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sometipsygnostalgic · 3 years

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..... She-ra characters as Homestuck music?

I haven't listened regularly to homestuck music for years, this is not going to be easy.

I will try, desperately, failingly, to stick to one song per character.

Adora: Red Disc. Adora and Dave strider are basically the same character having been groomed as child fighters into a heroic destiny that they really don’t want. The difference is Adora originally falls for this grooming but Dave’s always aware that it’s fucked up. This theme also suits Adora for its intensity and wonder - it is oozing with Heroic Destiny and Self Sacrifice!!! These poor kids need a hug.

Glimmer: Aggrievance. Glimmer and Shadow Weaver (and Micah) have a lot in common with Rose, but for Glimmer, I’m using one of Rose’s earliest themes. Back when she was a rebellious teenager who overinflated her mummy issues, but also had a bit of a dark side. I think Rose and Glimmer also go through almost identical growth!

Bow: Love You - Feferi’s theme from Volume 8. To be honest I was stuck on what I was going to give Bow, I couldn’t think of any relaxed guitar themes in Homestuck, but I bumped into THIS, and honestly? It fits!! Bow and Feferi are also misguided peacemakers. There may be better, but none of Jade or Karkat’s themes feel like Bow to me.

Catra: MeGaLoVaNia. Okay, it's guitars, it plays when Vriska is making terrible decisions. What further explanation do you need? Alright, alright, I'll give her a second theme - Killed by 8r8k Spider. The complete CHAOS that happens during this scene in the comic, with Vriska facing off against Meenah in the desert while they get bombarded by what would become Vriska's army of ghosts, it's soooo Catra. I am happy with this choice!!!

Scorpia: Jade Sylph. You may be surprised with why I have chosen such a moody song for Scorpia, but like with the Unova Elite 4 theme I picked out, I think this suits her after she's awakened as a Princess. Kanaya is very powerful, the only character able to cut down plot armor, and the mom friend of the team, unafraid to annihilate people who harm her friends. An alternate Scorpia theme is my namesake: Pumpkin Party in Sea Hitler's Water Apocalypse. Like Roxy, Scorpia's a cheery girl who had her heritage taken from her by a tyrant.

Entrapta: Terezi's Theme. Because theyre both my faves Because Terezi's theme has two parts - the intimidating harpsichord of judgement, followed by a very hopeful "Alternia" rendition - intended to show Terezi with and without her scary mask. It fits Entrapta's bifurcated mad scientist presentation well, how she appears to be uncaring and evil but is actually the softest character. Also it shares instruments with her in-universe theme? Toby commentary on this piece:

Hordak: Eridan's Theme. Mostly this is because I've been joking about it with @kan-rezi for weeks, but honestly? It fits. As does any industrial music in homestuck.

But alternatively - listen to Ugly Story, a song about Eridan's heartbreak over Feferi, and tell me it doesn't scream of either Catra or Hordak in season 4.

Just a COUPLE of the MANY lyrics that apply hardcore to Hordak (but also Catra) from this fansong:

Shadow Weaver: Orchid Horror. Rose Lalonde's Act 6 theme. Rose being a power-hungry a mage who fell from light into the darkness of horrorterrors, only to lose that dark power and end up as a solid informant. I FUCKING LOVE Rose, so I suppose this is a high compliment to Shadow Weaver vs poor Hordak who I have given the incel Eridan song. But yknow, if the glove fits...

Horde Prime: English. They are both a terrifying, egoistic, manchild force far greater than our heroes could have imagined, unleashed on the world by their own actions. The song I’ve used here is from the infamous Lord English introduction flash. I think it fits the end of season 4 nicely in particular, where he zaps up Hordak, Glimmer, and Catra, and just trashes whatever war they were having before to invade Etheria, much like how the HS characters abandoned the conflicts in their session to escape the Scratch and figure out how to end English

I haven’t really got anyone else.

#she ra #homestuck

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schmope-is-dead · 2 years

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Eridan almost looks like he gets less sleep than Karkat. Guess crying over being an incel keeps a fish boy man child awake.

I GUESS IT'S AWKWARD TO CRY UNDERWATER, IT CAN'T BE PLEASANT

DO FISH CRY?

#karkat.txt #caps tw

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jaketism · 3 years

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I think I’ve heard this one already but I’m not sure. So, do tell about the Eridan meme?

i despise this man i hate his guts i wish he stayed dead and while i do appreciate that his existence is suffering SOLLUX DOESN'T DESERVE TO SUFFER LIKE THAT WITH HIM. he's a fucking asshole incel who wants to kill all land dwellers, because he's troll. i have zero sympathy for him, he made his choices (never actually forming friendships and instead always hitting on people and lashing out when they rejected him) and the fact he feels bad over problems he caused himself does not justify saying fuck it i'm evil now and i'm gonna kill my friends who rejected me. AND HE HAS FANS. PEOPLE LIKE HIM! HE'S NOT LIKE EQUIUS WHERE HE'S DESPICABLE BUT EVERYONE GENERALLY AGREES?? PEOPLE LIKE HIM!! i read a fic once where he used neopronouns that sounded like mine and it made me so mad i almost gave up entirely like i hate this motherfucker i want him tortured in an ethical way that does not harm any solluxes. thank u for asking.

#asks #homestuck #lucy

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autumnblogs · 4 years

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Day 43: Openbound

We’ll principally be doing Act 6 Intermission 3 today, so expect lots of pictures in this one!

Believe it or not, I initially didn’t like Openbound very much; I felt like it kind of dragged on my first readthrough, and generally had a pretty hard time getting myself to care about the Dancestors. They’re a pretty unsympathetic bunch.

Then again, lots of Homestuck characters are pretty unsympathetic! I’ve been really feeling that in the second half, as retrospect allows me to view a lot of secondary characters through the lens that we’re not intended to get attached to them.

That said, Openbound is actually pretty key to helping us understand the second half of the comic, I think, and makes explicit a lot of the themes that it explores, and how it builds upon the first half.

I think that the theme of Openbound as a self-contained work within Homestuck that we can use as a tool to decode Homestuck can be concisely stated like this; “Nostalgia and a desire for unity with the past causes toxic stagnation.”

So, aside from the introduction that we’ve already gotten to Meenah through the short conversation she had with the other kids, this is our first real opportunity to get to know her! Boy is she obsessed with money.

Money, like Cake, is a symbol that is associated with the Aspect of Life. As an aspect principally associated with Raw Power - the power to do what you want, unfettered by the stringent restrictions that are associated with Doom - it’s natural that Life would be associated with money.

The origin of money in history is pretty nebulous; it precedes the invention of writing, so any theory concerning its invention is ultimately conjecture. What I think is interesting about money is that the move toward a monetary economy in history mostly (but not always) happens as a result of the fact that it is way more efficient to collect taxes; the state mints standard coins, only accepts taxes in the form of standard coins, and propagates them into the economy by buying goods and services from the market.

It’s a tool of government, and even though Meenah may abrogate her inheritance, the Princess can’t escape her birthright. Money offers control, security... and power. What makes all of this extra interesting is that money is effectively worthless in the afterlife. Here, there’s actually nothing for her to really buy or spend it on; anyone can dream up whatever they want with ease.

It’s a nice bit of callback humor that Meenah has the same reaction to discovering the Thorns of Oglogoth that Rose does, but unlike Rose, Meenah actually does destroy them on the spot.

For being so headstrong and dangerous, there are ways in which Meenah is really pretty surprisingly sensible.

Lord English can destroy ghosts - this has always been a pretty disturbing thought for me. I may have said something to this effect before, but if I haven’t I’m a free-thinking Theist - raised in the Church, and largely independent in terms of beliefs, but I’m still pretty convinced that there is some kind of life after death. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much in works that have final death as a general presupposition, but it always bothers me when some kind of eternal life after death exists in a setting, and can be arbitrarily denied by evil beings with some power or another, like how some Demons and Liches can destroy or devour a soul in Dungeons and Dragons.

In Homestuck though, it fits with the themes established by the ways in which everyone God Tiers - spiritual power can be pretty arbitrary, and generally signifies very little about the moral worth of the one who has it; it does not intrinsically elevate the one who has it. It fits with its general criticism of power and the powerful, whether that’s the Mayor’s hatred of Kings, or the associating of corporatism with the worst parts of Jane’s characterization and Crockercorp in general.

Lord English has the power to destroy ghosts and end the lives of immortals not because he has attained to any kind of heightened spiritual awareness. He’s just some douchebag who through cosmic serendipity was in the right place at the right time to become basically all-powerful.

I adore Meenah’s spark. Who gives a fuck if Lord English is invincible? She knows exactly what she’s going to do when she gets her hands on him, and she’s got a plan from the outset. I think it’s also interesting the way that even though Meenah is absolutely taken by the spectacle of power, it isn’t sufficient to make her want to join up with English. Only soft power works on Meenah Peixes; emotional intimacy, friendship... keeping her entertained. All of these are the actual way to moderate her violent and dangerous personality.

While neither Rose nor Meenah is a parallel character to either Gendo or Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion (I think, actually, that Dirk is the character who most strongly parallels both of them), this bit reminds me of the way that Ritsuko describes both of them;

Rose says of herself and Meenah, “You’re not very good at this, are you? ... talking to people.”

Ritsuko says of Gendo and Rei, “They’re not very adept (at)... living, I suppose.”

The same can really be said of a lot of characters in Homestuck, particularly the ones who primarily find their identity in some form of power-seeking. Whether it’s Rose, or Dirk, or Meenah, or even someone as innocuous as Jake, none of them is particularly adept at living.

Rose is pretty conciliatory with Meenah; given her attraction to danger and darkness, it’s probably not surprising that she makes such an obvious pass at Meenah in spite of the fact that she probably knows what their relationship was in another life.

Further evidence that Rose is the horniest Homestuck character.

“you know how it is with ancestors

they just kind of hold this inexplicable power over you”

Dave continues to progress down the path of not giving a shit, as did Sollux before him.

He’s not quite to the level of reluctance that he eventually adopts, of choosing to just not engage with English at all.

Gods are, to some extent, aware of the various narrative forces that govern their existence.

About the only thing this piece of nasty trash has in common with Karkat is the extent to which they both blabber, and he helps create contrast with the other, somewhat more likable dancestors. Kankri is pretty much openly contemptible, and really in the worst way. I’m almost inclined to call him a concern troll because of the extent to which his verbal essays exist purely to make him feel better about himself. Any time it comes time for him to listen to people who historically actually suffered from the systems they were involved in, Kankri shows his true colors, slut-shaming and misogynistic.

Unsurprisingly, The Other Thief is also the vector for English’s ideology in her session, “turning us against each other to make us stronger.” While Kurloz may be a worshipper of English, and Damara may have thrown in her lot with the demon because of her nihilistic despair, Meenah (rather like Dirk!) is clearly driven toward a life of violence, and restless action for its own sake.

Now we’re starting to get some insight into Feferi’s style of rulership, which in turn, probably gives us some insight into Jane. For Feferi, leadership means taking power away from the people you’re leading if it seems like they have the potential to hurt themselves (or to be a drain on society if left to their own devices). It represents a violation of agency, perhaps not so severe as the kind that Vriska perpetrates usually.

Feferi and Jane are the sort of people, I think, who want to create a perfect world - but it’s important to them that they’re the one who’s creating that world, and less important that the world is perfect for anyone in particular. Just perfect.

https://homestuck.com/story/5288

John’s whole self-conception, and especially his conception of himself as a man, and someone who might be growing up to take on the same roles as his Father, is tied up in the icons of dadliness and masculinity in the movies that he likes.

So we should expect that his disillusionment with his past will change the way that he thinks about his future, and what he’s going to do with it. It’s a shame that this line of questioning never goes anywhere in Homestuck proper, but I’ll use it as evidence in the “John/June Egbert is trans” folder. Reminds me of how my decisive lack of affinity for the Boy Scouts serves as a nice little retrospective bit of evidence in my own trans narrative.

Based on the number of trans Eagle Scouts I know, I feel like there’s a certain extent to which it be like, a fast-track to figuring that out about yourself, like, you tried all the boy stuff and just decided, nope! Not for me.

https://homestuck.com/story/5290

Man, especially if we continue to read this section of Homestuck as conflating the characters and the audience, this whole section reads as John not just having a meltdown about Con Air, but also generally having a meltdown about his own story so far - everything he’s done in Sburb, etc. It just all feels lame and shitty in retrospect, when it was something that was kind of exciting at the time, at least up until the point where his loved ones all dropped dead there at the end.

It turns out that there was nothing particularly edifying about John’s suffering.

https://homestuck.com/story/5300

Teens can be such monsters. It’s the anniversary of Bro’s Death too. Davesprite is probably as broken up about that as John is about Dad, but it’s hard for boys/men to talk about that kind of thing with each other.

Cronus is even more of an incel than Eridan. He may be the most singularly contemptible character in Paradox Space. Do I hate anyone more than Cronus? No, I think I do not.

I won’t have a lot to say about the middle leg of Openbound; it’s relatively empty of substance, and not much that happens in it is ever relevant again compared to the first and second legs.

I like to think that this leg of the journey is, more than anything, a chance to ruminate on some joke characters who were already parodies; parodies of parodies, a joke made at the expense of an existing joke. The kind of thing Dirk Strider would write, basically.

Hey check it out, the Year of Our Lord 2012, and Andrew was starting to show some mild sensitivity in his choice of words. Just mild enough to have the lowest character in the story show a tiny bit of sensitivity himself.

This leg of the adventure does give us some more insight into Meenah’s character. Just like Vriska, she’s all about being a hardass super-murder, until she starts causing problems for the people she actually cares about.

Being Evil Sucks.

This is a really weird sentiment for Karkat to have in light of like, everything else about the latter half of the comic. I mean, he hasn’t exactly had the epiphany yet that the ideas that he has about being a leader are kind of awful and shitty, so it’s possible that he’s talking the Condesce up to avoid thinking about that. IDK.

He also immediately claims he’ll leave behind the meteor to go and join Meenah’s army, so maybe Karkat is just in a pretty low place in general? That tracks.

Karkat’s little conversation with Terezi explains at the two thirds mark of Openbound exactly what this whole thing is about.

Almost the entire second half of the comic is about examining the character’s guardians, and their relationships with them. The Guardians - Grandpa and Bro especially - are hyped up to be these outrageous badasses, both in-and-out of universe, and their ambivalent relationship with their kids creates this ambiguity throughout the comic about whether the kids are worthy, whether they’re living up to their parents’ legacy - and it’s the kind of thing that plagues them throughout.

But the thing is, Ancestors can be lame, or even terrible. They’re not really anything to aspire to, and the image of success that they project onto the world is one of learned confidence, and usually that only if they’ve really managed to make it.

Even the best parents are flawed, and instead of trying to measure up to them, growing up healthy usually means learning what those flaws are, and committing not to reproduce them.

Parents don’t suck; they can be awesome, and generally speaking, for a long part of our life, they’re all we’ve got. It’s hard not to love them. But we shouldn’t turn them into idols.

(On another note, it’s one hundred percent fitting for Terezi’s Ancestor to be an outrageous coolgirl. Terezi is perpetually anxious about being cool enough, the sort of person who is breathlessly fun to be around, who commands the attention of everyone around her, and she’s surrounded by them wherever she goes.)

https://homestuck.com/story/5340

John’s distress leads him to dream about his dead Dad, and boy is he angry. He spends a lot of the second half of the comic seething in rage directed at whomever is responsible for all the suffering he and his friends endure, dishing out beatdowns toward those responsible, but I’ve never gotten the impression that these little outbursts of his are particularly rewarding for him.

https://homestuck.com/story/5358

That was quite a blow. He knocked out like a tenth of Jack’s health bar.

https://homestuck.com/story/5387

Depending on where you’re standing some really totally different things can matter to different people. From Vriska’s point of view, the things that happened back when she was alive totally don’t matter at all anymore - only the matter of Cosmic importance that is fighting Lord English.

But the stuff that matters to the people she left behind, and the suffering she’s responsible for - especially for putting Terezi in a position where she had to slay her - all of that still matters very much to the people who are alive, which is what makes her self-conception as someone who is on the side of the angels now really... not sit well.

She clearly hasn’t changed all that much. She just thinks, as usual, that now that things are even, now that the score is settled, things can go back to the way they were before.

https://homestuck.com/story/5388

Tavros and Vriska are really bad for each other in general. Like, it’s not good for her to be around someone as pliable as Tavros is, and it’s plain to everybody that it’s not good for him to be around her either; whenever he’s around her, he apes her bogus inflated self-esteem in all the worst ways.

https://homestuck.com/story/5397

Tavros’ explanation of what Vriska does suggests that storytelling has become kind of a ritual for her - a means by which she is attempting to connect with her Ancestor, by performing the same actions she is, miming her - still the same old Vriska.

That’ll be all for now. Cam signing off for now - join me for the thrilling conclusion to Openbound tomorrow, Same Cam Time, Same Cam Channel.

#commentary #neon genesis evangelion #liveblogging

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ipunchvampires · 3 years

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I didn’t get into Homestuck until after it initially ended, and my experience with the RWBY fandom is just as an outsider who reads a few fanfics and has a GM who really loves the show, so this opinion is based almost entirely on second-hand information, but the impression I get is that the majority of Ironwood stans are just like old-school Eridan stans. By which I mean that they dismiss or rationalize all the red flags the work waves in their face about how the character has an abhorrent worldview, up until the moment he commits murder because of it, at which point they bitterly complain that his villain turn makes no sense. The characters are pretty different (one’s the general of a highly-militarized nation whose trauma response is to become a fascist dictator, the other is a proto-incel who decides to become a nihilist and doom his entire species to extinction), but the shape of their character arcs and the way their fans respond to them is nigh-identical. The crux of the complaint that their actions are “out of character” is that they fundamentally misunderstand what kind of characters they were in the first place.

#homestuck #rwby #general ironwood #eridan ampora #text #original

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skips-is-asleep · 5 years

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Steph Talks For Way Too Long About Sollux’s Harry Potter House

I havent been able to stop thinking or talking about this topic for like 60+ hours

first wanna say that it’s really hard to interpret how people are sorted because JK Rowling is apparently shitty at writing. So people seem to have wildly different opinions on why people are in the houses they’re in because they view the houses and their qualifications differently.

I’ve also never read a harry potter book and havent watched a movie for like 5+ years maybe so i had to talk to like 3-4 people who went though huge harry potter phases and we talked for over 3 hours cumulatively for me to make up my mind.

I think it’s really important to say that because Sollux isn’t really a main character, there’s a lot we have to make guesses on. Hussie didn’t make a big sheet full of Sollux’s Dreams and Ambitions, Morals and Beliefs, so we have to fill in a lot of blanks on what we think those are based on a few things. Who he talks to, and associates himself with and what he does

The point being we don’t have a lot to work with.

It’s also pretty important to say that Sollux puts on a LOT of fronts and facades. He’s only truly mean and cruel to people he doesn’t like or care about Plus Karkat. He plays Fake Mean a lot, and if you dig even a centimeter under it, we see time and time again that he’s just pretending and does actually give many shits.

Sollux is also really passive in most things that he does. He doesn’t really question anyone’s authority or make a point to fight something out very often. The only time we ever see him resort to action to solve his problems are when dealing with Eridan. And even then, the first time we ever see them talk, it’s Eridan walking up to him and Feferi privately having a conversation and Sollux telling his gf to “make him go away.” And then after Eridan doesn’t go away, we see him resort to fighting. His PQ arc also has him antagonize Eridan and then drop a building on him, so like, yeah. Usually, when presented with conflict, Sollux either removes himself from the situation quickly, or if he’s unable to do so, makes it extremely clear that he doesn’t want to engage. In most cases, Sollux is by himself, sitting alone and not making attempts to talk to anyone else. It’s totally possible that he’s more social at other times and we only see him when he’s at his worst, but we dont see that so we can’t really speculate much on it. Point being, he’s very passive and self contained/oriented.

What i really want to put emphasis on is the people he associates with. His main friends we see him talk to willingly or at least show fondness for are Aradia, Feferi, Kanaya, Terezi, and Karkat. Three of these are considered main characters, or are at least given character arcs to some extent. These are the good guys. The guys who at least try to do good, and show compassion, and care about others. The characters we see him either avoid quietly, avoid loudly or vocally hate and commit violence against are the rest of the characters. Namely Vriska, Gamzee and Eridan. (im kinda gonna gloss over Vriska because his distaste/hatred/unpleasantness towards her doesn’t have to be a moral statement on his part. It’s pretty easy to assume that anyone with his past to her would have a similar if not identical stand point) These are characters that actively do bad things, they murder and harm others at worst and are gross nasty incels at best. And even the best case in that scenario is still blabberingly racist and, treats sollux and the people he cares about like shit. Sollux doesn’t associate with people that the comic have established are villains, or at least do things that are pretty unambiguously wrong or evil.

In Sollux’s pesterquest, Kanaya tells MSPA reader than when The Thing with Aradia first happened, Sollux refused contact with Kanaya because she didn’t cut off Vriska. He was upset at her for being associated with someone who traumatized him. This is very telling of sollux’s personality and his relationship with his friends, and it’s a side we don’t see of Sollux any other time in the comic or in his PQ arc. It’s only when she tells him that she doesn’t cut Vriska off due to romantic feelings for her does Sollux change his mind. He doesn’t bring up Vriska, Aradia, his grief or his trauma at any point while at his visit with her that we see. He doesn’t appear mad or reluctant to be there, he makes jokes, smiles, and reminisces memories with her fondly, even almost sleeps over at her place for the day. It’s like he’s completely forgotten about being upset at her at all, or is at least choosing not to bring it up out of respect for her.

Again, it’s unclear how much time has passed. But when you start his arc, the reason youre talking to him is because he’s been reclusive out of grief. He hasn’t been talking to people lately and his friends are worried about him. So clearly enough time has passed for him to be okay with seeing Kanaya, as that’s his sole purpose for leaving his hive that day at all, but not enough time for him to be fully recovered.

This moment in his arc showcases his loyalty that he has for Kanaya, and possibly his other friends. He seemed quick to forgive her, or at least bury whatever resentment he may have been harboring. One may say that his cold shoulder to Kanaya would be indicative of a lack of a loyalty trait at all, that if he were loyal to her, he wouldn’t be ready to possible end his relationship with her over this. But i kind of view it as a sort of bluff? Like Kanaya essentially told him that his trauma did not at all change the way she feels about her, Kanaya still has a crush on Vriska after hearing about what she did to one of her good friends. To some, this may have been a slap to the face, an entire dismissal of his trauma in it’s entirety. But instead, he sees it as a valid reason for not cutting her off, he shrugs it off. I feel like if he were serious about not wanting to be friends with Kanaya while she was talking to someone who hurt him greatly, her crush wouldn’t have been an excuse.

I also wanna touch on his loyalty to Aradia very quickly because you dont need me to tell you that he cares about her. Once again for like the third time, we have to make guesses on how much time has passed between events. From the time Aradia dies on Alternia, becomes a ghost with an entirely new personality, a robot with another personality, and then finally her alive Godtier self, Sollux’s feelings for her are very consistent. He seems to not really care for the ghost or robot versions of her, he even sits a chair away from her during Openbound on the meteor, and doesn’t talk to her much, is very cold towards her, and even tells her that she’s incapable of feeling when she tries to tell him goodbye when she explodes (it’s also worth noting he cries after this, which i think is the first and only time we see him do this). When Aradia comes back to the meteor, alive and herself again, Sollux immediately leaves the rest of his friends to go hang out with her. Even with Karkat begging him to stay, he just peaces out, without even really thinking about it. We have to assume that if it’s not written in the dialogue, it isn’t being said. So he doesn’t discuss wanting to leave with Aradia or with anyone else. He just decides he’s leaving, and then does. And he stays by her side for almost the rest of the time we see him. He ditches later for other reasons, but don’t worry, they’re back together by the time Collide is happening.

Point being, for the most part, he sticks by his friends unless they’re doing something he disagrees with morally. If he’s not down for what’s happening, he’s not down for sticking around. He even seems to be better friends with Nepeta now that this version of her isn’t really hanging out with Equius that much, someone Sollux would no doubt not get along with for many reasons.

Some of my friends pointed out that him sticking by his morals so strongly is something a Slytherin would do, coupled with the fact that he’s kind of a dick or something idk that much about Slytherins. But I think Huffliepuff is very much about comradery. We can tell a lot about Sollux based on who he surrounds himself with and what he does and doesn’t participate in. He doesn’t participate in trolling humans, he doesn’t participate in helping Vriska do something he doesn’t feel good about doing, he doesn’t participate in any of the relationship melodrama happening around him. But he helps his friends. He helps Kanaya open the viewfinder to see and talk to Rose, he helps Kanaya do little errands in his PQ route, he helps Terezi find out who Dave is, and he sacrifices himself to save the remainder of his group (which btw only contains the people I’ve previously stated he associates with minus feferi not that that means anything i just thought it was kind of fun to point out). I mean, he got better but its the thought that counts.

Someone could make a point that “If Sollux is so loyal, why didn’t he mourn Feferi even a little bit when he found out she was dead?” And yeah, that’s a good point to bring up, and i don’t really have anything to say about it other than….maybe he knew by this point that death doesn’t really mean anything? Maybe his euphoria of finally being lifting of the voices was happening at the same time? And also that he predicted he’d go blind like a million pages ago and now he can finally stop worrying about it? Is he happy that he’s talking to Terezi and right now that’s more important? It’s hard to tell. Sollux doesn’t really explain himself apart from “missing being her matesprite” when in Erisolsprite form talking to Fefetasprite form. It’s hard to tell what their relationship was at the time, or what his feelings truly were immediately afterward. I kinda think it was the foremost of those explanations, he probably knew that she’d come back as a ghost, or something?

Anyway, those are all the reasons i can think of at the moment for why I think Sollux would be Hufflepuff. A lot of his personality revolves around his friends, who he considers friends and who he doesn’t consider friends. Send me asks, message me, and do that shit if you wanna talk more, but i probably won’t have a whole lot to say lmao. Or ill just restate a lot of what i said here.

Props for getting this far. For the record, if Sollux for some reason was unable to be in Hufflepuff, I’d probably put him 50/50 Ravenclaw or Slytherin. I really don’t think he’s a Gryfindor because as I understand it, that house is very much about being courageous, and standing up for yourself and i went off for way to long about how he’s a little weenie man who does nothing mostly.

#its 3 am #sollux captor #homestuck #headcanons

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autumnblogs · 4 years

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Day 14: The Ultimate Reward

https://homestuck.com/story/2404

Movies are one of the main vectors that culture uses to transmit itself in the modern day, and if it sounds like I’m describing this form of cultural reproduction like a virus, you’re not wrong. The concept of the viral video has been around for about 15 years, if memory serves, and Homestuck’s self-referential format closely recalls the snowclone and advice animal type memes of the late thousands. Meme itself is a word coined by Richard Dawkins to describe the basic unit of cultural reproduction and transmission. While the lines related to memes from Metal Gear Solid have become memes themselves,

John and Karkat’s lives are both shaped by memes, transmitted to them through movies. John’s ideas about romance and family are shaped by his movies, Karkat and his ideas about romance and family are shaped by his movies.

https://homestuck.com/story/2406

The narration insists that Feferi and Eridan are made for each other, but their romance almost immediately disintegrates. The narrative is training us to be skeptical of the Troll’s preoccupation with Romantic Destiny. The idea that you have one soulmate, a person you were just destined for who it’ll work out with, is bogus.

https://homestuck.com/story/2435

Something about this sequence has inspired me to talk about Society with a capital S. Both Hobbes’ Leviathan and Ginsberg’s Howl talk about Society with a capital S - the indistinct entity, the system which arises seemingly unbidden from the gestalt of myriad human interactions, parables about social systems.

Leviathan is a founding myth for the social contract and liberalism in general. As one of the petite bourgeoisie who benefits from Liberalism, it is of course in Hobbes’ interest to defend its existence and provide justification for the material conditions he benefits from, but Howl is considerably less charitable. Referring to the same entity as Moloch, Ginsberg describes it as an incommensurable monster, consuming the lives of the men and women who make it up to further its own agenda.

Authoritarians have always used the threat of cultural extinction in order to justify unjust material conditions and social hierarchies. Fail to fall in line, and Western Civilization is doomed. Glub Glub (who I refuse to call anything else, Feferi’s Lusus, you know who I mean) is the physical manifestation of this threat, an unbearable burden foisted upon troll society by their overlord, Lord English, to force them to participate in a system that guarantees their inability to produce ethical behavior. Their choice has always been a choice between murder and extinction.

https://homestuck.com/story/2439

Eridan is fascinating to me. I don’t know if he predicted the Incel movement, or was merely an agglomeration of school shooter, neo-fascist stereotypes, but boy is he absolutely spot-on - the fascination with military history, the emotional theatrics, the possessive and entitled attitude toward the women in his life.

https://homestuck.com/story/2441

Feferi’s a sweet girl, but she’s still one of the people who benefits from Alternian Society. The problem has never been that the Condesce is a brutal evil woman, the problem is the way that Alternian Society is structured in the first place. I’ll have more to say about this whenever we get to Openbound, since Feferi’s rule is discussed more there, and I’ll definitely have more to say about it when I eventually write the companion piece that I intend to about Hierarchy, Patriarchy, and so on and so forth. That one might be a long time coming though, because a lot of Homestuck is devoted to examining it, and I think it might end up being my longest essay. It’s the theme I think is the most directly applicable to real life, hence the import.

Feferi’s caretaking attitude and controlling predilections are also juxtaposed with Jade’s in the same way that Kanaya’s maternal instinct and green thumb are juxtaposed with Jade’s. Could it be that as the Witch of Space, Jade Harley is the ultimate mom?

https://homestuck.com/story/2448

Man, as long as I’m comparing Eridan to neo-fascists and Feferi to the political establishment, this relationship between the two of them - the way that Feferi views her enabling of Eridan as actually curtailing his worst excesses - really smacks of the kind of unity and compromise rhetoric that liberals always seem to spout in order to justify their decision to adopt moderate right-wing policy instead of actual left-wing policy.

I’m probably reaching here, but the thought popped into my head unbidden, and I’m trying to keep this liveblog as stream of consciousness as possible.

https://homestuck.com/story/2458

People think about us way less than we think about ourselves.

https://homestuck.com/story/2467

Just as I’m not here to defend Eridan (he’s a piece of shit who knows what he did), I’m not here to attack Feferi, or to excuse her. Characters in Homestuck are frequently both abusers and victims.

Feferi’s relationship with Eridan is complicated. For starters, she isn’t really curtailing the worst of his excesses, not the way that she thinks he is. Feferi has authority, one way or the other, and by being emotionally available to Eridan, she has enabled him more than she has prevented him from doing wrong. Cutting him out of her life earlier could have sent a clear message to Eridan that his genocidal ideation is not okay, but instead, she has afforded the luxury of her presence.

The aforementioned preoccupation with Romantic Destiny probably made it so much easier for her to wait, too. As the Heiress, Feferi enjoys all the benefits of being in troll society while having to put up with almost none of the downsides. The suffering of other people - the extra pointless emotional turmoil she puts Eridan through by stringing him along, the suffering of the trolls whose lusii she has employed him to murder - their suffering is all theoretical to her. It’s not something she’s ever had to encounter herself (something she shares in common with Jane - if I remember correctly, Andrew’s commentary suggests that he picked up some of the ideas he was originally exploring with Feferi to explore with Jane).

(Some of these ideas are from a conversation with @bladekindeyewear with whom I was having a conversation on Discord while I was writing this).

https://homestuck.com/story/2475

Instead of indulging Eridan’s emotional theatrics (he continues to make other people’s suffering about himself, via his pretension of nobility) I want to call attention to the fact that, as a chemical coping mechanism, Homestuck compares Trolls’ use of Soda to humans’ use of alcohol.

I don’t know if sugary beverages have a similarly potent physiological effect on trolls as alcohol has on humans, and it doesn’t matter if it does - the parallel is being drawn nevertheless. I’m only making this point, because later on it will become important: Terezi and Rose’s respective addictions (Rose’s alcoholism and Terezi’s... sodaholism?) directly mirror each other.

https://homestuck.com/story/2516

The fact that Vriska’s narration here describes these sidequests as pointless is, I think, another clue into Vriska’s overall character. By all accounts, she and Tavros actually seem to be having a blast together. She’s not going for the gold, she’s not skipping right to the end, the two of them are just screwing around in her magical land, going on adventures. Okay, she is literally going for the gold in the sense of treasure hunting, but in a more figurative sense, the Vriska we’re more familiar with would probably be a taskmaster, using the scourge of her overbearing personality to drive the team forward to victory over the main final boss. Instead, she’s most in her element here when she’s not doing anything remotely important at all, just hanging out with someone she likes(hates? Troll friendships are complicated.)

Abusive relationships are rarely as obvious or simple as one person harassing and berating the other all the time. Tavros is clearly having a blast here too, and throughout this whole sequence.

https://homestuck.com/story/2521

The problem is that there are two Vriskas (at least), the Vriska who lives inside of her, who she’s only comfortable bringing out around people who have no expectations for her, and the Vriska that Scratch, and Spidermom, and Sn0wman are egging her on to be, the Ideal Troll who cuts through the bullshit, cuts to the chase, and becomes the most important person in the universe. Later on, they will be literally bifurcated by John’s retcon shenanigans.

Homestuck uses the language of alternate selves and ultimate selves to discuss a question that is applicable to real life as well. “Who is the definitive version of a character for whom different choices and versions of themselves are possible?” And when applied to real life, the question becomes something more like, “Could I have chosen to do something else instead of the thing that I did? Are my intentions important, or only my actions?” I don’t think it answers clearly, but just getting us to think about it might be sufficient.

https://homestuck.com/story/2531

The Black Queen is just one of the many malign influences in Terezi and Vriska’s lives, and while she’s not literally an abusive parent to both of them, by egging them on to indulge their worst excesses (Egging Terezi on to persecute people pre-emptively or overzealously, egging Vriska on to take away other people’s agencies), it’s safe to say that her voice is just one of many doing the same thing for the two of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/2543

Oh man. The memoes are some of my favorite conversations in all of Homestuck. They’re funny, but with the exception of one or two of them, I’m not sure how much useful info we’ll get out of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/2567

https://homestuck.com/story/2575

Karkat and Terezi may not have literally had sex, but whatever their secret encounter was is effectively symbolic of a consummation of their relationship. She knows what color Karkat’s blood is. They have been in a pail together.

The two of them can hardly be more intimate with each other.

Too bad it doesn’t work out.

But then, it’s probably for the best - the fact that it doesn’t work out for the two of them is the retrospect we need to be able to say it was never going to work out for the two of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/2576

Something different does it for everyone.

https://homestuck.com/story/2578

What does it for Vriska is having the shit beaten out of her by Aradia.

What is Vriska’s big takeaway from this beatdown?

Maybe if we continue to read Aradia as being Vriska’s doppelganger, being savagely beaten by one of her own victims, and one who is so like her in terms of her feelings of helplessness, her feelings of being at the whim of a cosmos that is out to get her, Vriska realizes that the thing she lashes out to attack in other people - the weakness loathed by troll society - is what she hates and fears the most in herself.

https://homestuck.com/story/2587

Aradia is starting to lose her tolerance for scenarios that involve being manipulated by those very same actors that are making her feel helpless.

https://homestuck.com/story/2593

Aradia interprets Sburb as being a challenge to come between any prospective gods and the ultimate reward. Perhaps that is the case. Assigning intent to Sburb to me seems possibly flawed, since it is, after all, only the reproductive organ of a universe. But perhaps it does have some intentions of its own. Are those intentions uniquely Sburb’s? Perhaps specifically Skaia’s. Maybe they are even, more generally, the intentions of Paradox Space itself. But Sburb itself seems more ambivalent to its players than anything. The vast majority of sessions, it seems, kill their players outright, or at least produce null sessions that never give rise to universal reproduction.

https://homestuck.com/story/2625

And that is where we shall conclude for this evening.

Cam signing off, Alive and Not Alone.

#liveblogging #commentary #politics #hierarchy

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