#funny how you all are so trapped in your poor views of political alignments that you celebrate the death of a trailblazer

[theirondragonrants]

I'm saying it right now, if you're celebrating the fact that Diane Feinstein is dead, the spirit of Harvey Milk is very fucking pissed at you.

[zwiezraczek]

Criminal - Chapter 8

Billy (viliain) x Female reader (cop)

Prologue/Chapter 1 - CHAPTER 2 - CHAPTER 3 - CHAPTER 4 - CHAPTER 5 - CHAPTER 6 -  CHAPTER 7 - CHAPTER 8:  And even I know this ain't smart - CHAPTER 9

SUMMARY: You always wanted to become a police officer. And you became one of them, brilliantly and they offered you your first case. “The Ghosts” case. The case of fleeting people and one sneaky bastard parkouring around the town to annoy you. You swore to yourself to catch him them. 

WORDS: 1.9k

NOTE: An we’re back on a Friday schedule, yay! A strange week, abut here we are with a week-end and another week which will hopefully be a good one! I hope you’ll like this update!!! 💕

TAGLIST: @onceuponadetectivedemigod​ @natsficrecs​ @suckerfor-fanfics​(leave a comment to be a part of it!) PERMANENT TAGLIST @suckerfor-fanfics​ (leave a comment to be a part of it!)

“Y/n? Y/n, you're here with us?” Jake's voice asked you as you snapped in again

It was the third time today. The third time that somebody had caught you thinking about something, something you couldn't share, so you told them it was about the case, your Ghosts case. And in a way, you weren't lying. You were thinking about Billy and his letters, Billy and his humor, Bill and the memory of his blue eyes, Billy and his blonde locks, Billy. At this point, you knew it had become an obsession to wait impatiently for your mail a week after you left the letter in the dumpster he indicated you – he hated when you called it the dumpster, he crossed the word a few times while replying to you and telling you that it wasn't a dumpster. But, it was a professional obsession, right?

It had totally helped you to sort things out, it had cleared your mind and your view on all the had done since you followed them. They had done many good, via very strange ways and methods but in the end their purposes seemed to be worthy. Not worthy killing so many, acting as outlaws and being hidden forever. You told Billy that you thought that their means were a bit harsh, but he told you that he wasn't the brain of these operations, only a pawn, a useful one but still a pawn. And he was certain that there was no other way of action, only being illegal allowed them to quickly dismantle all these dangerous groups. It was a risk that they had to take, as criminals.

A risk you surely wanted to avoid, by working with them.

“She's not here apparently,” said Gina as she put a hand on your shoulder. You absolutely zoned out again. Thinking about the case, and him.

“I'm here, I'm here,” you finally said with a smile on your face, “still working on my case but still here with you.”

“Apparently not with us, because you're not saying a word about your case lately,” Jake remarked and you bit your thumb. Damnit.

“I'm digging deeper into some things, with a new perspective, you know...”

“New perspective? Tell me more,” Gina said as she put her elbows on your desk.

“Well. The Ghosts are always striking at strategic points, their actions are always linked to a bigger picture it seems. All that we see are disconnected events, shootings, kidnappings, gang wars, but at the end there is always something big falling. Always, systematically. Just like in Russia the last time. We're not seeing the things as big as we should. We're always missing the final piece.”

“What do you mean,” you looked up at Jake who seemed a bit lost.

“They're doing basically our job, but without any morals and without any political limitation.”

“No shit way,” Gina whispered.

“You're joking y/n.”

“Not at all,” you said showing them a file in your computer filled with missions they had done in the past, “ look here. If we align their actions from the last few years, we have corresponding dismantling of some mafias in the country and even abroad. Their actions are linked in that way, they're not striking just to strike in a place, but it's all planned even more than we thought it was.”

“Damnit, y/n,” Gina whispered with her eyes still looking at the screen, “you're having something here. It's huge, the boss should know about it! You should tell him in order to make all the things work out again!”

“He's still pissed about the last mission I organized, you know,” you sighed. It wasn't your proudest moment, you had to admit. But, thanks to that moment you met Billy again... Focus, focus y/n. “And besides, he won't believe me. He'll tell me it's a happy coincidence, as everything I found on them so well... I'll keep working on that alone.”

“You can count on us, right Jake,” Gina asked as she looked up at Jake who nodded. “We're working together for years, I mean, at least in the same department, so if you need a hand just hit us up y/n!”

“That's lovely, thank you Gina,” you replied with a smile.

If they were about to work with you, you were screwed. Absolutely screwed. And knowing Gina, she would be there for you, obviously.

~~~~

The day you knew you screwed things up was when you had a day off and your mail came to the station.

But the worst part of your day off was that you spent it with Billy. Discussing. In a coffee shop. About things and others. You told him about your day off in the previous letters, and he decided that it would be a great opportunity to catch up together, as two normal individuals. And you didn't refuse trying to convince yourself that it was all because of the case, not because you found his jokes funny when he wrote them or when you slowly understood what they were doing, and mostly what he was doing to you and your poor heart. Your cat noticed it too.

When you saw him sitting with a cup of coffee in front of him your heart almost missed a beat. He wasn't wearing his signature hoodie, but a bomber golden jacket as he listened to some music and drummed with his fingers on the table, with his eyes closed. You truly thought about going back home, but he opened his eyes and waved at you. Shit. Breathe in, breathe out and smile.

You sat on the opposite side, looking at him as you took off your jacket. He was strangely silent. You were too. For a split second, you thought it was a trap and looked all around you, a bit nervously. You had your gun with you.

“I'm not trying to kidnap you, relax,” he said with a smirk, “keep that gun in your bag and I'm keeping mine in my pocket.”

“We said no guns today, what about our sight-duel,” you playfully asked.

“We both cheated because we don't trust each other enough, nemesises,” he concluded before sipping some coffee from his cup.

“Yeah, nemesises,” you repeated looking at him for a longer moment than intended before a man came to take your order.

“So, what's up? How's the whole investigation and the case?”

“Yes, I feel good too, nice of you to ask,” you replied as you rolled your eyes and smirked.

“How are you? Have you eaten today? Drank? Took care of yourself?” He asked you as he fluttered his eyelashes. You looked right into his green pearly eyes. Oh shit.

“I'm good, I haven't eaten yet, but I'll be drinking coffee right now, with the guy I should jail, so it's like fine I guess. And you? A casual day off, Billy?”

“I'm enjoying my time with the woman who wasn't first keen on bondage but now,” he started and you sighed knowingly.

“This joke has to stop, I can't do this anymore,” you complained as the waiter put the coffee right in front of you.

“You never tried,” he insisted and you gave him almost a death glare and he began to laugh, “fine, I'll try to stop with the whole bondage thing, but that's one of my best jokes so for so I was sticking to it!”

“I'm sure you can do way better, cocky Four,” you said before sipping some coffee from your cup.

“Yeah, always for such an ungrateful cop as you are. Sure.”

You chuckled, and then you talked. Probably more than intended. He was a funny guy, with beautiful hair and mesmerizing eyes. He was probably too nice to be true, and too nice to be genuine. However, you could tell he was.

But the real problem began when Gina found your mail and couldn't keep her hands to herself when she saw that the letter was from an unknown somebody from the city. And when she opened it, she knew she had to talk to you about it, immediately. So when you came to the station, all happy and sunny she was waiting for you, sitting at your desk with the letter open. And you smelt the rat. A big rat.

“How was your day off,” she asked you with a too wide smile.

“Nice... I guess... Why...?”

“Because you have some mail from Billy, he says that you're a funny cute cop, and that the Ghosts are planning new things. And oh, what the fuck with bondage?” For God's sake, not the bondage.

“Gina, follow me please, I can explain everything...”

“You sure have to, or I'm taking all of this to the boss,” she whispered as she got up.

You had to convince her that all of this, including the personal letter, was a trap set to catch them. That Billy never meant anything to you, that he wasn't even your friend. And these words hurt, especially after the afternoon you shared the previous day, talking about everything and anything and mostly not about the case.

He was just a lost guy who had it rough and who found his way now, by doing what he believed was right. You had it rough too, and wanted to make this world a better place. You were too similar to not get along well. And this was because of that that it did hurt so much to tell that to Gina. That he was only a pawn, you told him so many times that he shouldn't see himself like this yesterday and that he should believe in himself because he would rock this world. And somehow, you had appeased Gina, who had already told Jake about it. And you just hoped that this would end right there.

~~~~

“Our traitor's back online,” One greeted Four as he connected himself to their chatroom.

“Traitor,” Four repeated as he adjusted his headphones.

“Man, you're really trying to fuck our cover up,” Seven asked and Four began to sweat in his little crappy room.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The 'cute cop' date thing,” Two quoted and Four closed his eyes. He was probably screwed.

He knew that doing this for months wasn't the best idea, and he probably should have told the squad that you were there, in his house, and that he met you yesterday but no, it was his little secret mission. And even more.

“Oh, you mean my solo mission,” he asked carelessly. “I'm trying to save our asses here, no biggie...”

“No biggie,” One repeated sarcastically. “No biggie? Somebody heard your conversation in the coffee shop Four, you're trying to give us away? What's your fucking plan? You want us to kill you? Tell us!”

“Jesus, I'm fucking having it under control,” Four exclaimed. “She's wrapped around my finger, I'm basically trying to have a cop on our side so we won't be bothered!”

“And yeah, no other than the fucking girl, the cute cop leading our fucking case! Genius!”

“One, stay calm,” Two said in a plain tone. “We have to do something before they do.”

“They won't do anything,” Four interrupted her.

“Because of what? You being her boyfriend? Grow up Four, we're not in a fairytale.”

For a moment, he wished he was.

[mmmmalo]

Some Words on Openbound

This is a step towards a more comprehensive account of A6I3 (Openbound). The basic idea: Meenah’s interactive adventures can be read as a dream-sequence from Roxy’s point of view expressing the following motifs:

The threat posed by (Lord) English functions as a metastasized metaphor for problems posed by language itself.

To escape from the clutches of language is to achieve perfect communication, represented by a return to a pre-lingual, child-like state (“pre-lingual” at once referring to image, sensation, and silence)

The recurring motif of 'merging with child’ is also used to a. to express the desire for pregnancy b. to express the desire to become one’s True Self, conceptualized as an inner, child-self that is “born” within oneself like an embryo c. to express pedophilia

First: Meenah is Roxy’s doppelganger. When we are introduced to Roxy’s fenestrated planes, we are promptly informed that if someone were caught half in/out one of the windows when the power cuts off, the poor soul would be sliced in two (4510). By Chekhov’s gun, this introduction ought to result in someone getting gorily bisected by the window, but it never happens. Instead we get this:

Gcat warps the panel away, trapping Roxy in the void, and we are shown a bisected horse puppet (left). The half-horse reiterates the looming threat of Chekhov’s guillotine. Roxy’s body is intact, but the scenery suggests she ought to be split. The suggestion is followed by the initial appearance of Meenah (right), implying that Meenah herself is a piece of Roxy, snipped away and running rampant. Thus, a doppelganger.

So, taking Meenah to be a esoteric mirror of Roxy, it follows that her adventures in the dreams bubbles are a narrative frame for /Roxy’s/ dreams. This is the basic assumption of everything that follows.

1: Language is the enemy.

Time is an impermeable barrier. It ticks on irreversibly, edging its victims unto entropic dissolution. The Lord of Time and the destruction he brings embody the inevitability of death. Aradia cracks a joke about this at the beginning of Openbound: within the ageless confine of the dreambubbles, “time is a figure of speech”, she says. Though ostensibly asserting the endless flexibility of time, an alternate interpretation would indicate that Lord English, time, and language itself are apprehended on similar terms. The most useful one presently: language, like time, is regarded as a barrier.

Throughout Homestuck, characters struggle with abstractions, beginning with the frustrating data mechanics of the sylladex and culminating in various tightrope-walks along unorthodox configurations of space and time. Language numbers among the headaches: Caliborn characterizes the text he reads as “walls”, further declaring them to be “impenetrable” and “migraine-inducing”. On one level, this aligns with Caliborn’s statement that the kids talk/think too much and he’d like them to just GET THE FuCK ON WITH IT ALREADY: speech is an obstacle towards both the completion of the kids’ objectives and Caliborn’s attainment of what he wants. On another level, this aligns with the later discussion of Caliborn’s learning disability: in all likelihood, he has difficulty reading. Another example of this disdain for language is Jade, who, in her rapturous treatise on the wonders of anthro, answers the call of the wild by renouncing words.

No need to answer. Words slough from the busy mind like a useless dead membrane as a more visceral sapience takes over. Something simpler is in charge now, a force untouched by the concerns and burdens of the upright, that farcical yoke the bipedal tow. It now drives you through the midnight brush, your paws whisking through creepers, unearthing with each bold stomp bright odors demanding investigation.

Just prior to Openbound, the sentiments expressed above (that language is unnecessary, an obstacle to unmediated communication and pure sensation) are restated in mythic terms: REALITY ITSELF is being DESTROYED by (LORD) ENGLISH! Language the inhibitor of direct experience becomes language the rot of the universe, language the malevolent destroyer of the capacity for any experience at all.

Meenah witnesses English’s destruction of reality and rushes off to recruit soldiers to fight him. There is harmony between the imminent threat of English and the gameplay: the primary obstacles to Meenah’s objectives are words. Literal walls of text stand between you and the end of the level, as you must navigate exhausting conversations to satisfy the game’s win conditions. Within the conversation themselves, the motif persists by showcasing various ways that speech can obscure meaning.

Kankri couches his points in overly ornate terminology and uses social justice as a tool for settling personal disputes. Latula laments how her commitment to her RAD speech affectations and persona can make her harder to understand. Cronus trips over his own accent, Mituna tumbles through various word spasms. Meulin’s deafness is thematically succeeded by Rufioh’s inability to communicate his unhappiness to the Horuss, who has sweat in his ears. The two characters who you cannot understand at all, the silent Kurloz and the pseudo-Japanese speaking Damara, are revealed to be direct servants of Lord English! Failure to communicate – inability to bridge the barrier of language – is the enemy.

The counter to the hyperbolic threat of language-as-mediation and is a fantasy of perfect communication. In Jade’s scenario, attainment of this ideal is presented visually as Jade acquiring the superficial markers of a wolf (“Wouldn't these ears suit you? Would not this proud long snout assist you in the hunt?”), whereupon she acquires the rich experience that she associates with the idea of animal, unmediated by language. Just as Jade merges with the image of a wolf, there is an image in Openbound that Meenah seeks, the attainment of which embodies the goal of some idealized communication, without words.

The image is that of childhood.

2: Kankri and Porrim form a spectrum of identity

In Homestuck, desire is generally structured as the restoration of a lost unity. Consider Cherub reproduction, itself inspired by a Platonic model of love: in seeking a soulmate, one is actually seeking a fascimile of their lost half, that with which they were originally united. The force that fractures this unity -- the boundary that prohibits access to the desired object -- is the law.

I elaborate on the various corollaries of this motif elsewhere (x)(x), but for present purposes, let it suffice to say that time itself functions as a law of sorts, insofar as time rips you away from childhood and bars the possibility of a return.

That’s a little abstract, so here’s an example: due to the the status of trolls as manifestations, we know that the characters Meenah visits in the afterlife are expressions of her (and thus Roxy’s) psyche. This relationship is difficult to map on a troll-by-troll basis. But things begin to click when you view each cluster of interactions with Beforan trolls as a mental constellation, their interplay showcasing pervasive internal dialogues and dynamics.

In the first cluster, Latula appears between Porrim and Kankri because SHE IS THE LAW, dividing Jesus from Mary, Child from Mother (which, as I will show, seems to be the trajectory Roxy imagines for herself). This is the reason that Latula successfully interrupts Kankri and Karkat’s “conversation”: they are clones, more or less, and the law is that which divides the child from itself.

I don’t claim Kankri represents a child just because he’s a brat who gets ruthlessly mothered by Porrim: it’s also implicit in his politics. Humans are not stratified by blood color, so the hemospectrum is not directly analogous to any real life example of power, privilege, or what have you. Neither is it perfectly generic. In a given context, the hemospectrum is often analogized to some particular notion of hierarchy. Eridan’s drive for blood purity marks him as a analogous to a racial supremacist; the depiction of Zebruh’s attitude towards low bloods is well interpreted as being rooted in a particularly exploitative brand of misogyny (x); and Kankri’s polemics pivot upon the particular role that AGE DIFFERENCE plays in structural oppression of Alternia, a metaphor for what is popularly termed “adultism”, injustices stemming from the power adults hold over children.

Kankri emphasizes that the lifespan discrepancy between warm and cool hemochroma means the upper classes are allotted far more time (unto eons) to consolidate power and define cultural norms; their immense lifespans constitute a structural basis for the oppression of lowbloods, whose relative youth means less time to organize. This doubles as a description of a political limitation of children, relative to adults. Kankri describes the lowest grouping of blood colors as Burgundy, Ochre, Umber, and Yellow -- BUOY for short, which not coincidentally is Meenah’s nautical permutation of BOY. All of which is to say that Kankri rankling at Porrim’s doting is mutually analogous with his politics, in the context of Beforus, where coddling is the de facto relation between castes. His being a brat raging against an overbearing mother is an analogy.

And funny enough, that’s something he and Porrim have in common, in a way. Porrim balks at the /role/ of motherhood expected of her, among other injustices upon women in Beforan society. And Porrim likewise objects to the role of RAD GIRL that Latula 'pro+jects’, encouraging her to just ‘be yo+urself’... the idea being, in the same sense that Latula’s GAME GIRL persona masks her ‘real’ personality, femininity itself is construed as a shell encasing the ‘true’ child-self within. Or rather, the feminine persona is portrayed as being pregnant with the child-self, which is the true self. So Kankri’s raging against Porrim is a metaphor for a spirit balking at the gendered expectations that encase them.

If I can speak with any confidence on this psychological reading of Kankri and Porrim’s opposition, it because the invocation of pregnancy to communicate as sense of inner/outer self is repeated throughout the dream, through the language used to describe characters who are otherkin. Take Cronus for example: he is named after a god famous for devouring his children. And his lusus (an expression of his desire) is a seahorse, notable for their child-bearing males. The net effect is the impression of a baby in Cronus’s belly -- but instead of literal pregnancy, we see Cronus describe himself as ‘a human “born” in the body of a troll’, essentially invoking the image of pregnancy to communicate his status as humankin.

Here you might begin to see how this is Roxy’s dream -- the mental conflict between Porrim (womanhood) and Kankri (childhood, which while ostensibly gender neutral can be rendered masculine by opposition to womanhood) creates a spectrum of identity available to Roxy, as made explicit by their gender exploration in the epilogues. This seems to be the joke at play whenever Latula reiterates the “GIRLS RULE, BOYS DROOL” line from her theme song: taken literally, it is a succinct summary of the Kankri/Porrim conflict, wherein the feminine persona is construed as dominating the (at times masculine by contrast) child-self. 

Kankri’s description of a “warm-identifying physically-cooler caste” is Roxy: she identifies with her child-self.

And as I mentioned before, just as Latula stands between Porrim and Kankri, time is the law separating someone feeling trapped by femininity from a childhood where such concerns were nonexistent. Time is thus the enemy, which is one of the thematic reasons the Lord of Time warrants such resentment. A certain longing for childhood also characterizes the glimpses of John that punctuates Openbound: he laments the inability to recapture the feeling of watching Con Air with his Dad when he was younger (throwing his big tantrum at the exact moment that Cyrus threatens the bunny, which really ought to go back in the box, the perfectly generic object). Roxy later voices a similar sentiment in Wizardy Herbert via Beatrix, who would “trade all the badges in the world to go back to when things were simpler.” Elsewhere in the story Roxy emphasizes a growing tension between a figure with ~100 merit badges (symbolizing complexity) with another character, Russet (an apple, the emblem of atomic simplicity, as per drunk!Rose). Kanaya might describe this as a tension between Space and Time (1093), but here it chiefly serves to further underline the Child and Adult distinction.

3: The corollary of “perfect communication” is silence.

If Time divides the child from itself, it can be hypothesized that Lord English can embody this divide in his other symbolic functions, such as his embodiment of language. If true, it follows that the union of the child-self represents perfect, unmediated communication. Our first example of such a union then are the enmeshed Vantases (who are basically clones) -- but instead of some transcendent transmission of thought, we see an endless one-sided lecture. Spoonful after heaping spoonful of heaving diarhetoric fed directly into Karkat’s gaping earhole.

And on a psychological level, perhaps that’s an apt description of what it means to “just be yourself” without interruption, no commentary or insecure protests interjecting their way into your stream of consciousness. Ordering yourself around without a second thought. And I’ve been in the zone in that way, where I’m so immersed in a task that the task becomes me. But on an interpersonal level, it’s clear that “perfect” speech is entirely unequal.

Despite ostensibly championing the rights of children in the face of domination, Kankri asserts himself as the “teacher” to Karkat’s “pupil”, assuming that the transmission of truth will be one-sided. When confronted by Porrim about this hypocrisy, Kankri defensively insists that he is having a “man to man conversation” with Karkat, an equal exchange. (And oddly, even as she advocates for Karkat, Porrim leaves Karkat in his silence, gently assuring him that his dejected glance has said all he needs to say...)

At any rate, the Karkat-Kankri dynamic illustrates that the immediacy of communication within the primordial union brings with it an element of domination. The subsequent pairings (Cronus-Mituna and Kurloz-Meulin) elaborate on problems and abuses that can accompany compromised speech and silence, each section emphasizing a particular child symbol: respectively, angels and cats (which I’ve established previously). 

Angels first: Cronus’s claim that “as a wwingman [Mituna] is a total disgrace” uses “wingman” to invoke the image of angels. This method is repeated by Lil Hal, who observes that Dirk views him as a “counterproductive wing man”, to which Dirk sarcastically replies “nice deduction Lil Einstein”. The reference to the Disney Jr. show neatly ties the angel reference into the fact that as Dirk’s creation, in a sense Hal can be considered Dirk’s child. And in the same way that Hal (the child/angel) functions partly as a reflection of Dirk’s own nature, Mituna’s angel status indicates that he can function symbolically as Cronus’s “inner-child”, the self with which one is pregnant.xx

Silence is an interminable pregnancy. Not speaking means not birthing the baby, not letting the angel fall to earth. The hush is a measure against the corruption and ruin associated with English. (Even though the silent characters are his most devoted servants?)

Cronus demonstrates this with the command “vwait here, try not to fall dowvn, and ABOVWE ALL, try not to be seen” in which “above all” doubles as the place from which Mituna is falling. Language is the instrument of descent, Mituna’s garbled speech emphasizes his “fallen” status within the paradigm. Cronus “really hates the sound of” Mituna partly because he views Mituna as a caricature of himself, again not unlike Dirk’s violent rejection of the negative qualities he identifies in Hal.

This is why Cronus’s opening gesture is to fail a tongue-twister and cry GLOBES in exasperation: it is as though he has hit a snag in his verbal kick-flip and face-planted onto the earth (the globe) -- Mituna bombing his literal stunts and falling down being the root visual. Skateboards (and other 4-wheel devices) are vehicles unto “unreal air”: a status of immaculate lofty ideality, and thus untouchable and pure. The other skateboarder, Latula, made a point of emphasizing her untouchability as she performed some “objectively rad” tricks for Kankri. And more to the point, Latula claims that her intuitions “just make sense” and explaining them would not be "radical”, saying in her own way that bringing her feelings/intuitive knowledge into the realm of speech would in some way tarnish or degrade them. “4 grlz gott4 s4cr1f1c3 und3rst4nd4b1l1ty for th3 s4k3 of r4dn3ss” she says.

Another way to put it is that not expressing a thought can make seem invincible -- it cannot be exposed to the risk of contradiction or mockery. A relevant quote:

MEENAH: i heard a rumor you think youre a human now MEENAH: that true

CRONUS: its a privwate matter. i dont see vwhy i should havwe to talk about it vwith you, and open myself up to more of your judgmental scorn.

MEENAH: sounds like another desperate cry for attention imo

(Aside: an old friend of mine faced almost this exact conversation on facebook when they came out as a trans man, so this one actually hit home a little bit.)

Roxy’s sensitivity to the reactions of others is perhaps implicit in the paranoid staring contests with the void, but in relation to their gender expression, it becomes most explicit in the epilogue -- not only in the faltering manner by which Roxy begins to assert their gender expression, but in the narration itself. Although Dirk’s narration seems to largely reflection his own hesitation to embrace Roxy’s newfound identity, it should be remembered that he is effectively Roxy’s brainghost when narrating their thoughts. That is to say, Dirk’s reaction to Roxy is symbiotic with what Roxy imagines Dirk’s reaction would be. The mockery in the narration is the mockery Roxy expects and fears. Thus, Roxy’s level of comfort and security with their current gender expression necessarily coincides with the level of ease expressed by Dirk’s later narration.

But let’s return to Openbound.

The traumatic deafening of Meulin is analogous to the deathening of Jaspers: one is blasted with the violent shriek of a clown, the other sassacrushed by the “daunting text” of Mark Twain. With the cat as a symbol of the child-self, the message is basically that the child’s encounter with language is a violent experience. (Lord English is destroying reality, etc etc) Kankri neatly echoes this point of view by announcing one of his lectures as “my crushing harangue 9n this delicate su6ject” -- to rephrase, he is crushing the delicate subject (child) with his harangue.

Like much violence in Homestuck, violence of speech is sexualized. There is a moment where Cronus openly relishes the unilateral communication first displayed in the Kankri > Karkat pipeline. He basks in the fact that Mituna is incapable of repeating anything coherently, or that Mituna’s word is otherwise held in such disrepute that no one will take Mituna seriously. As Cronus does this, Mituna laments that Cronus is touching him and will not stop.

The bad-touch motif continues with Kurloz and Meulin, who achieve their own mode of “perfect communication” (union with child-self) via streams of wordless, emotive images. In the above exchange, Kurloz mimes an Ewok rubbing a child, to which Meulin responds with a small frown and a laughing Sailor Moon, as if to convey that she were the one being tickled in the previous gif. She slams the UNSEE button to emphasize her displeasure. (It is only after this sequence that we learn Kurloz can control Meulin’s mind, further linking harmonious union with tyrannical, unilateral communication)

It’s worth noting here that Meenah’s goal in parts 1 & 2 is to get through gates established by Karkat, ultimately convincing him to join up with her. Karkat who, alongside Kankri, currently represents the child-self. Just as Rufioh interprets Meenah’s invitation to join as a romantic proposal, Meenah interprets her successful recruitment of Karkat as a date, sealing the euphemism by reassuring her recruit that he “will not regret hitchin [his] wagon to [her] starfish”, which is a sex joke. The undertones of age disparity later surface as Meenah joins up with her second Vriska (x):

MEENAH: can i ask a kinda personal question MEENAH: i mean not even that personal but whatev 

VRISKA: Sure...? 

MEENAH: how old are you 

VRISKA: Uh, VRISKA: Almost seven and a half sweeps. VRISKA: Getting close to eight!!!!!!!! VRISKA: I pro8a8ly sound like a fucking nerd, 8ut I've 8een excited a8out reaching that milestone pretty much my whole life. 

MEENAH: 7.5 huh MEENAH: i guess thats a lil more respectable 

VRISKA: More respecta8le than what? 

MEENAH: nofin

For Roxy, the libidinal investment in kids is confined to subtext for basically the whole story: jokes about the speculative mechanics of boning chess people and elves, the sexual tension between Russet and the boy with 100 merit badges, the time Roxy was briefly upset to learn she had been “flirt-larping” with a 13 year old Dirk, only to resume the game a page later -- little moments. In the epilogues, Roxy being highly conscious of her interactions with children and the potential for reproducing systems of domination seems embedded in her trepidation towards any of the players governing the world they created (a hands-off attitude toward parenting that may also offer some rationale for Mom’s neglect of Rose, if all that is true of Roxy holds true for her past self).

But let’s move forward.

4: To See Oneself as a Host Plush

I’d like to reiterate here that the Kankri-Porrim dichotomy suggests that the categories of ‘baby’ and ‘boy’ are blurred in their mutual opposition to ‘girl’. Again, the letter of the law: BOYS DROOL! This offers a rationale for oddities like Roxy wiping John’s mouth for him during their date in Candy (boys drool), or this little slip-of-the-tongue which I wouldn’t quite call subtle:

ROXY: doin ok up there b?

JOHN: i’m fine!!! JOHN: wait. b?

ROXY: yea like short for babe ROXY: cuz ur my babe b

JOHN: oh, haha. right.

If we’re being less charitable, you could characterize this as Roxy keeping her eyes on the prize -- as though in addressing John, she is actually addressing the baby that he can provide her. And while I’m not certain of that, the notion of such double-speak (seemingly addressing the person in front of you when you are actually addressing an unborn child) is crucial for understanding the metaphors embedded in the Damara-Rufioh-Horuss triad.

The motif of pregnancy is here introduced via Fiduspawn: impregnate the host plush and a baby pony comes out.

You might remember that Rufioh refers to girls as ‘doll’ -- this quirk links the host plush to the feminine (at least within the context of this dream). To be more precise, the doll is characterized as a void that invites (or even demands) filling: this is a complementary reading of Horuss’s claim that Rufioh “stole his breath away”, synonymous with the claim that Rufioh “has a way of drawing the breath out of people”. The Rogue of Breath has difficulty standing up for himself (Horuss calls it “affable pliability”), so Horuss often speaks over him or on his behalf, as though Rufioh were a marionette. Horuss is saying that Rufioh’s passive demeanor invites this sort of behavior, that Rufioh’s effective silence means he is “asking for it”, to use a loaded phrase. 

How funny then that the “doll” of their group Damara (whose name means Silence) is literally “asking for it”, constantly. The same logic applies to Dirk’s decapitated head (from just before this intermission!) and Vriska’s comatose body -- through narrative contrivance, each voiceless vessel hauntingly implores a living Page to kiss them, to fill them with a Breath from without. The sequences suggest a conviction on the part of the kissers: that which is “empty” must desire to be “filled”, a framing that becomes particularly unpleasant when sexualized.

What Damara is asking for is ambiguous, at once referring to sex and the child to which sex serves as vehicle (among other potentials). I wrote awhile back (x) that Mom gave Jaspers an ostentatious burial as a proxy mourning for a miscarried child that preceded Rose, and her cat-cloning was oriented towards the eventual revival of her lost baby. For Damara (and thus Roxy) this becomes a fundamental myth: the desire for children is complemented in intensity by the conviction that the child has already been lost, or stolen from you. Horuss observes that Damara’s remarks a leaning “bloo” because (it’s a pun) her dirty talk is tinged with mourning. There is, inexplicably, sorrow when Damara says she wants to feel her nipples between your teeth. She’s not talking to you -- she’s talking to the baby.

This is also the joke when Latula/Terezi threaten to kill Damara for approaching Mituna/Karkat: the LAW will not permit you to access BABY! You may not recover your child or your childhood, time has barred you from both. (Though of course, through the pedophilia lens this becomes much less sympathetic).

A similar moment can be read into Horuss: Kankri, like all trolls, acts as a manifestation of some emotional surge, so Kankri’s sudden appearance implies that someone is legitimately triggered, despite the comic’s apparent commitment to denigrating his point of view. Like Cronus, Horuss’s horse-kin status entails an identification with his inner (child) self -- but the trans allegory melds seamlessly into other modes of union with the child image, such as pregnancy. So when Kankri asks Horuss to confirm that he is triggered by Meenah’s skepticism towards his identity, the reply “Trigger sounds like a wonderful name for a hoofbeast” is not merely a flippant non-sequitur, but also another echo of the core lamentation, a wistful musing on names for a dead/unborn child.

A brief step backwards: at the beginning, we outlined how Lord English’s destruction of reality was (in the present context at least) a mythic expression of fears and frustrations about communication and speech. Dissatisfaction /produced/ a fantasy individual to whom the problem could be sourced and blamed assigned. A similar attitude should be adopted in examining Damara’s theft of Rufioh’s “happy thought” Tinkerbull -- she represents an already existing discontentment with his circumstances, crystallized into an individual.

This is where Damara would seem to slot into the dysphoria proceedings: she crushed Tinkerbull with a refrigerator, a reprisal of the sassacrushing of Jaspers. The refrigerator is a womb symbol (I insist), suggesting that the womb is a hostile force on par with the Law of English (Girls Rule!). From the perspective of Mom, this could be read a response to her miscarriage, a result of blaming her own body for the child’s death. From Roxy’s perspective, it might be better characterized as ‘the body itself is a domineering force suffocating my child self’ -- and thus dysphoria. Damara crushing Tinkerbull represents the sense that your own body is a meat prison, a shell imprisoning (if not outright killing) your happiness.

This is why Damara manifests for Kanaya, who struggles to reconcile herself with Porrim, a daunting image of ideal womanhood, especially as it concerns the care of matriorb (ie motherhood). Porrim assures her that even though motherhood is to some degree a societal imposition, a role, this does not mean Kanaya cannot embrace the perpetuation of her species on her own terms. This is a good lesson, and Kanaya agrees -- but there stands Damara regardless, joy-stealer, lingering discomfort with self-conception as a host plush. “Just ignore her until she goes away” is all the advice Porrim has to offer on the subject.

(Passing thought: It occurs to me that the phrase ‘happy thought’ used to describe Tinkerbull could be replaced with ‘euphoria’, forming a clean complement to ‘dysphoria’... but wordplay reliant on a missing link is somewhat suspect, so let’s leave that one in the margins)

5: High Euphemistic Density

Let’s review by playing with some euphemisms in Horuss’s opening address to Meenah. I’m dividing his words into 3 sections for ease of reference:

1 HORUSS: 8=D < Your Harness... I mean Hayness. Highness I mean. HORUSS: 8=D < F*DDLEST*%. Please pardon my utterly e%ecrable language, and unforgivable stammering, your Horseness. #Sh*ot! #I mean Hayness! #Whew. 2 HORUSS: 8=D < I am a bale of nerves in your royal presence, and it has been so long. 3 HORUSS: 8=D < And when I am so spooked, you must know how that causes me to even more firmly identify with the majestic hoofbeast.

Starting with three: recall, “girls rule”. Femininity is characterized as a daunting (or even domineering) imposition. Kanaya displaying anxiety at the prospect of measuring up to the image of Porrim is one way this motif crystallizes into a character dynamic. Another way seems to be Horuss’s anxiety before his empress -- just as Kankri (child) rebels against Porrim (mother), the presence of Meenah (mother) induces Horuss to identify with the hoofbeast (baby). Both cases present a shrinking away from a feminine authority figure as metaphor for rejection of the societal strictures of femininity.

Two is a dick joke: while Horuss is ostensibly lamenting his anxiety, a penis is a literal ‘bale of nerves’, a sensory cluster. “It has been so long.” The pun is reinforced as the expense of Rufioh, who apparently did not have ‘the nerve’ to ‘finish [Damara] off’ on her quest bed, which is an innuendo for sexual inadequacy. That Horuss’s smiling face emoji is itself a dick suggests a conflation of identification with his happy thoughts and identification with the member -- which, based on previous discussion of Tinkerbull, would seem to blur the line between having a dick and being pregnant? Which aligns with the notion that pregnancy becomes a metaphor for masculine identification via union with the child self.

(“You very nearly caught a glimpse of a horse penis and began to cry” conveys a mournful yearning of the same order as “I want to feel my nipples between your teeth”?)

But the metaphor goes both ways: the brain is another ‘bale of nerves’, thus offering a rational for Mituna’s presence on the outskirts of the dream. His fall from the brain tree strikes me as less an ejaculation (from brain-dick) as birth (from brain-womb) -- hence the use of Mituna as the lost child, forever denied to Damara by the law (Latula).

And we arrive at one, which repeats a bit from Cronus’s introduction: Horuss trips over his own speech, illustrating the Fall. Just as Cronus attempts to silence Mituna to avoid the embarrassment expected to accompany self-expression, Horuss attempts to c*nsor himself before the judgement of his empress. The need to hide himself (as the stoic smile might indicate) is also embedded in the way Horuss describes his mouth as a load-gaper, and begs pardon for his potty-mouth: silence is golden, and conversely speech becomes excrable, fallen and profaned.

(Silly thought: on occasion, censorship can also designate the holy, eg censoring the name of G*d so as not to besmirch it. That in mind, I find it amusing to take Roxy’s line “holiest of shits // the shit.... // is down right // SACROSANCT” as a literal deification of excrement, making Horuss and Rufioh’s self-censorship look like a last ditch attempt at keeping the angel-child up in heaven. No?)

6: Conclusions and Questions

Obviously, this isn’t all that can be said of Openbound -- people have written extensive character studies of the alpha trolls, mined their stories for clues and parallels to less tangential plot-lines, and otherwise made whatever sense could be made of things. My contribution is some words on the mixed metaphors, word play, and psychological motifs that surround the proceedings.

If you, like me, are frazzled by the sheer density of double and triple speak at play, this is the gist of what I’m arguing for:

“Merge with child” seems to be the overarching motivation expressed in Openbound. But to follow that command verbatim is impossible -- the goal must be interpreted (as getting pregnant, as being true to oneself, as pederasty, as nostalgic pursuit of simplicity, etc) in order to be realized.

That the ideal merger is an image whose wholeness/breadth of possibility is lost in the specificity of actualization would seem analogous to the Fall occurring between silence and speech... so the motif persists on a meta level, maybe? But we don’t need to dwell on that more than we already have. 

Instead, I’d like to end with several new points that give me pause.

It’s still not clear to me why the silent characters are the direct servants of Lord English. Communication with them is impossible, and that frustration is what causes language to be conceived as a threat in the first place, but I have an itch that tells me there’s a bit more to it than that.

I don’t know what the transmission of the codpiece has to do with anything. I suspect it may number among various metaphors for trans masculinity, but that’s confirmation bias speaking -- from the scene itself, I gathered very little.

I wonder if Aranea’s info dumps at the end are factored in... you could construe them as placing Meenah in the position of Karkat relative to Kankri -- on the receiving end of spoonful after heaping spoonful of words. So even though Karkat disappears after you follow him, you’ve nonetheless “merged” with the child-function that he performs here? But again, I worry that this sort of hasty integration means I’m missing out on new info.

I’m pretty firmly of the mind that this whole intermission is chiefly devoted to Roxy, but I do worry that Meenah’s doppelganger status could have misled me on that point. After all, Jane’s planet quest contained references to her friends desires, not only her own (x)(x) -- would it be so odd for the same to be true of Roxy’s dreams? In which case it would be worth revisiting this intermission to double-check whether any given section might map more closely to the other alpha kids -- especially since Rufioh/Horuss is a transparent commentary on Dirk/Jake

This is a good a place as any to note that when I was operating under the assumption that Roxy was a trans girl, I was inclined to read the Rufioh/Horuss break-up as ambivalence on the question of getting rid of your dick -- which seemed sensible enough at the time, though the present model seems more consistent across the various conversations. It should be noted though that the language of gender questioning can easily serve multiple directions at once. So... I guess I want to make sure the apparent success of this approach doesn’t blind me to other interpretive potentials? Fingers crossed

...there’s more things to question, probably, but I think that’s good for now.

Special thanks to @red-zora for giving this mess the once-over.

Good night everyone.

[imaginemycroftholmes]

Mycroft Fan Submission Form

Name: Ellen Age:28 Gender: Female Occupation: Registered Nurse Nationality: American Country of origin: The USA Personality type:INTJ Education: Bachelors (BSN) Marital Status: Single Who would you shoot out of John, Sherlock, Mycroft and why: I would probably turn the gun on myself. I don’t think anything but extreme circumstances, my child or spouse’s life, could cause me to take a life. Height: 5'5" Position in the family: I am the oldest of four, one sister and 2 brothers. Best subject: Sciences have always been my strong point. Favorite Subject: Maternal/Child Nursing Worst subject: I didn’t necessarily have a worst subject. If it did not hold my interest I did the bare minimum to maintain my GPA. Last song listened to: “We Don���t Have To Take Our Clothes Off” Ella Eyre Favorite color: Blue, all of them. Thoughts on Molly and Sherlock’s impending relationship: It’s about time. Illness/allergies/impairments: I’m allergic to latex and have seasonal allergies. I have Celiacs, Reynaud’s, and ADHD mixed. Last sentence uttered to another living human being: STAT labs, cultures, and CXR as the left side sounds diminished and temp is 103? Hair color/length: Dark brown and below my shoulders. Who do you feel more sympathy for Sgt. Donovan or Anderson’s wife: Anderson’s wife, she did not make them sleep together. The vows of a monogamous relationship should be upheld. I don’t understand cheating and feel it is the ultimate betrayal. Eye color: Blue Constantly cold, hot or prefect: I’m always cold. Seven Noteworthy skills: I am an exceptional listener. I am determined I sing well enough. I have good observation skills Critical Thinking Patience Calm under pressure Nine noticeable sins: I can be too sarcastic. Stubborn Impulsive Overly self critical Easily Bored with things that don’t interest me Emotionally withdrawn My resting facial expression is mean Perfectionist Blunt Languages known/spoken:Only English. I am learning Spanish. Cats, dogs, both or other: Dogs. I have 2. How often you help your community: If you refer to my job as my community then 4. Favorite Holmes family member: Mycroft. Body type:3 averaged Number of past lovers: 2 Level of cleanliness: 2 Would you rather piss off Sherlock or Mycroft: Sherlock. He is emotional and once the emotional response has run its course the anger is usually forgotten. Rate your mental health: 4, gotta get more sleep. Rate your confidence: I would say a 3 on average. Sometimes I question myself. Combat Level: 3 Circle of friends: I have a small tight circle of close friends but many casual friends. Who do you side with more Sherlock or Mycroft: Mycroft. Level of intelligence on a scale of 1-5: 4 Who do you side with more Mycroft or Mrs. Hudson: Mycroft. Introvert or Extrovert: Introvert Political alignment: I am all over with my political views. I find it very hard to find one party I align with a majority of the time. Who would your rather be trapped in a long car ride with Mummy Holmes or Holmes Senior: Holmes Senior. I’m sure he would be very pleasant to talk to. Go to outfit for everyday: Long pants, tank top, and sweater. Honestly though I wear scrubs every day. Go to outfit to impress: A dress and heels 5 hobbies: Painting Reading Writing Hiking Dog training Opinion of Rosie Watson and Mary Watson: I love children and find it very hard to have a poor option of any child. I think they are all brilliant. I am indifferent to Mary. I cannot say what I would do if I were to be made to make the choices she did in life. Favorite music/book/movies: I love anything by J.R.R. Tolkien and reading a lot of medical, science, and various non-fiction books. I very much enjoyed the Wonder Woman movie. I will and do listen to any and all music. How well you take rejection on a scale from 1-5: I handle it pretty well, so about a 4. Religious or religious affliations: I was raised Catholic. Currently I do believe in God but I do not associate with any religion. Kids or no:I very much want children Out of the Holmes family (Siger, Violet, Sherlock and Eurus) who would you kill, maim, kiss or roommate with and why: I would kiss Violet in a close friend. Maim Sherlock but verbally. Eurus would be the only one I could see killing in a very extreme circumstance. Roommate Siger, I feel there is a lot about him we don’t know. Do you think what Mycroft did with Eurus (at the time) was justified and needed: I am the oldest and fiercely protective of my family. I understand where Mycroft was coming from. If I believed it was best for my other siblings safety and well being to contain another sibling, I would. I could also see the reasoning of lying to my parents of their death. As for using her to help the government, I often wonder if it was the only way he could justify interacting and seeing Eurus. I know I’d look for any reason to still visit them still.

One day three Greek philosophers settled under the shade of an olive tree, opened a bottle of Retsina, and began a lengthy discussion of the Fundamental Ontological Question: Why does anything exist? After a while, they began to ramble. Then, one by one, they fell asleep. While the men slept, three owls, one above each philosopher, completed their digestive process, dropped a present on each philosopher’s forehead, the flew off with a noisy “hoot.” Perhaps the hoot awakened the philosophers. As soon as they looked at each other, all three began, simultaneously, to laugh. Then, one of them abruptly stopped laughing. Why?

I guess he realized that they were laughing at him too so realized he had owl droppings on his head as well. It’s funny when it happens to others but not to you.

A 120 wire cable has been laid firmly underground between two telephone exchanges located 10km apart. Unfortunately after the cable was laid it was discovered to be the wrong type, the problem is the individual wires are not labeled. There is no visual way of knowing which wire is which and thus connections at either end is not immediately possible. You are a trainee technician and your boss has asked you to identify and label the wires at both ends without ripping it all up. You have no transport and only a battery and light bulb to test continuity. You do have tape and pen for labeling the wires. What is the shortest distance in kilometers you will need to walk to correctly identify and label each wire?

I don’t really understand this one but I’ll take a shot. So I’d group them to make dealing with them easier and label the groups at the start. Then take the grouped end down with me so that I could test and figure out which wire goes with which using light bulb and battery group. I’d label as I go. Then I’d have to walk the end back to the start. So 20km? I don’t know. I just know when labeling lines and hooking them up, I always go down and back up.

A woman is sitting in her hotel room when there is a knock at the door. She opened the door to see a man whom she had never seen before. He said “oh I’m sorry, I have made a mistake, I thought this was my room.” He then went down the corridor and in the elevator. The woman went back into her room and phoned security. What made the woman so suspicious of the man? He knocked on the door. You’d just open you’re own door.

Please bold the following that you wish to have with Mr. Holmes: Friendship Partnership Marriage Mentorship

Mycroft’s answer:

Ah, a nurse. I believe that you dear Ellen may be the first I have come across with the piles of applications and find it very refreshing to come across yours. So far with your questions you managed to answer two out of three correctly which is very promising as is your hobby for training dogs. Did you know that Sherlock at one point decided he would attempt to train a stray dog that had wandered into our neighborhood? A filthy if not friendly fellow. It was a shame that mummy wouldn’t allow Sherlock to keep him as I figured it would be a great companion for both him and might socialize Eurus a bit however after the ‘incident’ with Victor I feel fortunate that the poor creature found a loving home elsewhere. I can sympathize with the what others may call “resting bitch” face as both Sherlock and John claim that I have it despite my best efforts to look more enticing to young Watson but alas, I fear that she too like her father is wary of me and my intentions.It is also very comforting to find someone that validates my past decisions concerning the distressing business of Victor because even in my age I feel it was right and if I had to go through with again I would only change a few things like putting her into isolation in the first place without outside interference. Your line of work sounds very intriguing as from what I gathered you must work with adult or child like patients versus infants labs but I could be wrong. I’d love to discuss it over dinner.

-M

My dear Ellen,

Friendship: 9/10

Partnership: 8.9/10

Marriage: 8.8/10

Mentor-ship: 10/10