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valle-de-sombra-de-muerte · 6 months ago

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Homestuck Reread: Act 3, Part 1/3 (p. 760-891)

Read the previous post here.

Time for the beginning of Act 3! An inauspicious start, since the Act begins with Jade's introduction.

So I guess the "reader" is still acknowledged as a thing. And they're actively attempting to manipulate Jade. I wonder how much longer this will last for.

Jade has so many interests, you guys! So many! And I'm sure each and every one of them will be relevant to her character as well!

Also, she needs reminders so she doesn't forget about the things she's interested in? What?

Why does Jade have so many variants of fetch modus when none of these will ever show up again? Actually, the whole modus system continues to be really dumb and that's probably why it's rarely mentioned in the later acts.

Jade's precognition again being treated as just a fun lil' quirk. Gosh, she's just so quirky, right fellas? So many modi, so many interests. She's just so silly and fun, right? Right???

Honest confession time. When I first read Homestuck, I had no idea that a "eureka lemon" was an actual variety of lemon. Of course I've heard of crab apples, key limes, and mandarin oranges, but it never occurred to me that a eureka lemon was also a real thing. I didn't figure this out until years later.

Wait wait wait. Hold the phone. Jade is a fan of old cartoons? When is that ever referenced again outside of the occasional mention of Squiddles (a show that isn't real)? What the fuck? John likes movies, has posters in his room, and name drops his favorites on a regular basis. Why does Jade not talk about any cartoons she likes???

Physics, gadgetry, and gardening are all shit that aren't ever mentioned again either, but I was at least aware of those things being related to her, at least on a surface level. Jade's whole thing (well, what I assume Hussie ostensibly intended to be her thing) is that she's this genius wiz kid. And her username is gardenGnostic, so of course horticulture has to be somehow related to her character. This whole cartoon thing is seriously new knowledge to me, though.

Grandpa Harley was a real renaissance man with a multitude of interests, so it's natural that Jade takes after him. The problem is that Grandpa is dead and he's less of a character than he is this mysterious symbol that Jade both admires and resents. It doesn't matter whether or not he's fleshed out, but Jade is a main character, so by necessity she must be or else she comes across as half-baked.

Jade has two pages dedicated to her interests, yet none of them are relevant to her character. She never talks to anyone else about gardening or anthros or anything like that. She doesn't use her scientific knowledge to help solve a problem. Her guns only serve the same basic combat purpose as the other kids' kind abstratus, but beyond that she isn't a gun nut.

One can point to stuff like John's interest in programming or Dave's love of photography as examples of extraneous character traits that don't ever manifest later on in the comic. But in Jade's case, it's nearly all of them. Hussie could've filled these pages with anything he wanted, but nothing would alter the existing perception of Jade being nothing more than "silly, upbeat girl who can see into the future." This is what I meant when I said earlier that she doesn't have any character to speak of. Or rather, she's just extremely shallow.

And because Jade doesn't have enough quirks already, her shirt randomly changes designs. Wow! Incredible!

These "manthro chaps" are honestly more unnerving and sexually charged than the smuppets. I don't ever see anyone reference them nearly as often, and probably for good reason. Unlike the smuppets, they're too close to resembling humans and are very uncanny. This feels like a deranged fetish thing, but it's being played off as more silly, quirky bullshit. "Slop trough" is a phrase I never want to read again.

Right. Hating furries was very much en vogue back in 2009, I'd say more so than the present. However, Hussie is going to great lengths to portray Jade as one of the "good ones." Her interest in anthros is non-sexual in nature and she does not partake in "cringe" furry activities like wearing fursuits and engaging in sexual activities with other furries. As stated before, the manthro chaps are being depicted as wholesome make believe, not in a feral/pet play context (despite the fact that that's exactly what it looks like).

This is just Hussie taking pot shots at a subculture that has historically been a very easy target for ridicule. I'm not even sure why he decided to make Jade a furry in the first place if he was going to draw lines in the sand like this. What an incredible dickhead. And since this is written from Jade's perspective, it makes her a dickhead too.

There are a few times later on where Jade comes across as rude or judgmental, coming at odds with her otherwise unflinchingly polite and optimistic disposition. Needless to say, this does little to endear her to me.

Like John, Jade also has a chest full of shit that doesn't end up mattering. Come to think of it, this whole intro sequence feels extremely drawn out, kind of like John's. John at least had the excuse of being the first character and he required a long intro in order to establish the tone and mechanics. We've gotten a good handle on things by the time we reach Rose and Dave, so their intros weren't nearly as involved. So why the fuck is Jade's taking so long? We know this whole routine, we've done it three times now. Can we get the fuck on with the story already!?

This is a really bizarre sequence of pages where the "reader" is forced to match the memory cards of Jade's modus, only to fail at it repeatedly while both Jade and Hussie judge them for it.

Man... I know it's a common fandom notion that Jade is the most neglected and underutilized of the main cast of kids, but you seriously wouldn't have guessed that based on all these early pages. She feels more like Hussie's favorite, if anything.

Every passage he seems to talk about her with affection and a total absence of snark, not like the other kids who are regarded with bemusement at best or mockery at worst when they do something foolish. Here the derision is solely focused on the reader for their apparent cluelessness, and both Hussie and Jade are on the same side. C'mon, Jade's just offering the reader to play this game and they fail because they're obviously not as smart as she is. Serves them right for that earlier, boorish suggestion that this wonderful girl might be a, gasp, disgusting fursuit-wearing degenerate!

There's something a little off about how this then-30 year old man created this 13 year old girl who's so sweet and perfect in every way, and whom he dedicates so many pages showing us every single one of her quirks and all the amazing things she has in her home. But I don't really want to dwell further on this, so I'll be moving on.

"But he does like his steak well cooked."

"He does prefer his steak rare after all."

Well, which is it??? Does he like his steak well or rare? Does Hussie not know the difference between these terms? Has he never cooked a steak before?

Dave Strider? More like Dave Simper. He is incredibly down bad. She's obviously not online, dude. Get out of her DMs. He's also facetiously engaging her with furry roleplay. God, Dave, get a clue! ERP is something only cringy furries do and as established previously, Jade is most definitely not one of those types of furries!

The Midnight Crew get their own dedicated flash. These guys sure are getting teased a lot, despite just being characters from an in-universe webcomic. I wonder what it could mean...

FINALLY we get to the Strider fight. Well, it's more like Dave vs. Cal rather than Dave vs. Bro. Not to try and crack open more Bro discourse, but the idea that people will try to equate Dave getting clowned on by a puppet with actual child abuse is absurd. I don't see how this is any different than the previous strifes John and Rose had with their parents.

FUCK it was only for one page. We're back to Jade again. You know, if I had a friend who knew whenever I was about to have an internet outage and acted all smarmy about it, I would probably stop talking to them.

"Grandpa Moreau over there on Hellmurder Island" is a good line. Thank you Rose for providing some levity to this slog of pages I've been enduring.

Another GameFAQs page, but this section is written by John for some reason. He brings up a great point about how nobody is reading these damn things. If you're some nudnik who truly gives a shit about how punch card alchemy works, oh boy do I have a page for you!

Jade dislikes hunting and it was mentioned earlier that she'd never shoot an animal. It strikes me as odd that she has such a passion for guns, but not hunting. What does she shoot then? She's a "skilled markswoman" but do we ever see a shooting range or anything to practice her skills? I can't imagine there's much else to shoot on this island aside from wildlife.

Grandpa Harley says Jade will grow up to be like the women in the photos he gets off to. I uh... I don't know how to feel about that. Other than perhaps it's for the best this old man is dead.

Wow! Who's this rude customer? What a crazy guy! Oh well, he was blocked so I don't think we'll ever see him again.

Finally at this point we take an extended reprieve from Jade. For the record, we're 99 pages into the Act. It took Rose 25 pages from her intro before the plot returned to John, and Dave 48 pages from his before turning back to Rose. (I'm not counting brief cuts to other characters for these counts, because the main focus is still on the recently introduced character). Nearly 100 pages of Jade showing off her house before going back to the plot. Augh!

Anyway, Rose actually reaches out and grabs the captcha card, which isn't something we've seen up to this point. This whole inventory system is weird, man.

I think it's all but directly stated that Mom Lalonde became an alcoholic because she has known the exact date the world was going to end. A sad detail.

Part 2 of the Strider fight ends with Bro yeeting Dave down the stairs. Again, I can't see this scene as serious representation of legitimate child abuse, especially with the fucking SBaHJ jokes at the end. The tone is so comedic and outrageous I don't understand anyone who takes it seriously.

Honestly, the earlier scenes with Dave roaming the apartment, being surrounded by weapons and sex toys, making comments of how he has difficulty accessing food, and being videotaped for Bro's fetish films paint a much better image of an abusive household than any of this strife shit. I don't want to try and argue that Bro isn't a bad guardian, because he definitely is, but there's this notion in the fandom that he does all this because he hates Dave and wants him to suffer, and I don't think that's true at all. His actions read more like neglect and carelessness, not malice.

You can make a list of all Bro's crimes, but hating his brother is not one of them.

John wins his fight against the ogres. There's an earlier page where we see him getting the tar kicked out of him (with the same over the top slapstick animations during the Dave vs. Bro fight, mind you), but it's only after Nannasprite and Rose join to help that he's able to achieve victory. He really can't do anything on his own, can he?

How about a "thank you, Rose, for beating those ogres for me"? Dickhead.

No "thank you" for Nannasprite, either. Instead he asks her to carry him to the gate, since he already knows Rose can't do it. This kid really sucks.

Now that I'm a third of the way done with Act 3, I have to say Jade is some honest to god Mary Sue shit. I don't like using that term because it's been misused to the point of uselessness, but come on. Compare Jade to the three previous kids and tell me that this girl isn't the most ridiculous character in this lineup.

We have John, the goofy cornball that likes pranks and watching bad movies; Rose, the smug pseud that likes the occult and writing lousy fiction; Dave, the aloof hipster that likes rapping and making shitty comics; and Jade, the genius manic pixie furry girl with a randomly changing wardrobe that can see into the future, lives on a private island full of crazy hi-tech gadgets, was raised by a radioactive dog, and likes physics, gardening, sharpshooting, bass guitar, and inventing.

Fuck me. If I was DM for a DnD session and someone submitted a character sheet like that against three normal ones, I'd tell them to leave. Why can't she just be a normal kid like the others? It's all so jarring!

Suddenly I'm wishing I was back reading Act 1 again.

Read the next post here.

#homestuck #homestuck reread #jade harley #dave strider #rose lalonde #john egbert #grandpa harley #karkat vantas #tw abuse mention #bro strider #mom lalonde #nannasprite #lil cal

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