - recognizes her own handiwork, but knows SHE didn't make those - that, I think, sheer curiosity stirs her out of her darkness.
She has to know what that was about. She hesitates, just long enough for Ekko to speak. And, though offscreen, he tells her his story, and maybe she tells him hers.
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And it's enough, just enough, to set Jinx back on her Redemption Arc, to become the hero Isha always saw in her.
Maybe even the hero Vi and Ekko saw in her, too. Her new costume is full of references to all of the people in her life who never gave up on her.
(side note, the yellow stars and crowns puzzle me, though - they're quite prominent, but who are THEY for? Isha? Maybe? Yellow isn't a color associated with anyone in Jinx's life, but that crown's identical to the one she scribbled on Demacia in Fortiche's map, is... this a very subtle future Lightcannon tease? Nah. I'm not that crazy.)
I mean her costume is also almost literally both a Fishbones and a Fiddlesticks cosplay, with her hair as Fiddle's tongue, so take from that what you will.
It's clear Jinx and Ekko war painted each other for the battle, but the Firelights are also similarly painted up, and (with Linke even confirming this) there really wasn't time to develop anything else, guys.
And I am, honestly, fundamentally angry at anyone who would suggest that, even if she'd been in any space to want it, our boy Ekko, one of the most genuinely good men in recent fiction let alone in Arcane, would take advantage of a girl he just talked out of suicide.
Moving on. During the battle, Ekko is knocked out and lying not far from Jinx. She doesn't even look at him, she leaps up to defend Vi instead.
And that's their final interaction on the show.
Instead of returning to Ekko, Jinx chooses one final act of sacrifice.
Ekko's final shot of the show is this.
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He's sitting, alone, burning a mourning paper, where he sat with AU!Powder - where he and AU!Powder kissed - a place that has no significance to himself and Jinx, whatsoever.
It's little wonder who he's thinking about here, and which name he's burning on that paper. The girl he truly loved and lost.
For all he knows, Jinx is dead. But it's not only her he's mourning.
Or maybe he does know, or suspect, she's alive.
But either way, he's making one final act of sacrifice, too, with that paper burning into the breeze.
He's letting her go.
He's choosing his own story.
He's staying where he belongs.
Jinx may have become a symbol of the revolution, but it's Ekko who is, and always will be, the true hero of Zaun.
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And this is Jinx's final shot.
Because let's face it, we all know she's on that airship.
She's "breaking the cycle". She's "walking away". She knows that Jinx has left too many scars on the people she still loves - on Vi, on Ekko, on the cities of Piltover and Zaun - for her to pick up the pieces.
She knows that if she's going to find out what "Jinx" might stand for now, she has to go very far away from everything and everyone. She has to leave it all behind and find something new.
Maybe even someone new?
And ultimately, that's why I feel the Timebomb we got was perfect, they shouldn't touch it, they shouldn't try to force it to be "Endgame", not because it couldn't have worked, but because that's the opposite of the story they told.
For the rest of my analysis, lol, this got a bit long but i have FEELINGS.
Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't buy Jinx and Ekko as a love story if they had actually told that love story. But they didn't. It had no screen time. They have less interactions in S2, maybe even in both seasons added up, than Vi and Loris. Let that sink in a bit.
We know it's Amanda's favorite ship, so she may have intended more, and may even actually give us all more at some point, but please, dear god, let's stop pretending they fucked or kissed or even held hands offscreen.
That's honestly a bit insulting to both of these characters, to insist hell or high water that this very important milestone in their relationship happened, but they just didn't even bother to depict it. That an entire love story (because it would be a whole one, remember, Ekko and Powder had a romance but Jinx did not experience any of that, she and Ekko are back at Square One) would just be cut for time.
They both deserve better than that.
Let's stop pretending there was some grand, horny, Forever Love story with 60 minutes of cut footage, all of it timebomb content, somehow left on the cutting room floor of an animated show where every single frame has to be deliberately hand painted.
Because if in some insane universe they had written, storyboarded, voice acted and animated an entire 60 minute additional timebomb storyline and then cut it from the show, that would itself be a searing indictment of the quality of the storytelling in that imagined arc, but that's not what happened. Anyone who knows how filmmaking works would shoot this one down, and the showrunners already have, so let's leave it behind.
I know Timebomb blew up hard, and I get it, but what we got on the screen is not confirmation that there is any relationship at all between Ekko and Current Timeline Jinx. If anything, Ekko and Powder's beautiful romance only highlighted the tragic 'never to be' of Ekko and Jinx.
And it's absolutely fine to look at the art book, look at the creator comments, and imagine what could have been. Draw the fan art, write the fanfic, imagine the what-ifs and the fix-its, those are all beautiful and valid expressions and deserve their space.
But don't go insisting it's "the canon" and going after the shippers of other ships for these characters as "not canon" or somehow offensive for existing, especially toward one particular ship that, yes, has been around much longer than timebomb, is uncool.
I think this is mostly people who are New From Arcane, it's Baby's First Ship and they don't know how to share space. The timebomb fans I knew pre-season two didn't do this, at least not often enough for me to notice or care.
But I'll just say to them, if a Timebomb follow up happens and they actually tell a good love story for Ekko and Jinx, I will accept it. Grudgingly, because I think Lux/Jinx is an untold, untapped story full of incredible character dynamics that would complete Jinx's story in ways that as much as I love Ekko, he's too tied to her past, he can't.
But I love Ekko, and I love Jinx, and I will accept it.
But I'll also say to them, if the followup doesn't eventuate, if things take a turn they don't expect, if Jinx's airship is heading for Demacia, maybe they'll have to experience just a taste of what it's been like for Lightcannon fans for ten long years.
And maybe that's healthy. Maybe that's okay. Maybe our endgames don't need to be 'canon' to have value and that's a lesson we should learn.
Maybe there's a new Light on her horizon, and that's okay too. Maybe Ekko won't be alone forever. Don't forget - until Arcane - his story had nothing to do with Jinx, and there was a whole lot of it.
More with the Firelights, maybe bring in the original Lost Children of Zaun from his old stories, his inventions, his parents, all could yet be in his future. Who knows? He might find a way back to AU!Powder - or she might rebuild what they worked on together, and come to him, no matter what butterfly effects that could set in motion...
But if Jinx is heading for a Light on her horizon, maybe Ekko might Explore some of his possibilities. Find a new Spark of connection. Just saying. Jinx isn't his only ship, either 😌
And it is okay for people to move on, and let go. Maybe, for two characters whose themes are letting go of the past, living in the moment, redefining their identities, and moving on, that's what their story should be.
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daincrediblegg · 1 month ago
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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?
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zeb-z · 1 year ago
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the sooner badboyhalo viewers realize he’s an unreliable narrator the sooner I’ll be able to sleep at night
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peachdoxie · 2 years ago
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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.
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theultimatekamehamehavoc · 5 months ago
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so i maaaaaay have fallen deep into spirk suddenly 👉👈 without warning i don't even know how i got here sent help
#havoc updates#no i am no kidding#no worries! this will pass though! i won't forget the other stuff i've been working on. this is just a pattern with me#did not predict this out of all things would happen though#it's not like i'm only now into this btw as i watched the show as a kid. grew up with it even though i had no media literacy at all#everything flew over my head. probably cus it's dialogue heavy and subtext wasn't even close to being in my vocabulary#it's just so strange tho cus it's not like i'm even THAT into it but the old man yaoi's now got me on a bit of a choke hold rn#like damn it! they easily fit in the dynamics i like with characters. they also just have such immaculate dialogue together. peak material#i yearn to write characters with that level of chemistry#also a part of my soul yearns to draw fanart but also like... what would i draw? just them holding hands?? maybe???#i mean... there's no harm in it but also i'm so shy about it atm -///- i've never drawn these two losers before and i'm nervous!!#also it just hit me that all my other interests are either games or animated and this is the only life action show out of them all#think i'm also unsure what to due cus it's been ages since i've touched the franchise as a whole and i'd have to do SO much catch up T-T#the most i remember is that i watched the stuff but not the nitty gritty. also my brain is a bit occupied hyperfocusing on another franchis#soooo yeah... that doesn't help at all. darn you brain! why can't you just hyperfocus on more than one thing at a time!#and why must you suddenly hyperfocus on one thing for a week or a whole month before going back to the same old ;-;#gosh. am blabbering so hard rn. my bad#no clue what this post even is#hope my incoherent ramblings were entertaining for those who read this far :D
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mokeonn · 6 months ago
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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.
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kindred-spirit-93 · 3 months ago
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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.
#hades and persephone#the ill get back to this eventually tag#sick with all the awful adaptations & retellings that romanticise aspects at the price of completely and irreversibly ruining others#look i dont care what u want to enjoy or wish to believe thats none of my business its all fun and games at the end of the day#but to so blatantly ignore the orignal mythos in favour of aesthetic or whatever and insisting *thats* the standard is just cruel#part of it falls on how much were missing in the critical thinking & media literacy department and tend to accept pop culture as is#again one of the beauties of literature is its potential for interpretations.. and storytelling relies on appeasing the masses#and reaching audiences and demographics and adapting to fit the everchanging social norms and all that jazz. i know#thats not what im referring to here#its the denial of nuance and refusal to acknowledge that hey sometimes a piece of media isnt really accurate? or right? like at all#(i for one as of late have been extremely fascinated w darkfics and heavy topics being explored in media.. esp in greek mythology)#and it honestly wouldnt matter if it werent for the vehement hate it breeds against the source material and the very valid#opinions on the other side of the coin. the least we can do is do some background reading and have some common sense guys.#in this case the erasure of justified rage and grief to accentuate rebellious femininity or whatever to me is just sad#making demeter the villain? a mother who was rightfully horrified after her (underage) daughter was stolen from her#making persephone who cried and mourned during her stay in the underworld a girlboss who waltzed in on her own volition?#in some versions of the myth hades tricked her into eating the seeds. she had no idea what the implications were. NOT COOL MY DUDE#look i actually like hades and persphone in terms of theme and symbolism. like a lot. im working on stuff with them in it#but keep in mind the people places and things at play when engaging with media. think of the prices that were paid and how it relates to us#myths serve to teach lessons and morals as well as explaining natural phenomena and other things. folklore doesnt exist in a void#also as much as i love to dunk on zeus for being a piece of shit and serial rapist#he is extremely complex and multifaceted as a god and king of the gods and much more than that. as is the case for everyone in the pantheon#agh i need to go before i go on a rabbit hole so deep i find iron lol
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halitis · 23 days ago
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do i have anything anything against jason as a character? no. i actually like him quite a bit! i think hes really interesting!
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BUT DO I THINK SOME JASON FANS ARE FUCKING DUMB AS FUCK?!?? YES BITCH WHAT THE FUCK?
im gonna go through all the shit wrong with this comment thread one by one because jesus fucking CHRIST!!!!
1. "that thing" first of all. What. she is literally just a evil-aligned poc woman. she has been raised in this environment and as a result of that this is really the only life available for her and thats the tragedy of her character!
2. "why did she get with roy" THEY ARE FUCKING SOULMATES. THEIR ENTIRE THING IS THE INHERENT LOVE THEY SHARE FOR EACH OTHER WHILE ALSO VALUING THEIR MORALS ABOVE EACH OTHER. IT IS THE COMPLEXITY OF RAISING A CHILD TOGETHER AND ALSO TRYING TO FIND MIDDLE GROUND. IT IS BEGGINT THE OTHER TO CHANGE AND KNOWING THEY WONT.
3. "MY BABY JASON" YOU CANNOT SAY THAT AFTER YOU JUST INSULTED JADE.... LITTERALLY CANNOT. the biggest fucking hypocrytical statement i have ever fucking heard!!! bro!!! jason is Nawt a good person! he just flat out isnt! he has done so much horrid shit, not just to his familt, but to roy's family too. like he is not ur sweet innocent traumatised boy, he is a fucked up grown ass man who was hurt and decided to take that pain out on others. he is no fucking different from jade except he thinks hes doing rhe right thing, at least jade knows she isnt
4. "lian baby mama is jason now" ive talked abt this before, but sexism in fandom spaces when it comes to mlm ships is so fucking common it is fucking absurd. why are women only used as babymakers for ur gay characters?? why can they not be complex characters while men can???? it is fucking absurd how common it is in dc fandom and i frankly dont know why im shocked by it! women are regressed to one of three roles: evil villain who abused male love interest, baby maker, BAMF with no complexity or character at all and it is honestly so fucking tiring and just, boring to read??? like how do you not just hate it??????
5. "unemployed" honestly. i have no words. all im saying is it is No Fucking Shock that the woc is being pushed into these awful stereotypes.
now we are up to the worst part. the final comment...
6. "how are you gonna sleep with my man" ROY LEFT JADE. NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND. roy was on an undercover mission and fell in love with jade and got her pregnant! he left because he would not be able to arrest her!!! all she fucking knew was one of the first people she truly ever loved had fucking gotten her to trust him and then left her, she had to deal with that pregnancy BY HERSELF. SHE LITTERALLY SAYS SHE SPENT THE ENTIRE PREGNANCY WAITING FOR ROY TO COME BACK TO HER, AND SHE WASNT EVEN MAD SHE STILL LOVED HIM.... she didn't even realise his identity for years!
also why is it always the woman's fucking fault if she gets pregnant? it takes two to tango! roy is as equally responsible for that pregnancy as jade is!
7. "AND THEN LEAVE YOUR KID" OH MY GOD.... [EXPLODES YOU WITH MY MIND] JADE. CANNOT. LEAVE. THE LEAGUE. BUT SHE DOES NOT WANT TO RAISE A FUCKINF CHILD THERE BECAUSE SHE KNOWS WHAT ITS LIKE!! SHES BEEN THAT KID!! jade knows fucking better then to delude herself into thinking she can raise lian safely while still stuck in her life, but lian is her number one priority always!! forever!! she pushes roy and lian away because she knows she is dangerous for them and because she thinks she doesnt deserve to have them and that love in her life!!!
8. "lian should be embarrassed to have her as her mum" i actually fucking wish nothing but hell upon you. have you not fucking read. just a single thing in ur life actually? just like actually can you read??? because i have met TODDLERS with better media literacy than you. LIAN HAS ISSUES WITH HER MOTHER. THIS WAS A BIG PART OF HER STINT AS SHOES. SHE IS DEALING WITH THE COMPLEXITIES OF LOVING HER MOTHER, THE WOMAN WHO LOVES HER AND CARES FOR HER, WHILE ALSO ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT SHE ISNT A GREAT MUM.
im sorry this is so messy and has so much shouting it actually has me fuming when people r so fucking stupid, idc if you dont like a character but dont just ignore all the bits of a characyer that make them redeemable or interesting to prop up ur male blorbos????
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alexanderwales · 16 days ago
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Person 1: You know when you think about it, Batman could stop a lot more crime by donating to charity. Person 2: Gee, I don't know, maybe it's a comic book? Get some media literacy.
I have seen this argument a few times now, specifically with this claim that this is "poor media literacy", and I find it really frustrating, because that's not what media literacy is. Reading a work in the way it is meant to be read is like ... basement level foundational stuff, but it's not the only way to read a work. I think it's good and worthwhile to understand what we're meant be getting from the work. That's just where we start from though.
Reading a work in a different way from the intended one is also a super important part of media literacy. What assumptions is the work making about the world? What fantasy is it appealing to? How does this fantasy intersect with the real world? What are the contradictions inherent to the work? What complex issues are we poking at the edges of?
Here's how I'd like the conversation to go:
Person 1: You know when you think about it, Batman could stop a lot more crime by donating to charity. Person 2: I don't think that would fulfill the fantasy that Batman provides. Person 1: Maybe, at its core, the fantasy is a bad one. Person 2: In some incarnations Batman is very restrained, and never gives anyone any injuries, never kills, puts the bad guys away but in a prison that offers rehabilitation. Person 1: I think even that variant is also a fantasy, and Arkham Asylum being a revolving door points to a particular view of rehabilitation, one that's negative. Person 2: Not universally. There have been a few stand-out episodes that are about these super criminals coming out and having to grapple with a lack of support structure, which is one of the things that leads them right back into a life of crime. How do you stay on the straight-and-narrow when no one will hire you, when all your old friends are criminals, when all your skills are crime-related? Person 1: And that's a support structure that you think Batman should provide? Person 2: Well, in those episodes the point is interrogating the real-world social problem of reoffenders and recidivism, so it would undercut the story if Batman came in and fixed the problem before it became a problem. Unless it's a fantasy of using money to help people. Person 1: There's also the question of corruption, which is a running theme through the franchise. Gotham City is depicted as deeply broken, with corrupt cops, paid-off politicians, and institutional decay. Person 2: Which brings us back to fixing those things, and why fixing them is usually not a part of the story. The stories are generally simple, rather than complex. We like simple things, and a comic book isn't the best place to try to tear apart the how and why of corruption. The fantasy is that if we had power, we could simply use our power to stop bad things. Person 1: Which is true, in a sense, isn't it? I mean there are times and places when everyone knows who the worst people in a community are, when there's this constant thorn in your side, and there's just no way to do anything about it. Person 2: Someone peddling drugs on the corner, gangsters going around strapped, the asshole who keeps stirring things up. Sure. Person 1: So there's this gap in society, sometimes, a problem that doesn't necessarily have a solution, and the comics are, in part, a way to fulfill that need. Person 2: And also a bunch of stuff about the nature of fear, the strangeness of identity, legacy and family, order and chaos ... Person 1: It's complex. Hey, sorry about earlier when I said you should get some media literacy. Person 2: Yeah, it's fine, I was just struck by the thought, this way that there's this tension there. Person 1: I mean, to be fair, in some continuities Batman does give to charities and supports criminals after they get out of jail and does all this other stuff that people say he should do. Person 2: But it never changes anything. I mean, the two examples I'm thinking of are Harley Quinn, who becomes an anti-hero more than a hero, and the guy that controls Scarface. Maybe that second one is a good example. But it's not a central example of how the franchise handles its villains, it's definitely an oddity. Person 1: A lot of it is just how comics are, and I don't mean as a deliberate fantasy, I mean ... the narrative just keeps going, and there's always pressure to bring back fan favorites, so the status quo has to keep going, and this runs against any kind of reform or rehabilitation narrative, both for the villains and the city itself. Person 2: Which I guess you wouldn't argue is intentional. Person 1: No, it's a bug, not a feature. But it's a very different way in which the question of why Batman doesn't give to charity has an answer.
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gretashand · 7 months ago
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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.
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ekkotimesthree · 5 months ago
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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.)
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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)
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paperlunamoth · 1 year ago
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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.
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problematicbyler · 11 months ago
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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):
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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.
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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.
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miraculouslbcnreactions · 7 days ago
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On occasion, I swear I get undertones from the side of the fandom that liked the season 5 finale that “if you didn’t enjoy it, you must not be smart enough to understand it”…
But… that’s kind of a really stupid argument?
Is this not a TV show intended for 5-12 year olds? If the writing is too complicated for a grown adult to understand, then they have failed at writing a good kids show. Point blank period.
You can write a good kids show that has elements that go right over the kids heads, but those elements should be subtle bonuses that mildly improve the story. They should not be a key part of the overall message. A great little example is this scene from Bluey where the titular character finds an obnoxious "lost" toy hidden under the sink in the laundry room:
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Adults and older kids watch this scene and immediately get why the toy was under the sink, but little kids probably miss it. That's not a problem because the sink thing is just a bonus joke that is not vital to the message of this episode. If the sink joke was vital to understanding the message, then the writers would have failed at their job because they wrote something too subtle for the intended audience.
That's why I'm so critical of everything Miraculous is doing. Even if there's ultimately going to be an amazing story here, they've failed to tell it in a way that the intended audience can engage with and that makes the story objectively bad no matter how good it is for older viewers. The lessons should be obvious. The jokes should be obvious, too. There should be no question about what the message is.*
The season five ending is a perfect example of why Miraculous is objectively bad for its intended audience. Lets say that season six is going to address all of the issues with Gabriel and tell us that he was an abusive monster. How powerful is that lesson going to be to the five-year-old who grows out of the show in the year between season five ending and season six airing? What about the kid who obsessively rewatches seasons one to five in the hiatus between seasons and internalizes the happy ending? Or the kid who only watches the show casually and doesn't remember most of the early seasons by the time their issue are addressed?
Obviously those kids won't walk away with a great lesson, which is why shows aimed at kids usually make their morals clear by the end of every episode. Complex morals told over seasons are a bad fit here. Kids in the show's intended age group are only just starting to really learn about the complexities of the world. They generally don't have the life experience to question the show's morals.
That's not to say that shows for kids can't have cliffhangers. The cliffhangers just need to be about the story, not the morals. Season four was a good example of this. While I don't think it was a great final, it did have a clear message. It ends with Ladybug stating what she'd supposedly done wrong - even if season four didn't actually have her do what she said she did - and the question was only what would she do now. There was no moral ambiguity about what happened. Every episode of Miraculous should feel that way, but the show often fails at this. There's way to much ambiguity for a kids show. The fact that many adults can't tell if Gabriel was evil or not is a terrible sign!
*I will note that even perfectly clear messages can be twisted into baffling shapes by viewers of all ages and people will read into things in ways that leave even talented writers scratching their heads. The pigeon thing comes to mind as a good, Miraculous-based example of poor media literacy. So I wouldn't go so far as to say that a kids show is always bad if adults misinterpret things. It depends on how widespread the misinterpretation is and how logical the misreading is. The season five ending is a good example of a true issue because it's played like a happy ending. It's not weird that some people took that at face value while others are waiting for the other shoe to drop. Only time will tell which side is right, which should not be the case when we're dealing with content like the widespread manipulation of an abuse victim in a show aimed at children. That should be presented as unequivocally wrong. Instead, the lies lead to a kiss and happy smiles.
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Hi!
Feel free not to answer if you don't want to, but I'm curious why you don't post Buddie stuff anymore except for parts of your fairy fic. I'm also reading your vampire fic and you've said a couple times there that you ship both, but I only see Tevan stuff on your tumblr now.
I mean...I don't think I was that active to begin with. But, being 100% honest, while I do still ship Buddie, I'm not really down to fuck with the Buddie fandom anymore. It's not everyone in the fandom, it's maybe not even MOST of the fandom, (and certainly nobody that has directly interacted with me over my Buddie writing) but a large enough part of it seems to have lost their ever-lovin' minds, and I just got tired of having to constantly curate my tumblr and TikTok.
So much of the response to the BuckTommy relationship, Tommy the character, and Lou Ferrigno, Jr was just SO mean-spirited. Moreso than the usual bits of fandom toxicity that is just part of the experience you have to learn to ignore.
I'm talking about the flood of anonymous fics featuring Tommy doing unspeakable things to Jee and Christopher that took over the AO3 tag this summer, the fact that for a good long while, everytime I went on AO3 I had to scroll through a shit ton of "bashing" fics, the constant discourse, the just general air of smug condescension that took over a LOT of TikTok creators I'd been following--not that Tommy Kinard just wasn't their cup of tea, but they had to go out of their way to announce how stupid and bad and wrong anyone who shipped them was, the constant LeaRn SOme MeDIa liTerACy refrains over stuff that had nothing to do with media literacy.
And here's the thing...I FULLY acknowledge it is their right to do and say all that stuff (apart from the CSA anon or anons...that shit was out of pocket). The bashing was tagged for the most part, the TikTok videos generally had disclaimers that it wasn't a safe space for people that liked Tommy. I'm not wasting my breath trying to convince anyone that they're wrong and I'm right or throwing a hissy fit in the main tags. I'm just...quietly withdrawing from interacting with fandom that no longer makes me happy. I'm still enjoying writing my Fae fic. I still read Buddie and enjoy TikTok edits that are JUST about Buddie and not how awful Tommy is. I still follow the Buddie blogs that aren't assholes about Tommy and BuckTommy. But yeah, when my fandom experience started being more about having to blacklist and filter and scroll back, I started interacting more with the side where my experience has been generally more positive (not saying there are no assholes in the BuckTommy side of things or that they are perfect angels, just that I, so far, encounter less negativity in the wild on that side of things). *shrug* I've been in fandom since the early nineties...I'm too old too let my fandom activities to be a source of STRESS in my life.
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tangerinecherrygal · 4 months ago
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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?
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