#but it kinda does make sense though

[sparticus2000art]

I would like to say congratulations to cross xtale for coming out as trans.

[hoofpeet]

Cleanup <3

[screwpinecaprice]

Oh oof I slipped and hit them with dark and serious beam. 😣

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Why The Ending Sucks

Ok I figured it out. Hear me out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[tinseltownie]

i have a vision.... I don't actually think Lando likes to be casually touched.... someone come discuss with me.....

[coern-art-very-cool-and-nice]

the boy in the spotlight versus the girl in the mirror

edit: made a part 2

unshaded version

[skrunksthatwunk]

thinking about how eiji's a pole vaulter and how ash talks about eiji "flying" and how eiji's associated with bird imagery and how eiji's free (unlike ash) and how eiji comes in on a plane and leaves on a plane and how ash cannot fly, ash cannot be free, how nyc is ash's prison, and how ash is the leopard who dies climbing the mountain, unable to live at such elevation, how he was trying to reach the sky and be free but was always stuck to the earth, how he chose to die instead of climbing back down, how he chose to die where he could see the sky and hope and freedom almost like a bird with eiji's letter right in front of him rather than letting everything go wrong and ruin it once again, how eiji's a failed pole vaulter anyway, how a bad fall ruined his career and grounded him (physically and emotionally), how it took flying to america and meeting ash and needing to save him and skip for him to try flying again, how he landed hard and harsh and still the thought of that escape compelled ash to protect eiji at all costs because if he could fly that means something to him, even if he doesn't think he can fly, how eiji is the manifestation of his hope and how when he breaks and asks eiji to stay with him a while he folds himself over his legs and weighs him down and traps him and grounds him, how ash fights like hell to keep eiji alive not because he thinks he can be like him (hopeful, flying, innocent), but because he makes him forget the gravity of his situation, and so he can see eiji fly again. how he wants to see him escape. how eiji is a bird and ash is a wildcat and how ash never once saw eiji as prey. how eiji never saw ash as a predator. how it is eiji's naivete that first endears ash to him, how it is his freedom and flight and removal from darkness and his ability to leave that darkness that really roots eiji in ash's blood as something essential to him keeping on living in this hell of nyc. how it is that distance from the violence and that hope for the future that ash chooses to surround himself in as he dies. how ash dies in a dream because he feels more than anything that he can't fly like eiji, that he can never leave. how his violence is a part of him and will be forever, how it weighs him down. how he wants to enjoy the view from the mountainside rather than looking up from the ground below. as if they can both fly. as if he is with him up there and not grounded. eye-to-eye with what he can't have, seeing eiji's homeland: the sky. how he dies trying to reach the top because he couldn't take retreating and trying again. how ash, tired and tired and tired and convinced it will go on forever if he crawls back down the mountain, chooses to close his life deluged in eiji, in eiji's insistence that they can fly together, in eiji's hope for him and for them, in eiji's beautiful dream. how ash dies without trying to realize that dream. how ash, in dying, destroys it.

[introspectivememories]

please put your reasonings in the tags!!!! esp if you pick the last one

[longagoitwastuesday]

This is about Hindley:

«After a short suspense it was opened by a tall, gaunt man, without neckerchief, and otherwise extremely slovenly; his features were lost in masses of shaggy hair that hung on his shoulders; and his eyes, too, were like a ghostly Catherine’s, with all their beauty annihilated».

And this is about Heathcliff:

«a tall man dressed in dark clothes, with dark face and hair. He leant against the side, and held his fingers on the latch, as if intending to open for himself. “Who can it be?” I thought. “Mr. Earnshaw?”»

Heathcliff is the character most often described as tall (and altogether big), with Hindley also being described as tall, as well as Linton, Heathcliff’s son, being said he was tall for his age (which is fitting).

I find so juicy that Heathcliff and Hindley look somewhat alike, at least structure-wise, enough to make Nelly think for one moment Heathcliff could have been him, and scratch the idea because no, that's not Hindley's voice. You resemble the man who destroyed you. It goes both ways. His child looks like his sister. One could think it was her child instead. A stranger will think the boy your son. You'll smile at the irony.

[havenshereagain]

Another week, another WIP Wednesday! Still working on my de-aged Tim fic, but I also have a fic that i banged out over 3k in two days? So there's a snippet of that as well (that fic's premise is most of the family finding out for the first time that Tim is immunocompromised, currently titled Tim's Spleen)

De-aged Tim

That seemed to do the trick because Tim nodded, though his eyes went distant in thought. The kid probably had a thousand questions, and was trying to figure out what order to ask them in. "Did my parents die?" he finally asked, and Jason's jaw dropped a bit. He then explained his thinking, "I mean, earlier you seemed surprised by the fact my parents went on trips a lot and I don't think my parents would stop traveling unless they had to, so either the company went under or they died. And I'm staying here, and Dick said it was my room not a guest room or something, so I probably live here, or at least did for a bit. The room seemed a little too clean for me to have been living here, but I'm an adult now, right? So I probably moved out, but I definitely did live here based on the pictures and stuff in the room. My parents dying is the only way it makes sense to me." Jason's jaw was just about on the floor from the kid's deductive reasoning.

Tim's Spleen

Tim's grip on the handlebars tightened again. "I knew it was serious," he murmured. Losing an organ, especially one vital to the immune system, was a big deal for a vigilante. It was important that his doctors and team know. "I've spoken with Leslie and Alfred about it. I just assumed at least Bruce and Dick had read the report."

Barbara sighed, and Tim could just imagine her pushing her glasses up to rub her face. "Dick's always been awful about reading reports," she said after a moment. Neither of them said anything about Bruce. What was there to say? The man was usually diligent about reports, this was an anomaly.

[slayerdurge]

i gotta say i do love durge & minthara just standing in the corner cheering on astarion as he ascends. best enablers in baldur's gate. 💖

[rueclfer]

Shigadabi makes more sense than throwing hawks in that mix honestly. Hawks had more scenes with twice like if anyone, he should be with twice. Unless the manga shows more Dabi and Hawks interactions. Then I stand corrected, because I only know as far as the anime goes. I feel it makes no sense to ship characters who had less than two scenes together even if their pasts and backstories parallel each other or the characters are each others foils. In my view, if they haven’t interacted past a 10 minute exchange I don’t see shipping potential they have to be at least sharing a lot of screen time.

"it makes no sense to ship characters who had less than two scenes together even if their pasts and backstories parallel each other or the characters are each other's foils"

*throws up* so unfortunately i disagreeeeee and ik it's not that deep but if given an opportunity to talk about dabihawks i will take itttt

dabihawks is the type of ship that is only compelling because of their parallels and narrative foils. it's the type of ship where u rlly do have to read between the lines and understand the characters in order to "see it" and envision the possibilities even if that means having to look past the very little screen time they have interacting

-> hawks being seen as a human being for the first time in his life by the person that embodies everything he has been conditioned to hate (villains, dabi) when the people who raised him continues to only see him as a tool

-> dabi being understood for the first time by someone who went through very similar circumstance as him despite being painfully close to the person who ruined him in the first place (endeavor)

like it all about the possibilitiessssss hawks destined to be a villain like his father and ending up a hero and dabi destined to be a hero like his father and ending up a villain

*THROWS UPPPPP*

shigadabi to me is just me making my naked barbie dolls scissor like truly just to push the rude4rude freak4freak agenda i dont think they're canonically aligned at all LMAOOO like they barely interact past the end of the 2nd arc and dabi is also rlly fucking rude to shigs <\3 they r just 2 hot mean men i want to make kiss

[anerdynerd]

I do wonder what Jericho and generally any android that has ever worshipped/followed/looked up to Markus would react like, finding out that he has had to kill fellow dying androids and rip them of their compatible parts at the scrapyard in order to walk the Earth again

Those were difficult circumstances, so I wonder: Would they blame him? Would they not be able to see him the same again? Or do they empathize and know/think that they would do exactly the same to survive? Do they maybe even know about the whole thing already? Did someone start telling the story of how Markus came back from the dead? Or do they sense it somehow? Has he talked about it to his close friends? Does he think about it? Or was it easy for him to move on because he knows it was the only way? Is that part of why he took on this role of helping all androids? To make up for it? Or does he 100% believe that it was justified?

[neonhellscape]

Him..............

[aroaceleovaldez]

i would like to say my ideal PJO adaptation (if i was being physically forced against my will to have to pick a live action adaptation over an animated one for some reason) would be a combo like writing of the musical + casting of the show + visuals of the movies

BUT the show actually does have the playwright for the musical as one of the major writers for like three episodes and that did nothing for it. so...

[pretendthisisaname]

Sure hope this isn't some kind of foreshadowing