#double death of the author

[derseprinceoftbd]

This is a rant I've been meaning to get off my chest for a while, but the conception on Tumblr, AO3, and sometimes here, that Jake is capable of "teasing" Dirk, and all that implies, irks me deeply.

Let me be clear: Jake English is not self-aware. He, in Canon, never does anything resembling self-awareness, maturity, emotional boldness, or anything else that requires a spinal column. This includes apologizing to anyone, talking about his problems in a way that doesn't end up being selfish, teasing someone, particularly Dirk, or transitioning. (I maintain this especially; he does not have the boldness, maturity, self-awareness, or nerve to have transitioned his gender presentation pre-Act-6.)

He has an *understanding* of pranks, if we allow Paradox Space as evidence, but that's it. He makes *Tavros* look like a fully-roleplayed-into-Class-shift Lord.

You know what the popular Fandom perception of Jake, as a member of a DirkJake relationship, lines up with? *John*, before his main writing trait became a deep, all-consuming depression and repression thing.

Like, John’s original Act 5 and earlier characterization before his underreaction to his dad's death and the spiral that sent him down towards his current "transition would not save her" characterization is what people use for Jake (charming, funny, actually seems to have his shit together enough to maybe be transmasc (man, remember *transmasc John*?), and, most importantly, seemingly capable of dealing with the levels of vaguely sociopathic bullshit that an even-close-to-accurate Dirk would throw at him), but DirkJohn/JohnDirk is less popular, to the point of not having a consensus order, simply because Jake and Dirk are *coded* as liking each other.

I think a lot of people miss that DirkJake is fundamentally the Equius of relationships; Hussie isn't one of those writers that feels pride in finding pathos in the ridiculous, but spiteful glee and humor. He genuinely does not care if he accidentally touches people's hearts in a way that doesn't involve Dave, or *maybe* Vriska. The fact is, DirkJake is a joke relationship, which is spelled out very clearly in their conversation.

You know, their conversation. The one they have together. The time we see someone who is actual Dirk Strider, not Hal pretending, not Aranea co-opting a memory, not a Brain Ghost, talking to Jake. That time.

Yeah, that doesn't exist. DirkJohn has as much conversational basis as DirkJake.

Edit:

LESS! GAME OVER! "I FAILED"! LESS!!!

DirkJake is a joke, a long, subtle one being made on everyone who saw Dirk's affections and immediately wanted him to get together with his disabled(?) ongoing harassment victim. Hussie was having a lot of fun making it seem like Jake found it important in the Masterpiece, I'll tell you that much.

@thelifetimechannel/@geejaysmith/@clonerightsagenda did magnificently wringing blood from this stone, I really do mean that, their Alphas are genuinely written better than Canon for 3/4, but that's all it ever was; every DirkJake writer is the YouTube comments under [this video](https://youtu.be/B7bpv5xyrOY?si=wYTCFDHM5ZzOY8fp) saying Equius could ever have been more than what he was.

TL:DR

1, Jake is pathetic, and we should remember this.

2, Hussie is a jackass who hates us one and all for the sin of caring and everything he has done with this franchise since maybe EOY2 has had an ulterior motive, and we should remember this.

3, Most people who write longfics set in SBURBless AUs, whether normalcy or fantasy, and want to ship Dirk and Jake should really be shipping Dirk with John, since now that history of Dirk-Jake interactions that justifies the ship in-Universe is gone at the Author's leasure, John would have the dynamic they want, and they talk *exactly as much*.

4, If you want to trans Jake, [there's a sensible way to do that](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8619856), but there's no in-character way to make him transmasc.

5, Read DDOTA, I beseecheth of you. Like yeah the Striders are emotional to a kinda weird degree but apart from that they really got everyone down right.

[derseprinceoftbd]

I mean that's literally not what happened. Like this is something I keep seeing, how much of the Fandom completely forgot the Masterpiece, and also somehow Act 7's ending shots. Like you're thinking of @thelifetimechannel. Like that is something that they did and Homestuck very much did not. Like we know how every one of those Kids suffers and dies. The narrative wins. Hussie hates our guts.

regardless of how you feel about homestuck you do have to admit that the story concluding with almost all of the major characters literally deciding to just say fuck it and abandon the story entirely is like. an absolutely iconic narrative decision. you know what i'm not doing this shit anymore. figure it out. bye.

[botanicalcanopus]

have you ever read DDOTA on MSPFA

it might be unfinished but it's a more coherent end for homestuck

I believe I read it a few years ago (*takes psychic damage from thinking about age*). I enjoyed it from what I remember and thought it wrapped up very happily. It definitely gave the fans the fluff ending we wanted!

I just went back to look at it and I think it is finished for sure now, that last page is definitely a nod to how they escaped the story from our perspective.

I will say unabashedly that I am a fan of HS² (at least with this new team) so I'm curious to see how it plays out.

[frankenfossil]

Oh! I nearly forgot, but can I ask the significance of this panel?

It comes directly after Dee explains that he can’t come and see her from the future whenever he wants. (Which is one of my favorite moments where Dee’s true eldritch horror leaks in to the story), so I assume it’s… sort of a metaphor? How Emily finds herself at the foot of something she realizes is much, much bigger than she contemplated before?

(Also, I just wanted to compliment you for this panel)

(The first time I saw it, I imagined Dee was showing her this on purpose, time traveling from sometime the same day to really show her what it would be like. An object lesson.

The second time I saw it, I started to wonder

Because Dee himself doesn’t really look aware of what is going on behind him.

And maybe, just maybe, this one moment in time has become the only moment that Dee allows himself to come back to to see Emily, the one moment where he can get lost in the crowd with every other time he came back to look. The one moment where he’s explaining why he can’t come back.

Just… Makes me sad, and I wanted to say thank you for that too, because I love these characters and the story they tell, the sweet and bitter.)

Oh!!!

(Quick test of my ability to find which chapter stuff happens in)

I love your reading of that Uluru panel!! I think I probably didn’t intend anything that deep with it; these time skip montage style chapters are pretty choppy and I’m usually trying to figure out a way to touch on all these brief scenes or moments that I don’t want to spend a whole chapter on for whatever reason, and arrange them in a way where the cuts aren’t too hideously abrupt. For visual reasons I try to contrast different locations and not put 2 dialogue heavy moments directly next to each other. Mood wise, I don’t really want to cut from something serious and angsty to something that’s a complete backflip on that. I also sometimes just feel like drawing a nice landscape and hope it achieves my aims on these fronts haha.

I think also here I was trying to move from that final sentence, “The present is more than enough”, to demonstrating them appreciating having that present together - being able to go do cool and enriching stuff, something not completely mundane but not completely fantastical either. (I mean... sightseeing within your own country is extremely normal, but going to Uluru from Melbourne... not a convenient day trip, since it’s 2000km; 25 hour solid driving, or you can fly in a few hours but I think you have to go via Sydney, so that makes it take at least twice as long I guess. Not that it's specified how long they're there for. I haven’t been myself but I’d love to one day...)

So, yeah!! More of a mechanical/compositional rationale than an intentional metaphor, but I think your reading makes complete sense and actually improves the page! (Sometimes I do intend visual metaphors... but sometimes they’re just happy accidents.)

And thanks for the compliment re the crowd of Dees!! I also love the moments I can lean into his eldritch qualities... they’re sadly few and far between but maybe that helps them be more surprising?? Definitely your first reading was what I intended, that he zigzagged back pretty quickly, probably even from within the conversation, but there is an inherent ambiguity to Dee’s time travelling where unless I take pains to spell it out, there really is no way to know when he’s come from. Even if he can be assumed to be taking every interaction chronologically, there’s no knowing how much time has passed for him between each visit. I don’t even know how to estimate how long his experience of time is, when he’s zigzagging back so densely all the time; even the number of living things on Earth any moment is an incomprehensibly mind-boggling number. That eldritch horror again!

Truth be told I hadn’t thought of him coming back to this moment and blending in with the crowd for the rest of the future ;_; but that’s so real... he could well be, the sad sack...

I had a different sillier thought from slightly misreading your question on first pass, which is that maybe he doesn’t originally know what’s going on behind him, but then later on as he’s just going about his business he goes “oh I know exactly how to punctuate that thing I said earlier!!!” and then does it as an afterthought. Oh to have the ability to add the things you wish you’d said to an earlier conversation 😂

[starlightt8]

BSD 109

Soukoku nation,how are we feeling?

Here’s a fanfic!

“We are destined to die together “

🥀900k words only

🥀Major character death of course

🥀Nakahara Chuuya is not ok

🥀 References from stormbringer

Sharing is appreciated 💕

[dreamersbcll]

“Everything I should’ve said” - a part 2 for @monarchsrus

—————————————————-

Sam can’t remember the last few days.

It was all a blur. One continuous film reel that repeated itself every time she closed her eyes.

She remembers holding her sister’s rigid body against her, their blood spilling onto each other. Sam’s blood still pumping and Tara’s flowing out of her- intermixing on the cold floor of the kill box.

Every time she closes her eyes she can feel Kirby pulling her off of Tara, and she can hear the guttural scream that tumbled out of Mindy’s mouth. She can still taste the anesthetic smell of the hospital, and how chilly the morgue was. Her hands still remember how cold the stretcher that Tara’a body was on, and how she held on so tight, that her hands turned red.

That was a few days ago. Today was a new day, as Gale said. But today was the day she had to bury her baby sister.

Tara was dead.

Sam had tried so hard to save her. She had fought tooth and nail to keep that boy away from her. Tara had whispered to her to Let her go, and Sam did. She thought Tara could handle it. She believed her sister could. But when her sister's body fell to the ground after Ethan’s, Sam realized she was wrong to believe that letting her sister go was the right thing.

And now she actually had to let her go. She had to let strangers lay the tiny body six feet under. And Sam had to be okay with that.

Nobody asked if she was. They all knew the answer.

Gale and Kirby had bathed her, dressed her, and fed her. The older women picked out a black dress and did Sam’s hair for her. No one spoke during the whole process. There wasn’t much to say about a baby sister that died too soon.

At the funeral, Sam bared her teeth and forced everybody back. Nobody got to touch her little girl’s coffin. Nobody was allowed to get near her grave. Tara was still hers, alive or not. Not anyone else’s. She was Sam’s baby girl. And Sam refused to let anybody near her.

Even as they laid her coffin into the ground, Sam bit the hand of anyone who would touch her. Gale and Kirby had to hold people back, away from the grieving big sister. Though Sam was acting irrationally, nobody dared to tell her that. They let her stand vigil over the burial ground as she said goodbye to her big sister.

Tara was dead. Sam was not. And everybody would feel her wrath.

——

It had been three hours after the funeral ended when Sam finally acknowledged her baby sister.

She sat at the grave, her knees digging into the fresh dirt. Reaching out, she felt the grooves in the cold gravestone, tracing the words.

Tara Carpenter

December 14th, 2002- November 2nd, 2023

Beloved sister and friend

“Mi Cielo”

“Oh, Mi Cielo. Mi amor. My baby girl,” she whimpered. She dug her fingernails into the cold marble, trying to claw her baby sister out of the grave she laid. Perhaps if she dug deep enough, she could uncover her baby sister’s soul again.

Tara would come back and hug her, and tease her for being so worried. She would press her chin into Sam’s shoulder, and sigh happily. Sam would wrap her arms around her and never let her go again. She would tell her baby sister that she loved her, and was proud of that. That they were going to live a long life together, and Tara wouldn’t be able to get rid of her.

Instead, Sam just tore her fingernails apart, her blood dripping onto her sister’s new home.

She sobbed, a rib-shattering noise. If someone reached into her chest to find her heart, they would find a shriveled piece of flesh that no longer had a chance to beat again.

“I don’t know why you told me to let you go. Why the fuck did you do that, Tara? Why would you tell me that? You know I would do anything you asked. You know I trusted you. Why did you let me down? Why did you let me do that?” she cried, folding in on herself.

Tara didn’t answer. Tara was dead. Gone. She was six feet under. Sam knows exactly what dress was on her tiny body and how her hair looked. She helped pick out which bow would go in her hair and what kind of stuffed animals would be buried with her. If Sam could’ve, she would’ve squeezed her body into the coffin too. A death by asphyxiation would be a gentle death. At least then she would know what it was like to be alive for the last time.

She sobbed harder, holding onto the grave for dear life. “I don’t know why you were chosen to die first. You did nothing wrong. None of this is your fault. You were my light, my heaven, my sky; and now I’m left with nothing but darkness. And I deserve it. I deserve all of it. I should’ve been the one slain. I should be dead. Not you, my sweet girl. It should’ve never been you,”.

The chirping of birds overhead was the only thing answering her. The sky opened up, and rain fell from above, soaking Sam to the bone. She scrambled to try and cover the grave, worried that her sister would get wet from the elements.

As the rain poured, Sam let her own tears fall as well. At least then she wouldn't have to admit to herself that she was broken. Weak. A carcass that no longer had a purpose.

“I love you. I fucking love you. Did you know that? Did you know how much I love you? Were you aware of how much I cared? I’m sorry I didn’t say it enough. I’m so fucking sorry. My baby. Mi Cielo,” she wailed, shaking the grace.

The universe had it all wrong.

Tara was dead. Sam was alive. Nothing would ever make sense again.

[news4dzhozhar]

The US Congress just passed this insanity but because they didn't also veto the measly 2 week long ceasefire at the UN, Netanyahu has pulled the Israeli delegation from Washington. The level of entitlement Israel has and the US continues to allow is truly sickening.

[ohbandera]

Journal: Schrödinger's author

I think it is really important to be able to take a piece of art and look at it both from the angle of artistic intent as well as how it resonates with you.

It may be different for others, but my experience in most fine art classes(tm) was not to consider how I resonated with art, but to only really look at artistic intent. It would visibly upset professors if an artist had purpose for a piece but I saw it differently based on the context I consumed it in. Perspective can change the meaning of art entirely, and I feel like some people struggle to hold more than one meaning for something in their heads.

This kinda leads into one of my favorite quotes:

“That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons.”

― Dave Grohl

"death of the author" is often approached from too black and white of a perspective. When an artist puts their work into the world, do they lose authority over the perception of their work, or does their intent majorly influence said perception?

I like to call this "Schrödinger's author." The author is both dead and alive... because I believe the answer to "death of the author" is both.

Artist intent both matters and does not. It depends on the person consuming it and the context in which it is consumed.

Two people with completely different backgrounds can view a piece of art or media and see it in opposite ways... and chances are, they see it differently from the artist as well. However, if they are exposed to the artist's intent for the work, they may now hold more than one meaning for it in their heads.

I think now more than ever it is important to approach the art and media we consume with nuance. I've had my fair share of "this art sucks and I hate it, therefore it is bad and shouldn't exist" growing up... especially in school. This was almost entirely because I looked at it too black and white- either artistic intent was not exposed to me at all, or artistic intent was all I was encouraged to consider.

Some of this of course was an ignorance on my own part, and some of it was a critical failure in the American education system.

From my experience, critical thinking and nuance is not taught or encouraged in modern academic settings, and it is making for a less media literate population... The result is a society that is more susceptible to black and white thinking, propaganda, and misinformation. That, historically, is especially dangerous when applied to human art and expression.

[volfoss]

firmly believe that if we had both stopped batman death of the maidens and grant morrison that talias character would have been like... so much fucking better by now

[boltlightning]

Okay what assassin's Creed you love and which you hate and why and why are we in the same fandoms!

it's because we have excellent taste goo <3 i wish i could ever answer your questions succinctly, but here is your long answer anyway:

i have things i love and hate about every mainline game! i wouldn't say i outright hate any of them. i find each game really fun to play for their own reasons (excepting v.alhalla, which i have not played, because o.rigins/o.dyssey burned me out so fucking bad on open world games i can't play them anymore. and i haven't played mirage yet either)

in general, and this is not a hot take in the least, i have a lot of qualms with the modern/isu plot. obviously yes, as a period drama person i am more interested in the historical plots, but even approaching the other side in good faith, i don't think it lends itself at all to the themes of the stories? the assassin-templar dichotomy is fascinating and has a lot to say about who writes history and how we cannot help but walk the footsteps of our forefathers, as much as we try otherwise. human conflict is inherently interesting; the historical stories and especially the modern stories don't need the alien-artifacts-as-drama-and-worldbuilding side of the story at all. we are literally reliving history every time we enter the animus, and is that not exciting enough?

it made sense for the first few games, but overall, i don't think it adds much outside of being the defining A.ssassin's Creed™ thing that they do in every game. it has the nasty side effect of turning every story into an assassin good/templar bad plots by virtue of who holds onto the plot devices, and it's immensely frustrating. ac3 was incredible mostly because haytham and connor both don't really care about the artifacts?? they're fighting the same war on the same side for opposite reasons and actually care about changing the world for the better in their own ways??????? i don't know. there is so much potential in the series and it so often breaks under its own weight.

anyway. more to the point of your question, the only game i think is genuinely bad and poorly researched overall is u.nity, which is unfortunate because it has my favorite gameplay, outfits, and setting hands down. i adore the phantom blades and i'll never get over walking around my favorite cathedrals. damn shame about the broken multiplayer aspect and checks notes fundamentally misunderstanding the f.rench revolution. the napoleon dlc was SO good! it could have just been the whole game!!

[derseprinceoftbd]

Here, at last, is that thing I keep talking up: my Homestuck rewrite doc itself, a list of the changes I would make (with illustrative page links), heavily inspired by the works of @thelifetimechannel, @meraki-sunset, and, to a lesser extent, @friendlybatteringram and @act8official. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yvangCLo3QIyuCvjWL6pu_fTQXaZFa3F6BS0_rHT5dc/edit?usp=drivesdk. Featuring more God-Tiers, Karkat Doing Things, June Egbert, Ultimate Jade, Cherub Lore rewrites, Eridan Doing Things, Nepeta Doing A Few Things, Feferi causing Game Over, slightly more Tricksters, nothing known beyond the final threshold, and more. Approximated to end up at around 8400 pages.

Edit: big rewrite pending, should be up at... some point.

[diekoffee]

HI!!!! I'm finally back!!!

Chapter six is up!!!

[p-clodius-pulcher]

Personal flaw of always reading ibid as ibis

If life could be a dream….

[rotenotes]

Saul Newman - Derrida’s Deconstruction Of Authority

Title: Derrida’s Deconstruction Of Authority Author(s): Saul Newman Date: 2001 Topics: authority critique deconstruction Derrida language post-anarchism post-structuralist Notes: Originally appeared in Philosophy & Social Criticism, vol 27, no 3. Source: Retrieved on September 14, 2009 from www.infoshop.org Saul Newman Derrida’s Deconstruction Of Authority Abstract: This article explores the…

[opstandelse]

Saul Newman - Derrida’s Deconstruction Of Authority

Title: Derrida’s Deconstruction Of Authority Author(s): Saul Newman Date: 2001 Topics: authority critique deconstruction Derrida language post-anarchism post-structuralist Notes: Originally appeared in Philosophy & Social Criticism, vol 27, no 3. Source: Retrieved on September 14, 2009 from www.infoshop.org Saul Newman Derrida’s Deconstruction Of Authority Abstract: This article explores the…

[malakkc-poetry]

Alien Buddha Press published 3 of my poems: Press Vest, Sounds of War, and MY YEAR OF RESTITUTION