#homestuck has a lot of good stuff; but when it has bad writing It Sure Has Bad Writing

[juney-blues]

June Egbert is, and always has been incredibly fascinating to me because of just, how many factors have conspired to make Homestuck fans show their collective transmisogynistic asses.

The main character of Homestuck transitioning is a planned future plot point for the official continuation of homestuck, that was spoiled in advance by a fan making a joke about finding some toblerones Andrew Hussie the author of homestuck hid in a cave.

The current main writers of Homestuck: Beyond Canon have went on record in an AMA confirming that this was indeed always the plan, even before they took up the project.

In spite of these facts, the general consensus among certain homestuck fans seems to be that "June Egbert" is purely a headcanon for the original comic that was "made canon" by a "Toblerone Wish" (a concept that didn't even exist at the time)

For a variety of reasons, the "canonicity" of the postcanon official continuations of homestuck is a mattter of much debate, (though a debate that most homestuck fans seem to err on a side of "it's not canon at all in the slightest," something the writers have feelings on I'm sure.)

All of these factors combined leave the concept of "June Egbert" in a very nebulous place. It's assumed by most to just be an "ascended headcanon" that was shoehorned in, it's a spoiler so it hasn't happened yet in any official media, and the official media it will eventually happen in is regarded by some to be nothing more than glorified fanfic.

If someone is talking about June Egbert, and you don't like the concept of June Egbert, you have your pick of a million different excuses for why she's fake and gay and not worth discussing and bad writing and just the authors doing a gay dumbledore*, paying lip service to representation while actually doing nothing.

And of course, lots of people *don't* like June Egbert! Rather than being introduced as transfem from the start, she's in this nebulous position of discovery where people have to truly reckon with the idea of a "Pre-transition Trans Woman."

You can try to write off *some* of the backlash as transphobia, because obviously not everyone in this fandom is gonna be cool about trans people.

But there's no shortage of fans just dying to tell you about how much they like reading her as transmasc, or the idea of her being nonbinary or genderqueer or genderfluid, or literally anything besides a trans woman. And since they're fine with all those other interpretations, there's obviously no implicit biases driving their distaste for the concept! (if you want to try explaining the concept of "transmisogyny" to people like this you're braver than I.)

you can trust them when they say it's *just* a problem with whether or not it makes sense with the writing, or it just doesn't feel right somehow, or any of the thousands of excuses that this writing situation gives them to just Not Like It.

It's just, so interesting to me. There's not a lot of characters out there that get a trans arc in this way, that leaves room for open denialism and insistence that we have our trans cake and eat it too... Because Homestuck is a timeline spanning multiverse story, lots of people seem to want it to be an alternate timeline thing. Assuring us we can have this character share space with a non-transitioning version of herself and it won't be weird or imply gross things about trans people.

If you ask me it feels like a plotline that'd be really good for exploring some gender horror though, finding your true self and then being demoted to a footnote, an alternate version, because everyone around you likes your pre-transition self more....

Anyway I have no broader point beyond "hey look at this isn't this kinda weird. You don't get this kinda stuff often!"

*side note: it's a little ghoulish I think to compare "a future trans plot point that hasn't been given the chance to even happen yet, in an already famously queer piece of media, from a nonbinary author" to "some stupid shit done by the literal most famous transphobe of all time" but that's perhaps a discussion for later.

[catman-draws]

really taking hs as a serious work (i know i know) the dancestors would be a really horribly written concept, since like you said they were mostly intended more as a one-off joke than any kind of meaningful plot point. (weren't they also supposed to be a subtle/blatant insult towards the fandom? because we all know hussie loves flat out insulting his fans)

Oh the dancestors were HORRIBLY written, I don't think there's any contention about that.

[nekropsii]

What a about Caliborn makes him so cool in your opinion?

Go keep track of his progression as an artist alongside his development as a character and think about how these are intrinsically linked. Ponder the fact that he is both at his most obnoxious and at his most amateur when trying to ignore his unique style explicitly brought on by his canonical learning disability and mimic others rather than truly be himself. Consider how his explorations of art are genuinely cool, not a bad thing, and how we get some really neat multimedia stuff out of it.

Caliborn may be a shitty little teenage wretch but the way he is portrayed as an artist and as a disabled person is both really good and very real. It comes from a place of love. His learning disability is handled with a degree of gentle care that you would not really expect from Hussie. The place Caliborn's art style ends up in is so fucking sick and I actually unironically love it. The technique he uses is really interesting. It's intentionally reminiscent of an Etch-a-Sketch, and I'm a little obsessed with it.

This is so fucking good. I mean this seriously. He's right - that is some Pure Art Skill.

I just love the way art is employed as a necessary component of his character arc. It's so neat. You don't see visual cues that intricate too often. Usually it's just in character design, but watching his entire art style and even his medium of choice change several times over is fascinating. You can really tell Hussie had a lot of fun with him. He's also just really, really fucking funny. Just about every sentence that comes out of his mouth is Grade A Absolute Fucking Gold, and I'm honestly obsessed with his dynamic with Dirk. This may get me thrown to the wolves, but I personally think Dirk and Caliborn have way more chemistry than Dirk and Jake. Maybe that's because we actually see Dirk and Caliborn interact on screen... Lmao.

Necessary Topic: I don't know why people hate him so much. Like, I understand hating his misogyny and fatphobia, sure, but those are deliberate character points and not just Hussie-isms. I see people act like Caliborn is indicative of Hussie, as if Homestuck-era Hussie wasn't, like, famously really fucking good at writing female characters and absolutely not a misogynist. Caliborn's a parody of Homestuck Anti-Fans - which is a term we really ought to bring back, god, anti-fans are absolutely still a thing and good lord they're everywhere - who really were just shitty little bigoted haters. Calliope, the opposite side of his coin, was representative of, essentially, "the best kind of Homestuck fan" - an ultimately sweet young teen girl who willingly dedicates almost all of her time to this piece of fiction she loves so, so much, who draws a lot of fan art for the joy of it all, has OCs that don't fit any of the design conventions in Homestuck whom she pairs with the characters in it for innocent fun. Someone who has a lot of theories and analyses, writes a lot of fanfic, and is genuinely just having a lot of fun. Everyone loves Calliope. Even the characters in Homestuck love Calliope. They just think she's the cutest, sweetest little thing they ever did see. Caliborn was the worst kind. He sucks on purpose. No one likes him. He is a total nuisance to characters he is by all means trying to impress. I love them both.

It's also just funny that he's a canonical Intersex Transmasc who is probably Gay and this has, like, no relevance to anything about him, really. So no one really talks about it. Gender Hilarious, Gender Nefarious.

[hms-no-fun]

Why is it that Jane threatening to buy the post office as a teenager is indicative of her becoming a fascist as an adult? Couldn’t it just be that she’s upset at her delayed package and makes a threat she has no actual intention of following through on?

why is a child billionaire threatening to buy a public service with the explicit intention of privatizing it (something that is very much within her power to do) indicative of the possibility that she might grow up to be a fascist? man, i dunno. i guess you'd have to make the argument that one's class position dictates their ideology and morality, and that as such rich people are conditioned from an early age to view all of society as a series of products to be purchased and resources to be pillaged.

is it destiny? certainly not. there are so many different ways jane could grow up. the epilogues show us one very particular vision of jane's future wherein that rich kid grew up into a rich fascist. neither i nor the epilogues think that this is the *only* vision for her future, and you know, the text invites you to write the jane you want to see in the world. my contention is that the epilogues' vision of jane is imminently plausible, and sheds some really interesting light on a side of her character that we saw in fits and starts in homestuck proper. of course i don't like how she's written with jake in the epilogues, personally. i think a lot of that stuff is mean-spirited in the bad way. but come on. have you read homestuck? jane sucks! all the alphas suck, that's what makes them great. the betas suck too but they're like vanilla suck. the alphas are neapolitan suck. they're a beautiful codependent disaster. i love them. i hate them. i think it's good when characters suck, actually.

oh and the trolls are a damp burlap sack of wet rocks shoveled off an old gravel road in an april hail storm in the rural midwest. that's neither here nor there i just didn't want to leave them out of the ice cream analogy

wait what was your question? oh right, fascist jane. yeah man i'm right there with you. totally. oh yeah, no, for sure. right. right. the breast milk was too much. right! yeah i agree. oh my god you're so right. yeah. oh absolutely. uhuh. oh i know. yeah. that was really problematic, yeah. oh i hated that part. uhuh. right. oh my god i know!

i hope you're filling in the blanks between those sentences because that's the closest you're gonna get to a conversation where i agree with you about jane crocker

[yellowocaballero]

hi! i know that i'm fated to read your every work despite not knowing the media half the time. this time i would like to finally be one step ahead. so uhh. where do i read orv? do i go for the webtoon or the novel? to clarify, i did try to search, but got confused by reddit. also i am going to watch trigun. i've been eyeing animorphs too but the 54 (?) books are making me go hmm. thank you for existing you're pretty great. you're like the spiderman of writing but instead you got asbestos rat'd.

THIS ASK IS INSANE. WE'RE REFERENCING MY LORE NOW?

But thank you, you're insane. People ask why I have stupid high standards for the fics i post on AO3 and it is because there are people like you who will just read whatever regardless of whether or not it's good. I have a responsibility.

This ask also made me wonder if I have good taste. Because every time somebody says this my first reaction is "oh god and the source materials aren't even good". I read a lot of trashy stuff (but, like, define trashy), and I consume too many bad things to be able to say I have discerning taste. If I enjoy something I almost never call it bad, because things were made to be enjoyed and I enjoyed them then they had value in at least one aspect. If you were to ask me if my favorite TV show of all time the Incredible Hulk 1974 was actually, unironically, good, then I'd break into a cold sweat. Is somebody bad because it's camp? Is something bad only if it's unintentional camp?

Regardless, I never write fic for something that isn't only like 80% good - there's a sweet spot of 'good enough for me to obsess over' and 'bad enough that I'm rewriting it in my head'. It's rare I write for anything I find completely good. Which is why I feel bad when people say that they're reading this thing I'm writing fic for jalksdf there's better things out there I SWEAR.

ORV is in the sweet spot of "this isn't high literature" and "this has given me brain worms". Definitely for sure start with the webtoon - the webnovel is clunkily translated, you don't read it for the writing at all, and it is also a literal million words. Don't read the webnovel unless you're like "I'm going insane and I need more of this". It starts off kind of slow ("This is a well executed very banal isekai") and you're like a frog in the pot of it slowly going more insane until you're a ways in and you are in a tangle of ridiculously complicated gambits and convoluted storytelling. There is literally no other way to describe it than the Homestuck of webnovels. If you're completely unfamiliar with isekai that's fine, but as a warning - ORV being your first webtoon/webnovel isekai is like your first shoujo manga being Ouran High Schol Host Club, or your first magical girl show being Madoka, or your first mecha anime to be Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's one of the best works in its genre but it's supposed to be viewed in context of the genre. Or maybe it's more like if Homura starred in Evangelion, which was Ouran. I'm just saying words.

Animorphs is kind of like Mother 3 in which everybody who has ever read/played it said that it changed them as a person, it changed their relationship with media and storytelling forever, if you read/play it you will be born again from the world's egg, etc. Works that genuinely become part of your personality. I also never recommend it to people because it is incredibly hit or miss. I remember using a spreadsheet of just "what books are skippable or not" because some of them are incredibly weird and some of them are incredibly weird in the bad way. The only Animorphs fic I've ever written is from 2019 so it's also not that great. Each book only takes an hour to read and the pdfs are free online, so it's incredibly accessible in terms of the reading experience, but it's kinda the Animorphs gestalt that changes you forever and not the individual books. I try not to recommend stuff that's like 25% bad.

Watch Trigun if you like what Trigun is - it's not going to deliver on something it's not. Also watch 98 first. Watch Stampede/read Trimax if you want more Trigun. The Trigun fic is based off Stampede but refer to my "I only write fic for smth that's 80% good and not 100% good" statement.

Also I think being bit by an asbestos rat just means that I probably have mold and drywall in my lungs, which would explain a lot about this blog. Thanks for the ask I love it.

[zapsoda]

aUGH you talked about bax's and babygirl's i mean. roy's bad eyesight. does anyone else have an likewise handicap or disability? also what's their weakspot for each one of them ... both physically and mentally if you want to write even moar words hehe

ofc!!

as previously mentioned bax has shit eyesight. hes also a bit mentally ill (lack of survival instincts), and while that can be beneficial when in dangerous situations where he needs to act effectively and expediently it can also be VERY DISADVANTAGEOUS. for obvious reasosn. what would the crew do without him? when hes constantly getting injured and incapacitated?

roy has her weird eyesight, and she has kind of the opposite of bax's problem. shes pretty anxious and has trouble acting and making quick decisions. she doesnt really like getting into *serious* trouble (she likes silly stuff and pranks and goofs though), anyways this makes it harder for her to step in when someone needs help.

clam *is* a runaway government android and so basically anything that isnt healing or surveillance is antithetical to what he was programmed for which is bad for everyone. he wants so badly to deviate and cultivate more of an identity but its gotta be just one step at a time, while roy and the others help him reprogram his body and brain bit by bit. which sucks. he wants physical agency Now.

tallys lack of horns and low-ppointing fin rays would land him very low in his home planets sort of caste system. not like. homestuck per se, its less ingrained and more socially enforced. on a dangerous planet where community contribution holds a lot of social weight, being physically weaker, lacking parental skills or instincts, and being kind of selfish on top of all of that made him very. not liked. this is part of the reason kip feels so responsible for him and overly protective.

anyways hes kinda internalized it. every single crumb of attention and validation sends his ego to the moon (metaphorically). he is torn between accepting a low place in life and society "everyone hates me, why should i change that" and desperately trying to prove his worth to anyone who will listen. yaaay mentla illness mwah (i kiss him on the forehead)

kip is the opposite of tally. he has horns. his fin rays point straight up. hes big and strong. he can hunt and protect. hes kind of tender and paternal. hes generally well respected. and he left all that. with his "nephew."

hes used to the expectation of taking care of everyone, protecting them, making sure nothing goes wrong. so he overcorrects. he comes off a bit controlling, though he normally channels this through his cooking. its like a healthy outlet, where he has control over everything as long as everyone stays OUT of his FUCKING kitchen.

hes also very slow to learn and a bit stubborn (though he tries very very hard to work on this)

hes honestly very stable and good at keeping himself together unless He were to be the one hurt and or in trouble ahahaha. he would not handle that. he would go crazy. the thought of being the one to need others makes him ill.

he is so fucking awkward around clam and its for two reasons. 1. dont wanna break him, unfamiliar object, not sure how the best way to proceed 2. stop trying to help me stop leave me alone you sick vermin

deep down he loves clam though cause he feels like theyre the same. "this weird animate object is just like me fr" he admires clams instinct to help others a lot eheheheh.

[29pageshomestuckeveryday]

Homestuck, page 2,162

Nepeta: Consult with friend on the matter.

Author commentary:

Nepeta x Equius is a good character relationship. I don't mean just that it's entertaining, which it is. It stands out for other reasons. For one thing, it's a strong example of moirallegiance by troll standards. This is a minor point, though. For reasons that are hard to explain, this relationship is of cosmic significance in the grand scheme of the narrative. Arquius x Davepeta, as the terminal for their combined trajectory, illustrates its significance by seemingly placing it on near-equivalent terms with Dave and Dirk's relationship. Why the hell should this be true? Perhaps it's premature to say. I'll save that for the Act 6 book babbling. More generally, key relationship pairs bring a lot out of certain characters, even minor ones. For instance, you could write dozens of paragraphs of meta on Vriska alone. But the moment you stop writing about Vriska in a vacuum, and start writing about Vriska x Terezi, the avenues of analysis seem endless. It's a circuitous, psychologically tortured mutual arc of competitive codependency, which on closer inspection serves as the axis around which virtually the entire plot revolves. Equius and Nepeta bring things out of each other's arcs in a similar way, relative to their lesser roles in the story. They could have ended up being merely two fairly shallow extras swallowed up by a huge ensemble, but the interactions they have make it much harder to write off either of them individually.

We don't know much about Equius yet, but we get an awful lot of info about him with this excerpt. He's racist, a huge snob, doesn't like swearing, is stern and controlling, has a patronizing fondness for Nepeta, and thinks archery is cool because of its association with nobility. Combine this with the snapshot of his room we'll see soon, and suddenly we have an extensive character portrait. This was all important to establish quickly, because it helps us understand in record time that Equius is in fact one of the greatest characters ever created.

But wait, there's more. He also sweats a lot, he can't actually wield a bow and arrow because he's too strong and just breaks them, and he detests cruelty to animals, which he adores, especially humongous, nude, anthropomorphic beasts, which is something we don't need to get into now. There's plenty to say about Nepeta too, but when they're talking, it seems Equius starts to bury her in the contest of absurd, eyebrow-raising character traits. In this sense, she's sort of the straight man of the duo's relationship. But then, that's not a bad way to describe what a moirail really is. It's playing the stable, calming straight man to a more erratic or extreme personality, to help keep them grounded.

Much of Hivebent involves observing the characters we're in the process of getting to know find out how they're either not on the team they thought they'd be on or won't enter the session in the order they believed. Sometimes people get tricked, sometimes they get sabotaged, and sometimes they get ordered by an abusive friend who has no real power over them, except the power of sheer insistence they have grown accustomed to successfully asserting over the years. Also, there's no such thing as an abusive relationship for trolls, just lots of arrangements that are "normal" due to their terrible culture. There you go, that's my red-hot take of the day for you.

Equius says he appreciates that Nepeta's angry. I guess meaning that he respects an angry disposition, like his own. Especially early on in his characterization, it's suggested he has anger issues (like him taking his rage out on robot dummy combatants). But I'm not sure this trait holds up. Over time, he seems to show a lot more passion about his weird stuff, his passion for archery and muscular horse men, his submissive obsessions, his deference toward those higher on the hemospectrum and fetish-like indulgence in depraved attraction toward those lower. Ultimately he comes off more as a ridiculous nerd, with a soft spot for a lot of silly and creepy shit. My view on this is, it's not that the text lost track of the fact that he was supposed to be angry. It's more that this was his initial state of mind early on, and the more he started blowing off steam with his various indulgences (Aradiabot, etc.) the less he had to be mad about. We just meet him at a really high-strung point in his life. I think it's more accurate to say his "anger" is a form of hyperintense focus on being stern, aloof, proper, and averse to nonsense, which is a facade serving to cover up his inner personality, which is barely in control at all. Like Nepeta suggests, deep down he wants to play the kinds of silly games she plays. He wants to let go completely, and indulge every ludicrous and depraved whim he has. His arc tends to be more about caving to these indulgences, and all the mixed consequences that follow, than resisting them.

[homestuckdailyweekly]

Homestuck Daily - Week 3 - 5/4/2024

>Emma: Write Homestuck Daily Week 3 Post.

You are sitting at your DESK, sitting in your new DESK CHAIR and trying your best to figure out how to start the 4th update to your VERY DUMB IDEA. However, you are finding yourself afflicted with WRITER'S BLOCK, and can not come up with even a single interesting thing to say. You have hundreds of weeks left in this VERY DUMB IDEA, you can't run out of things to say 3 weeks in. You decide to ignore the WRITER'S BLOCK and just write whatever BULLSHIT comes to mind. >Discuss the Plot You would go over your NOTES, but you forgot to take them this week. You always have been terrible at note taking, why would Homestuck of all things cure you of this deficiency? Nevermind NOTES, you'll do this live.

EV: This week of Homestuck begins with the very first Strife of the series, a battle where John attempts to beat DAD with a hammer while DAD defends with pastries. This fight continues until through sylladex shenanigans, smoke pellets crushed by Colonel Sassacre's Book allow John to escape the fight. He steals DAD's PDA along with taking the RED PACKAGE addressed to him and the SBURB BETA before fleeing to his room. After some more SHENANIGANS, John arrives back at his room to two Pesterchum Notifications, one that introduces us to GG and the other a discussion about birthday gifts with TG. This week of updates ends with John going to mspaintadventures.com to check out the new MSPA, Midnight Crew.

You take a look at what you have written, and decide that it's good enough. > Discuss this week's Shenanigans.

You wonder if this idea to separate the recap by the Plot Important information and the various Shenanigans that happen between each plot point is, well, good. You are certain it is, in fact, bad. But the Past You has already decided this is the way you'll do things, and if you change things now, Future You might disagree and change it back. You sigh, thinking about what funny stuff happened this week.

EV: So, obviously I can't not mention the very first STRIFE of Homestuck, John v DAD. I remember when I first read Homestuck, I got a laugh out of all the STRIFE commands starting with A. But I don't have a lot to say about that other then "heh, that's fun". The way this STRIFE ends via Sylladex Shenanigans is probably the best bit of Sylladex Shenanigans in the comic so far, with the mechanics introduced so far leading to a smokey escape. Then John merges 2 cakes along with everything between those 2 cakes, which is a problem since everything else in his Sylladex was between those two cakes. Not a problem though, John is able to take a razor and perform surgery on a cake, a phrase that is remarkably similar to the meme "they performed surgery on a grape" despite predating the grape-surgery. The Cake-Surgery also leaves a huge mess in the bathroom. Then we re-enter John's room and John admires his Matthew McConaughey movie poster collection. A final bit of shenanigans that borders on the plot-important is learning that John got TG a pair of shades that Ben Stiller once wore for his last birthday. We also learn from TG that other Sylladex Modi exist, which foreshadows future and more varied Sylladex Shenanigans.

You look at what you've written, and shrug. It's good enough. You are realizing you don't really have much to say about shenanigans in general, and perhaps need to rethink how you structure future updates to this VERY DUMB IDEA. You're pretty sure that's all you have to say, and probably slightly more than what you have to say. >Emma: Post Homestuck Daily Week 3

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

I've always appreciated the extent to which Homestuck has the sense that it is a thing. There's the "meta" that is acknowledged more often than any "canon," and the sense that what's going on, for the most part, really is going on. I'm not sure I've ever read another work, even a comic book, that felt so unapologetic about the nature of its world.

I mean, I could imagine some comics that try to be like Homestuck, and get some things wrong: Watchmen, perhaps, although Watchmen isn't always as unapologetic about its own world as a lot of people say it is. And maybe Scott Pilgrim -- although I dunno if Scott Pilgrim even knows he's supposed to be a satire of other works (though at times, it kind of looks like it's trying to be one?).

(I used to read a lot of superhero comics as a teenager, and while I could imagine doing my own thing with superheroes, there was always that feeling that superheroes had already been done. If Superman really had existed, he would be a real guy in real world realness, and it would be ridiculous to try to come up with a Superman that would be plausible in its own world: the Superman everyone knows is just the result of trying to make the world fit him.

The characters of Homestuck, in contrast, are not "superheroes," but "supervillains," a genre that has existed for a long time, and which in itself is an archetype, just like superheroes, but in a different way.)

A lot of Homestuck's "serious" bits come off as really over-the-top parody, though.

Maybe the best example I can think of is the intermission that starts at the end of Ch. 311. What makes it so entertaining is that it's deliberately silly. Like the rest of Homestuck, the premise for it is a reference to something that isn't there in the story: the idea that Hussie, the main character, is reading a fantasy story -- a really cheesy, bad fantasy, like the one you'd see in the Sunday morning cartoon section in the local newspaper -- which is actually a lot funnier than the comic this intermission lampoons. (This is how Hussie felt about Homestuck when he started writing it.) And yet, the intermission doesn't feel out of character for the comic. It is a part of it, and it's funny, in that way that only a silly thing can be.

It makes me wonder how often, in fiction, something like this would work. Like... I don't know, what's the "right" thing to parody, really? The original Mad Magazine stuff often feels to me like it's not really parody -- it's doing what it says on the tin, as if it actually believed in itself. (E.g. here's a great comic from the early 1990s by John Ostrander where the "mad" part of Mad Magazine is taken seriously and the "magazine" part is used ironically.) I don't think this is because those early comics didn't know their target. Rather, the target had already disappeared. There's nothing else to parody.

Homestuck seems like it has a pretty good handle on the "what is parody?" question. There's something there I don't think I've ever seen anywhere else.

(I'm not exactly going to sit here and say that this is better than what Homestuck has been like for the last, like, seven years. But it's at least an approach I've never seen.)

[loki-zen]

Hot Take:

1. post-canon Homestuck is quite good actually,

2. certainly better than the bad/off the rails latter parts of canon Homestuck,

3. and, actually, on several craft-of-writing levels it’s better than canon Homestuck full stop; AH has grown as a writer and an artist in the intervening years and as such the day-to-day panels of HS^2 look better, its story is better paced, jumping between story threads is done more artfully, the cast is pared down to a more manageable size, and there are several characters that it always felt like he didn’t really know what he was doing with them who have been figured out and used to far greater effect, as well as popular original Homestuck characters whose arcs are meaningfully improved by the continuation.

Spoilers under cut (mild I guess)

The character stuff really benefits from the greater freedom post-canon provides in terms of narrative role.

In canon, there was basically only one role any of the human or humanlike characters could have - Hero of [Blah], player of the Game, aspiring saviour of the universe. Boring. Especially in the Alpha kids, it fell flat in everyone but Roxy.

Jane and Dirk are infinitely more interesting as sometimes-at-least-somewhat-sympathetic antagonists. Jake English is infinitely more tolerable when his role is not ‘Hero of Hope’ but ‘that shallow somewhat irritating guy you knew as a kid who is now a shallow somewhat irritating celebrity.’ Roxy’s quantum transness is Extremely Relatable and I think pretty damn well-written in the end (I’m thinking of eg the conversation Candy Roxy (she/her) has with John about the situation in ^2).

Speaking of which, the timeline shit is better utilised here and easier to understand. And the way fourth-wall breaking, format screw shenanigans interfaces with the plot is a lot more well done (or at least more well thought out? More coherent.), and imo genuinely sinister and chilling at times.

All that said, it does lack some Inestimable Something that prevents me from claiming that it’s outright better. Maybe it’s just that by definition it can’t be groundbreaking the way the original was. And it’s far from perfect - Meat is much longer than it needs to be in classic AH style while Candy is very half-assedly (un)finished, and ^2 itself will probably never get finished, or at least I’m not getting my hopes up.

But it’s got its charms, for sure, and might’ve been unfairly skipped out on by people who were put off by how the original went off the rails. It’s definitely a valiant attempt to get back on some rails.

YMMV if your favourite troll isn’t in it, of course. (Off the top of my head, Eridan, Nepeta, Equius and both Piexes do not reappear at all; Sollux is barely in it, Aradia has a somewhat minor role, and Tavros… well that one’s kind of interesting, but the character we know does not reappear.)

[SPOILER re the above: a character with the same speech/typing quirk, approximate narrative positioning and first name does appear, but he is a human who is related in no way to the Tavros we remember.]

(also I think Jade fans could reasonably say she is done dirty by post-canon to the point that they may well prefer her arc untainted by knowledge of her post-canon self. Depends what side of her you’re into. Same goes for Jade and Dirk fans who prefer to think of them as heroic characters I guess?)

(Additionally, in ‘things I just think are neat’, there is an Egbert/Strilonde baby in the mix, and we discover that the synthesis of Egbert nerdery, Strider extroverted-insecurity and Lalonde virtuosic dramaticness is, naturally, a Theatre Kid.)

[anbroids]

i am loving your dirkjake fic so far. your characterization of jake hits close to home for me? i sometimes feel like all the complexities he has in canon are hard to translate into fanworks but i think you are doing him justice and i just wanted to say it is very appreciated!

hooooooooooooly shit literally the best compliment to receive ever i'm foaming at the mouth thank you so much

100% most daunting part of writing a homestuck work was the jake writing (right next to jane) justtttt personally bc i didn't want to write over his issues / flaws for the sake of storytelling and more importantly writing dirkjake. idk how successful i was at that because with so much shit just going on in the story i wasn't sure if i was striking a good balance between character driven moments and plot points, so it feels great to hear that some of those complexities still felt present and hit home for you! thank you so much for reading and leaving me this lovely ask <3

i have like ten million jake thoughts inside my head at all times you have no idea so i am absolutely going to take this moment to go on a tangent under a read more

i love all the alpha kids so very dearly but out of the four of them i think jake is probably the one that makes me feel the most batshit insane (also how i feel about jade with the beta kids too) he's got all this layered shit going on in the comic. like i truly want to dissect him under a microscope.

i must credit tomatograter for a lot of the ways i read him as a character. if you haven't already, go read their dirkjake manifesto right nowwwwww it is full of delicious meta analysis.

i think that just due to the nature of dirk's popularity as a character and the amount of time spent in the comic that flush out his issues in canon and post-canon (specifically while handling those issues seriously-ish (?) and not getting into too much jokey or cruel territory, which is how i believe jake's issues are treated in canon and post-canon just in my humble opinion espppppp post-canon), a lot of dirkjake fanworks put dirk and his issues as sort of the front and center of the narrative. i find that a lot of works in the hurt/comfort category set up dirk as the one hurting and jake as the comforter by proxy. but this seems to extend outside the genre too like i just often see works that are a little more dirk centric and jake primarily functions as the "love interest" role.

when you write jake as the comforter, it’s easier to write him as more grounded, confident, and secure so he can be the vehicle for dirk to figure his shit out. but, i am first and foremost a jake enjoyer specifically because i think his flaws are SO FUN......... i like that jake is a coward. i like that he is so guided by fear and self preservation that it makes him neglect or hurt the people around him and cause problems for himself. a lot of people read this as jake being kind of a selfish person which i think is a sound argument sure, but i like the term self-preserving a little bit more because of the contrast it makes with dirk, who is so frequently cutting off his own head self-sacrificing for his own agenda. i like that he’s embarrassing and a crybaby (affectionate) and does a lot of cringe shit all the time. and i didn’t want to erase those qualities for the sake of "fixing" dirkjake.

there is a lot i could add here too about how i don't think dirk centric dirkjake stuff is bad either. the derse characters esp the striders are popular for a lot of reasons in the comic that i won't get into and i do honestly feel like people get hung up on their popularity just to be contrarian sometimes and it comes off a bit mean-spirited to me? all of that being said, ig sometimes i wish there was more of an attitude when interpreting characters meta relationships etc of if it's not for you, just leave it at that. no need to call it bad or wrong or cringe etc.

and god there is so much MORE i could say about how i personally do enjoy any and all readings of hs characters. i dislike subscribing to one kinda reading and even if someone writes or interprets a character like jake differently from me i still find it very interesting and enjoyable and fun! and i appreciate that there is a variety of writers and fans that interpret him in all kinds of ways, i think he's just an interesting character to explore in general? so all this being said i am very glad this reading hit home to you! but also i don't want my response to come off as... YES MY READING OF HIM IS THE ONLY CORRECT ONE bc what the fuck do i know... this is just my own reading for one particular story. i think it's good to have an open mind to all kinds of hcs. i'm a believer in the more takes the merrier, i like to see em all.

but anyways yeah i... don't really know how well i've done in portraying all these jake thoughts so far in the work but i guess those were just my intentions going into it? to balance them both out and keep the jake writing feeling authentic to those certain flaws. those are the things i really like to see explored in fanworks myself so i hoped to do the same!

for the first homestuck work i published i wanted it to be like a proper chaptered adventure au with some world building and an actual set-up, climax, conclusion situation just to try something new for me but in the future i would love to just do more jake-centric oneshots where i try to dissect his brain for a couple thousand melodramatic words and call it a day. now that's indulgence baby.

god but i could really go on about dirkjake as narrative foils for days but i won't. i already wrote an essay here and will leave it at that.

[therealfroggymagician]

This post will probably be a long essay but uh, I’ve been in the homestuck fandom for around three years probably and it’s impacted my life in good and bad ways. So if you’re entering the homestuck fandom or in the homestuck fandom etc here is a list of things I’ve learned! This isn’t for like discourse or something, just talking from my experience in the fandom!

- Sexualizing minor characters (even if you are aging them up) isn’t good, don’t do it please. Especially Vriska, don’t sexualize her for the love of god

- There’s a difference between a kismesis relationship and a toxic/ab*sive relationship. Please stay safe and know the difference, treat your partner like a person no matter the quadrant 

- Tavris (Tavros x Vriska) isn’t a healthy ship

- No matter your kin, don’t be an asshole. I don’t care what bloodcaste you had, be a decent person

- There are racial stereotypes in homestuck: Damara, Makaras, Piexes (except for Feferi). Keep this in mind and listen to POC, do not speak over them. This goes especially when cosplaying these characters

- I’m pretty sure that the strilondes (striders and lalondes) are Jewish canonically

- Headcanons are valid! 

- Discourse is not worth it, I mean we all like the same trash so just enjoy the parts you enjoy

- Hussie had a bias about Vriska while writing the comic

- Bro was not a good father, like at all

- Everyone has their own opinions about the epilogues and Homestuck^2, but you can love what you want to love, take the extended canon with a grain of salt and you don’t have to force yourself to take the epilogues as the canon endings. You could stop at just reading Homestuck and that would be fine!

- Typing quirks can be hard for people to read! Don’t get angry when someone tells you they can’t understand what the fuck you just typed

- You can enjoy Homestuck while still being critical about it

- Every single character did something bad in the comic, except for maybe the mayor

- Don’t make jokes about characters having disabilities!! This goes for characters like Tavros, Terezi, Latula, Mituna, Meulin and so on. There’s going to be jokes about their disabilities in the comics but that doesn’t make it ok! 

- Don’t infantilize Mituna. PLEASE.

- This is just my opinion but I feel like Kankri is aroace coded and it’s really weird when people take characters that clearly hate sex and make them like all uwu shy

If anyone has things they want to add on then go for it, if I think of more stuff I’ll add on too. Like I said this is just in my experience and a lot of this is a given, take things with a grain of salt

[radicalapollo]

Homestuck^2: Penultimate Pickle

So, as of yesterday, Homestuck 2, or Homestuck^2, was put on indefinite hold, the patreon was frozen and will not be restarted, and it was announced that when it updates again, it will be one, large, massive dump of content given all at one time, with the team of it, hopefully, being paid a good sum of money over a stretch of time directly from Andrew Hussie himself, and whatever money that was previously accumulated from the Patreon pre-the initial break they announced to end in April (now, TBD.)

This comes on the heels, but seemingly doesn’t truly have anything to do with, several long, well documented deep dives into shady things regarding Homestuck, Hiveswap, Homestuck^2, and generally everything Hussie related.

You can read it here, if you’re interested:

https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2020/10/03/the-hiveswap-fiasco/

Point of the matter is, supposedly, this has nothing to do with anything to do in this article, though I kind of have my doubts on that, but I’ll leave the theories to myself on that point. 

What was said, for sake of making sure everyone is on the same page, is that Homestuck^2 will finish, or at least, that is the plan. The team behind it will be payed in full for their work on it, which if you are to believe Hussie, they’re delighted to finish, but he’s shutting down the patreon and the active, monthly updates of the comic because of constant and consistent harassment and threats being aimed at the people involved for their writing decisions, in hopes to protect them from these things. Which is good.

Though, that comes with the caveat, which is bad, that a lot of Homestuck^2 is chock-full of genuinely bad ideas, put to paper and seemingly not really well thought out, and characters being put into situations that tread into “I get that this is supposed to be mildly to pretty uncomfortable for the sake of coming off as deep, but it’s not actually all that deep to just put mildly to pretty uncomfortable situations in your series for the sake of shock value.” Like you have to go through that whole speech in your head because that is what’s happening. 

Between everything going on, both with the Homestuck “Brand” in general, and lots of stuff about Hussie, as a person, coming out, this is one of those “Going out with a whimper” type situations that kinda just leaves you sad. For all it’s ups and downs, Homestuck meant a lot to me, and a lot of other people for that matter, and to have it kind of systematically fall apart due to a mixture of bad management, corruption, greed, and in this case, a last ditch effort to protect the people still making content for the series, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that probably won’t go away for some time. 

[hms-no-fun]

what is your reasoning for having some characters have dual name/text colors? is this just another stylistic choice to try and even further branch out from homestuck or what

there are a lot of unstated style rules in godfeels that have just kinda emerged. there's a logic to, for instance, who gets third person narration vs first person, & how they show themselves in that narration. June's narration is always her text color because she isn't really capable of intense subterfuge. Terezi, meanwhile, is very good at hiding herself in narration up until she gets flustered or mad. i never really set out to make an expressive narratorial matrix for these characters, right, but it's there.

going back to 2.1, i actually originally wanted to make June's name be Vriska-blue and her text be Egbert-blue... but i had yet to discover the magic of find & replace, and the thought of having to manually replace "June:" with "<span class="vriska">June:</span><span class="john">" forever after seemed like WAY too much of a hassle. i think giving her a bespoke text color was by far the better choice, because it literally being a blend of Vriska and Egbert was a very very early metaphysical indication to me that there was a much more complex psychological phenomenon occurring under the surface. it took me until writing 3.1 before i realized that the name for that phenomenon is plurality (thanks to the commentary made by a number of plural readers).

in homestuck proper, having a name that's a different color from your text is generally relegated to the sprite^2s. i always read this as a simple way of visually communicating that they're fusions. i always liked the EFFECT of reading their lines because the dual text colors help them feel ascended in some abstract sense.

so, when it came time to introduce Silverbark, i wanted a way to indicate that something big had changed with her beyond the obvious stuff like her appearance. because what makes Silverbark interesting imo isn't just that she's gotten older. if she'd just gotten older while living more or less the same life she was living on earth c, i don't think her hair would have greyed, and i don't think her name color would have changed. it has to do with experience and perspective somehow. to my mind Silverbark's silver is the ultimate tell that her initial impression as the same silly girl that everyone remembered was a front she was putting on. something has changed in her deep, deep down, and in a way the whole space opera side of things emerged out of my own desire to understand what changed. perhaps one could make some inferences there given Padua's color conventions.

in the case of Risk and Dare, i take sort of an opposite approach-- and here i'm now realizing this actually pretty closely mirrors my philosophy about who gets first person narration. imo there's two primary ways one takes control of their own narration. one side, the Dirk side, is brute force. the other side, June's side, is self-realization. so you have two poles, one associated with external power and the control of others, the other associated with internal clarity and a desire to live one's own life more genuinely. i know this particular verbalization makes it sound like one is good and one is bad, but i think you can look at the events of godfeels and say pretty definitively that both camps are just as capable of doing both really good shit and really terrible shit. how you got power certainly informs how you use that power, but it's hard not to think of obama running on hope and change only to turn around and become just as bad as the last guy, dismantling every apparatus of party organization that got him in power and made sure the dnc would never ever run a campaign that effective again. it's complicated, baby. there's no easy answers in life, and there's no easy answers in godfeels.

so anyway in Davepeta's case, you've got a name color change due to a cosmic fusion, the result essentially of a basic math problem. in Silverbark's case, you've got a name color change due to some level of personal/political ascension, a crossing of some kind of rubicon that came with great benefits at what looks to have been a pretty heavy cost.

with Risk and Dare, you've got name color changes as a result of literal self-actualization. it is with Dare's insistence that their name is Dare and they do exist that they finally push through the veil between internal self and external self, forcing June to acknowledge that they are in fact Real and Whole and Independent from her in some key way while also being equally part of her, inextricable from her. it's the final expression of Dare's arc-- throughout chapter 8 they keep trying to find reasons to live, trying to find gods to believe in. they plead to June, they plead to the universe, they even plead to us as readers, and still they get no answer. it's only when they take their life into their own hands and embrace the name that X gives them that they reach the point of being In Control that allows them to fight back in the way that they do. you'll remember that when Epigone is making everyone sing happy birthday, Dare-as-J is the only one who seems to be able to put up any kind of resistance to the words being pushed out of their mouth.

in Risk's case, the motivation for the color change is similar but distinct. for her it's a matter of realizing that "Vriska" as an archetype just doesn't fit anymore. it's still self-actualization, but where Dare's was about fully knowing and embracing their right to exist as an individual, Risk's is about knowing and embracing her right to be someone who doesn't already exist. what exactly that means in the longterm remains to be seen, but you can be sure that it's gonna come up again eventually

[thewebcomicsreview]

Seeing as I don’t have a job right now (one week furlough), I managed to get a lot of writing for Saffron and Sage done today. Now I feel good! Time to ruin that with a Homestuck 2 Liveblog! Last time: Jade kidnapped “Yiffy”, much to Jane’s distress! No time for that, though, as we’re back with the Candyland Kids. 

HARRY: vrissy, i know this is a stressful predicament but i think that's going too far. HARRY: my dad believes in us. HARRY: and if he thinks there's something we can do, then there has to be a way!

Kind of interesting that Harry holds his dad’s opinion in such high esteem, considering that his dad has been AWOL pretty much his whole life.

TAVROS: Uncle john isn't to blame for this,,, HARRY: yeah, no shit tav. HARRY: this whole situation is because of YOUR insane hitlermom.

How the hell does Harry Anderson know who Hitler is? When did that conversation come up? This is a completely different universe! 

TAVROS: Is less sincere,,, than it is,,, an attempt to weaponize something difficult for me, TAVROS: In order that you can win an argument,,, with harry anderson,,,,, VRISKA: GRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! VRISKA: WILL YOU ALL JUST VRISKA: SHUT!!!!!!!! VRISKA: UP!!!!!!!!

A good example of why characters like John, Jade, Vriska, and sometimes Karkat are important in Homestuck or in stories generally. They actually do shit. 

VRISKA: Neither you nor your friends have anything really important going on. VRISKA: Your lives and your planet are a total 8ore! VRISKA: 8ut somehow John loves you anyway. VRISKA: Try and be fucking gr8ful for that every once in a while. VRISKA: Not everyone is so lucky.

Vriska please do not be pining for middle-aged John Egbert. You have literally half a dozen semi-official love interests (John, Terezi, Eridan, Tavros, Meenah and Kanaya), please don’t pick the one old enough to be your dad. It was already weird enough when Adult John got hot and bothered by teen Roxy in the epilogues, to say nothing of you fucking a middle-aged homeless clown in a bush.  

thespiansGlamor [TG] began pestering adamantGriftress [AG]

Oh, fuck you, Homestuck. It’s bad enough that Harry and Dave are both going to be referred to as “TG” in chatlogs, but now Vrissy and Vriska are both AG and have the same font color! 

TG: i've allocated the strife specibus with the scissorkind abstratus? TG: hm. TG: using this weird vocab and stuff feels... well, weird. TG: i'm not sure why, but it seems as though everything that's about to happen is that much more important now. TG: or maybe it already was, but i just didn't understand just how important until this moment.

One issue with wearing your metaphor on your sleeve as much as Homestuck 2 does is that thematically important lines become really obvious. 

I like how the triangle-shaped panel around Vriska escaping the crowd by simply walking into it is reminiscent of a magic 8-ball. That’s clever! 

VRISKA: Your society... no, your whole planet... it deserves to 8urn str8 to MEGAhell, and I'm gonna 8e the one to fly it there! VRISKA: I'm gonna shatter your paradise into pieces with my 8are hands and SHIT IN ITS GRAVE!!!!!!!! VRISKA: HOW'S THAT FOR A FUCKING ST8MENT! VRISKA: YOU GOT ALL THAT, JANE CROCKER? VRISKA: DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT'S COMING FOR YOU???????? VRISKA: YOU'VE MESSED WITH VRISKA: ********VRISKA******** VRISKA: ****FUUUUUUUUCKING**** VRISKA: ********SERK8T********

There’s some extreme Dungeons and Dragons energy here, where Vriska’s plan to escape a mob of reporters working for a totalitarian dictatorship run by literal gods is to simply walk outside and publicly declare her intent to destroy the world as punishment for its sins. 

And yeah, this is how that plan usually works in DnD, too.

Man, the next page is a wall of text, whereas in old Homestuck this’d be an animation. I get “fair wages” and “small budget”, but is still feels weird to see a big Strife scene merely get described with boring-ass words.

Fearing gunfire, the few paparazzi who aren't currently getting their asses handed to them by the world's angriest traffic cone start to trip over each other, diving for cover.

The world’s angriest traffic cone.

Far away, in her lair, Jane Crocker grabs the two sides of her computer monitor with enough strength to snap it in two. She can't believe what she's watching. Behind her, from a shadowy corner of the room, there is an agitated growling noise and the rattle of chains.

Is that Yiffy? Is Yiffy an animal? Please tell me Yiffy is not a person that Jade named Yiffy. 

....Actually, please tell me that Yiffy isn’t an animal Jade named Yiffy that is Jade’s child via sex with another animal that might be my breaking point.

Vriska alights on the ground, rakes her throat, quietly spits out a little wad of blue, and wipes her mouth unceremoniously. Tavros pats Harry Anderson tentatively on the arm. Vrissy tries to be badass and cough up something too but she doesn't really make it work.  

Vrissy::Vriska Vriska::Mindfang

It’s weird that John’s sprite is the same even though he’s middle aged now, but I like that his God Tier outfit doesn’t fit any more. Isn’t it magical? Ahh, who cares.

JOHN: this old thing is pretty uncomfortable in a lot of ways. JOHN: hm... JOHN: when we get a moment, maybe the two of us could brainstorm a redesign? JOHN: no pressure though. HARRY: !!!

Oh, that’s why! That’s cute. 

JADE: theres something i need to tell you

don’thavefuckedadogdon’thavefuckedadogdon’thavefuckedadog

JADE: john... i have a daughter JADE: shes almost harry andersons age JOHN: ... JOHN: ... JOHN: you have a daughter.

Named Yiffy?

ROSE: It was at this point that Jade came to me. ROSE: I could understand her pain quite acutely, and so... ROSE: I agreed to carry a child on her behalf. KANAYA: . ROSE: ... Without telling Kanaya.

Without-

Kanaya is your WIFE. You LIVE WITH HER. Even ignoring the question of why you’d keep 9 months of pregnancy from your wife, how? Kanaya would have been living with humans for years at that point and she’s literally in charge of reproduction don’t tell me she thought Rose just got fat for a while and then lost the weight really fast. 

ROSE: I'm... not sure why I made that decision. ROSE: I regret not telling Kanaya, of course. ROSE: But I can't say that I regret going through with it. ROSE: At the time, it didn't feel as though the deception was even all that prolonged. The whole affair was... short. ROSE: Purely physical, and nothing more.

ROSE: John, there isn't a father. ROSE: Jade and I are the sole parents of this child. JOHN: oh. JOHN: ... JOHN: OH. JOHN: oh i'm so sorry, i didn't th- ROSE: That's quite alright John, although you might like to direct that apology more towards your sister. ROSE: All I will say is that if you would like to take up the particulars with us, ROSE: Some *other* time, 

Actually, if John doesn’t know that Jade has a male dog’s genitals due to a fusion accident, I’d love to know what that all-caps OH means. What does he think happened, that Jade and Rose managed to have a baby? 

JOHN: so... how did you hide the pregnancy? ROSE: Oh, that was simple. ROSE: Jade's genes being, as they are, part canine, the gestation period was substantially reduced.

OH NO 

Yiffy is literally a furry, isn’t she? Moreso that Jade, she’s a full-on “Can be naked onscreen and it’s okay because she’s covered in fur” dog girl.

JOHN: i think i understand everything so f VRISSY: WAIT!!!!!!!! VRISSY: YOU MEAN TO TELL ME VRISSY: NOT ONLY DO I H8VE A SISTER VRISSY: 8UT YOU NAMED VRISSY: YOUR ****SECRET CHILD**** VRISSY: ********YIFFY********????????

Vrissy makes an excellent point. 

ROSE: We didn't call her Yiffy. ROSE: That would be a quite ridiculous thing with which to burden a child. ROSE: Her full name is Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley.

Vrissy looks as though she is about to shit the belltower they are standing in, brick by brick.

ROSE: It was, in hindsight, a monumentally terrible decision acting as the final chapter in a long series of novels, each one full of progressively more terrible decisions than the last. ROSE: But that is the name that we decided upon.

Oh, wait a second. Vriska changed Vriska Maryam-Lalonde to Vrissy, and changed Harry Anderson to just Harry. So obviously she’s going to rename Yiffy to literally anything else, then rename Tavros, and then we’ve got a new set of four kids as Vriska leaves to do something else. That’s what going to happen, right? Right? Please? 

ROSE: You have to understand... this whole situation ended up playing out a bit like an ironic game of chicken between the two of us. ROSE: Something that far outstripped anything that the Strider fraternity could have produced in their wildest, most jpegged creative wet dreams. ROSE: But in the end that triumph of irony came back to bite us in the fucking ass, as irony is wont to do. ROSE: There was absolutely no possibility of us casually letting you all know that, by the way, we had had a secret daughter named Yiffany Longstocking. ROSE: At least, not right away. ROSE: But carapacian change-of-name paperwork is so complex and circuitous that, eventually, keeping quiet forever just seemed like the more reasonable option.

This is, even for Homestuck, monumentally stupid. You named your daughter Yiffany Longstocking as a joke and then kept the child secret because you were embarrassed. You two are awful fucking parents. You are the worst parents in the entire series, and that includes Bro Strider and the spider that made Vriska feed it children. 

And we’re literally at the point where the writing is bad and the joke is how bad the writing is. This isn’t enjoyable to read; you can’t make a bad B-movie My Immortal fanfic on purpose.  

Even now, Yiffy is likely being held at spoonpoint

I feel like “Jade and Rose have a secret daughter named Yiffany Longstocking” can be a joke or it can be drama but maybe not both at the same time. 

[dahniwitchoflight]

Homesquared Chapter 16

Alrighty, that was a fun tangent, now back to John it seems?

Oh, no, Narration of John (So Actually Dirk, speak of the devil and he shall appear and all that etc etc)

“ leaving John with one final touch on the shoulder. John leans into it in response, though he’s a bit ashamed of chasing down a sliver of physical affection so soon after obliterating Karkat’s evening like he had. “

pfft lol so Im not the only one that thought it would be funny if that scene was interpreted in a Pale Romantic light, even though that really wasn’t what was happening

OIh! but we still get Roxy, just the other version of Roxy

Roxy subtly being like “hey!! shit has apparently gone down, were not exactly close atm but I feel bad about you dying to want to know if youre still alive so im gonna message you while trying to make it look like i dont care about it as much as I do”

JOHN: trying to align my memories of my youth with whatever is happening right now so

and the wonderful question is, what IS going be happening with you now John?

Roxy looking nice and casual, but also yeah narration, why are you making this ominous, its not like Roxy’s out here to double spy on behalf of Jane, I don’t think Roxys on her side THAT much

ROXY: may have to do a smidge more if my old bff decides im next on the list for bombing out

ROXY: but so far so good

ROXY: just a coupla exploded cars in the yard from some shenanigans our dear son and his friends were in but u kno it is what it is!!!

Roxy once again being a master of hiding how shes feeling, even when trying to open up, feeling pretty stressed about whats happening with Jane, understandable, the exclamation points give it away lol

The narration is really trying to make John nervous though

OH lol that was the implication haha no lol John it obviously wasn’t that

“John feels his shoulders unbunch. Of course. Yeah. He’s almost embarrassed by how relieved he feels. So what if his ex wife wanted to hook up? Shouldn’t that be a situation he could navigate? Don’t people like to find solace in human physical connection during dire times? Why did the idea of it make his mind white out in panic more than, say, any number of the traumas he just experienced? He doesn’t know, but he believes Roxy that he must look pretty haggard. He probably feels haggard? Maybe sitting down will feel better.“

lol once again, Dirk has no idea how to read Roxy at all and just trips over himself and his assumptions XD

Yeah, looks like Roxy not on the Jane train and is doing some takesies backsies, shes glossing over her feelings on the matter still though, I know thats par for the course of how Roxy tends to handle stuff too but I wish shed open up a bit more, but maybe shes playing the smart game, yknow, knowing that Dirk has a hard time reading her, so glossing over stuff is how you protect yourself against the narrative force, confusion and vaguery in the narrative and her actions only helps her to keep control over it, because at any point, you can decide to “clear up” any narrative “miscommunication” or “confusion” and lay down what is it thats actually happening with you any time you want

Void working in the behind the scenes to do what they want

JOHN: like it’s my HOUSE.

JOHN: but mostly it always felt like my dad’s house?

JOHN: and when i started living there after i moved out of here, it was like i crammed myself back into whatever was left of my kid self?

JOHN: and it didn’t feel good, but it at least was familiar, you know?

JOHN: like living there let me feel closer to my dad, trying to be like the way i remember him, or like how i remember him wanting me to be, or something?

JOHN: and i didn’t realize how much i hated doing that until i saw it all go up in flames.

JOHN: so i guess i could have used my powers to stop the fire and save whatever was left of the place, but i couldn’t bring myself to do it.

JOHN: like some fucked up part of me was glad i got there too late?

JOHN: so i just sat there, watching, trying to figure out why watching my house burn down felt like i was being released from prison.

JOHN: and even now i keep trying to explain it away, as though it’s because of how fucked up everything else is that it made me feel good.

JOHN: but that’s just bullshit.

JOHN: it DID feel good.

JOHN: i DO feel free.

JOHN: sorry.

ROXY: no need 2 apologize

ROXY: we just delved in2 my whole gender thing last time so it seems fine for u to have a turn

JOHN: i didn’t say it was a gender thing.

Im pretty sure you’re talking about a gender thing John, like, very 100% sure now this is what’s happening

because if you were actually a girl, of course you’re dad leaving all these notes about how one day hes gonna be so proud of the man youll become, yeah, that can feel a little pressuring, even if your dad didnt mean it like that, since he was unfailingly the kind of dad just bumbling around trying to understand their kid as best they could and leave encouragements everywhere, thats what his intent was, but all his notes come off a bit wrong in particular issues

remember the note under the fridge that was all like “SON. IF YOURE READING THIS NOTE, YOUVE FINALLY BECOME STRONG ENOUGH OF A MAN TO PICK UP THE FRIDGE.” not exactly that but that was always the vibe Dad’s little notes always had

Yeah, i can see how John would view it as a bit off, but if he hadnt the self awareness to realize it was a gender thing at the time, hed be understandly confused as to why such a thing would bother him

now though, he’s realizing, maybe, he doesn’t exactly want to be the man his dad always encouraged him to be

John does seem a lot happier here in his convo with Roxy than he did on his own when the house was burning, that conversation with karkat left me wondering if John was about to start dissociating he was so down, but here he says he feels freeing and happy about it?

ROXY: but like now that u mention it

ROXY: *meaningful pause*

JOHN: …

JOHN: i

JOHN:

John’s beginning to question stuff, or acknowledge that he’s questioning stuff, cuz it’s true, and hes feeling happy about it, in a way that he wasnt before, but he hasnt quite connected the dots here between the happy feeling and what exactly he has to be happy about

ROXY: aight then no wind bending just use your mangrit

Roxy flexes, the corner of her mouth pulled up into a familiar grin. John feels his guts, so recently calmed, twist up into knots again. Her eyebrows shoot up and the smile loosens. He must have shown something on his face.

ROXY: ok or just like push when i push

ROXY: we both got sick muscles

ROXY: no other adjectives necessary

JOHN: yeah ok.

Yeah Roxy’s 100% picked up on it, and maybe Dirk has as well if the narration is commenting on it

Alrighty then, to the secret lair under the bed!

oh I just noticed how kind of cute and interesting Roxy’s nickname for Harry is, “Lil H A” Harry Anderson shortens to Ha like laughter haha

and if Harry had Roxy’s last name, it’d be Harry Anderson Lalonde

Lil HAL

lol what is Callie doing under Roxy’s secret bedchamber XD

This whole secret bedchamber thing is turning into one big metaphor isn’t it?

That thing behind the curtain kind of looks like the Attic Portal shape from Hiveswap though

that’d be neat if that was it, like obviously we knew one of the cherubs had to have something to do with that portal just going by the design of it alone

Honestly it makes sense that Callie is doing it under the curtain of Roxy’s Void, it’s honestly the safest place to do something like that

lol Calliope has grown past writing fanfic about shipping and being in love, now the drama of broken relationships and divorce is all the rage XD character growth? haha

CALLIOPE: besides, hUman divorces are even more fascinating than i had ever imagined, and being able to witness yoUrs in motion was an honoUr.

CALLIOPE: so i consider Us aboUt even at this point.

Calliope just burned him harder than his childhood home’s destruction

CALLIOPE: ah right, right. yoU're probably a little cUrioUs as to where the dickens we are.

have you been talking to Jake lol (I mean, probably Original Grandpa Jake tbh if that portal is actually the portal)

Alright so John is getting caught up on the major plot points, Earth C is indeed in the large black hole, his choice didn’t matter since both choices happened anyway yadda yadda

CALLIOPE: think of it like a coin flip.

CALLIOPE: the series of events that led to Us being trapped beyond the event horizon of an Ubermassive black hole could be considered "tails", while the events which would have occUrred otherwise could be considered "heads".

CALLIOPE: since both were possible, and paradox space is the way it is, they actUally both happened. and we jUst "happened" (hee hee) to get tails instead of heads.

yup yup yup pretty par for the course of timesplits in homestuck so far

CALLIOPE: not at all! since both possibilities depend on one another's existence, it really doesn't make sense to call them "right" or "wrong". they both just "are".

yup, this is true, the ending’s of both referenced the others, so it’s disingenuous to say one is “canon” while the other isn’t

one is simply in the realm of actual possibility, the other is in the realm of unlikely possibility

More than likely, John would have chosen to leave and go die and be the hero like in Meat, but there was still the possibility that he would stay, even if it was unlikelier than the other, but since both were possible choices for him to realistically make, both actually happened for real

CALLIOPE: anyway, the reason i went on this tangent in the first place was to explain that the space we are standing in right now has a special significance, in that it is the location which corresponds to the black hole's singUlarity

that’s interesting, so there’s the original meteor that crashed into the surface of Earth C, and it’s in here that the singularity of what I don’t wanna call the Green Hole to match the Green Sun when I wanna talk about this specific Black Hole lolol

but yeah, here in this meteor lies the crux of the paradox it seems, interesting, also interesting again, this is where that Hiveswap Portal is

Hiveswap does have a plot point of “Joey must do thing in 11 days otherwise Earth and Alternia will be destroyed” and the only known destruction event of Earth and Alternia so far in canon is the Green Sun’s Creation from the destruction of both universes (and then later Callie’s destruction of the green sun into the black hole) so is Hiveswap gonna be a factor in the green sun’s destruction/creation as well? (Joey has the symbol of the Green Sun for a reason, I’m super curious as to what factor Joey has in relation to the Green Sun’s Existence, We still don’t know what the fact those black monsters are too, they’re like nega-first guardians, the kind of things that look like would come out of a Black Hole that came from the Green Sun tbh)

It’s all inter-related I tells ya

ROXY: ur not gonna enter a weird time vortex and change the trajectory of a little girls life with the power of love

JOHN: aw.

You say that now but

CALLIOPE: it's not strictly speaking "bad" for Us to be inside of a black hole, mUch thoUgh that contradicts most of what anyone knows about them.

CALLIOPE: of coUrse, if we had fallen into it, that woUld be a whole other kettle of fish.

CALLIOPE: the tidal forces woUld have stretched Us all into spaghetti and then ripped us apart!

CALLIOPE: bUt the natUre of oUr arrival was more akin to simply "being" here, sUddenly. one moment we were not, and the next moment we were, and somehow always had been.

yeah that’s basically how this multiverse’s reality works, the future is a thing that already physically exists, just in a different location in the universe somewhere else

time travel and spacial teleportation could be said to be the same thing all along

that’s why violating the events of the future has actual consequences, because its like asking to go somewhere that doesn’t exist but how has to exist because it’s the future, too much of that and reality starts cracking at the seams to make room

same thing happens with sessions and playing sburb

the planets and dreaming moons and all that simultaneously have always existed here, and started existing only because the player played the game and the planets were generated upon entering a session, but to the player involved, it looks and feels like you are just being teleported to a different location in the universe, because you also kind of are

CALLIOPE: i mean, the natUre of space and time is a little finicky in here, bUt for the most part it doesn't seem to be anything too oUt of the ordinary.

CALLIOPE: bUt beyond that, it means that we are sealed away from the rest of existence.

CALLIOPE: oUr sphere of inflUence is limited to the sphere of the black hole's bounding horizon.

CALLIOPE: as far as everyone else is concerned, we might as well not even exist!

So you’re just in a little seperated bubble, that’s not connect temporally to any other place of existence, you aren’t anywhere in the past or the future of anywhere else

nowhere leads here, and here can not lead outwards either, theoretically, and yes it exists, so it must also

JOHN: is there no way we could let anyone know that we're in here...?

CALLIOPE: almost certainly not!

CALLIOPE: there are very few ways for anything to escape the kind of predicament that we are in right now. one of them is to be an all-powerfUl being with control over the very fabric of space, with the energy of two Universes at yoUr disposal.

CALLIOPE: in which case, escape woUld become rather trivial, if a little Unscientific.

JOHN: ok. i am going to assume that we can't just do that.

CALLIOPE: yoU've hit the nail on the head, UnfortUnately. U_U

CALLIOPE: the method i described was the one employed by my alternate self, who yoU may recall crashed through the event horizon in the body that once belonged to jade harley.

CALLIOPE: she departed through a pUnctUre she created in the black hole's surface shortly after consUming my brother, a deed which provided her with the necessary "oomph", and which was frankly rather breathtaking to watch. =u=

CALLIOPE: bUt Upon her departUre, the rift closed for good. as far as i can see, there's simply no way for Us to commUnicate with the world oUtside the black hole.

CALLIOPE: i woUld certainly be very sUrprised to find oUt that anyone had managed sUch a thing!

So someone else definitely has managed to do such a thing

JOHN: knowing that we're inside of a black hole... does that actually change anything?

JOHN: like, can't we just go on living like normal?

CALLIOPE: oh absolUtely not.

CALLIOPE: i don't know if yoU've noticed john bUt this world is on the brink of a total cataclysm.

JOHN: oh.

CALLIOPE: oUr exclUsion from the overarching coUrse of events which governs all reality means that oUr existence here is liable to dramatic and violent Upheaval.

CALLIOPE: to pUt it another way, becaUse nothing in here "matters", we are likely to be sUbjected to things which are a bit bats in the belfry, for no reason other than it's totally insignificant to the wider canon of reality.

CALLIOPE: and mUch thoUgh i am personally titillated by some of the conseqUences of this predicament, it is a degrading way for Us to live. u_u

JOHN: that's... certainly one way to put it, yeah...

yeah, so because here in the black hole neither affects the past or the future of anywhere else, being so disconnected, they are technically free of the reigns of the Alpha Timeline that exists elsewhere in the multiverse

the Alpha Timeline now being understood to simply mean, The Narrative

Things are the way they are because they are thus written to be so

CALLIOPE: at first, i believed that this was simply necessary. Us playing tails to oUr coUnterparts' heads, the black to their white, and so forth.

CALLIOPE: bUt over the years i have come to the conclUsion that this is simply not kosher.

ROXY: its total bs is what it is

CALLIOPE: right, yes.

CALLIOPE: a steaming pile of bUllshite.

CALLIOPE: and so we have decided that something needs to be done aboUt it.

Hmmm. It’s a dangerous idea to be playing with for sure, to decide all the black pieces in the game of chess suddenly become white, it is a very flip turning of reality upside down to be sure

To be honest, I’d think you’d need a powerful Doom player at your disposal to even try something like this

or actually, a powerful Doom user would be most likely to shut this entire thing down, knowing how bad of an idea it’d be, maybe it’s more you need a powerful Life player to do something like this instead

is that also why Dirk viewed Jane as an ally then? She would technically have the kind of power to upend the black and white doomy laws of reality if driven to her full potential, i mean obviously yes, we know this already because of the candy colored I-can-do-whatever-I-want-with-no-consequences lollipop

Is this what Calliope hopes to achieve with the Hiveswap Portal then? her goals for Joey and friends are to be the ones to prevent their universe’s twin destructions, and thus the Green Sun’s initial existence and then also the destruction into the Black Hole after the fact? that would be one way to prevent the Black Hole from existing, making it so the thing that creates the black hole never exists either

and that's certainly a canon event that would be difficult to tear asunder without major consequences

That would be a “Re-writing Homestuck from the very beginning” level of canon event

And if I’m correct, Joey is theorized by me to be a Mage of Life, if any classpect at their full potential was gonna do something like that, or have the impossible knowledge to something impossibly paradoxical like that, well..

ROXY: but u dont need to worry abt busting us outta space jail tbh

ROXY: thats not ur problem to fix

JOHN: oh.

JOHN: i'm... not sure i follow, then.

ROXY: i mean yeah ur gonna obvs facilitate it in a sense

ROXY: but only by going and busting the person who can actually help us outta normal earth jail

CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity.

ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point

CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan.

CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more.

CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it.

CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.

CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself?

I mean yeah! makes sense! Johns major factor here is Freedom, Vriska’s is Importance

and yeah, I can think of no other wholly dramatic event that to mess with stuff with the Green Sun, everyone will have eyes on that, they have to, their whole existence the way it is relies on it

But, they could also mean something else, its only condition is that it has to be something so imflappably impossible, something so not-canon and so outrageous that it basically horse-shoes around to the other end of the canon spectrum to being something that truly exists again

and that could be literally anything and it’s nerve wracking and exciting to see what thing theyre gonna come up with to just directly kneecap Homestuck itself

ROXY: thx babe

ROXY: oh is it 2 soon for that joke or

JOHN: no, weirdly enough, that one’s fine.

(yeah that’s because Babe can be construed as feminine June)

so, I’m basically convinced they’re doing June Egbert now

that to me was like, pretty severely on the nose

John: Hey Roxy, what it does mean when you find a sense of freedom when all of the symbolism of the masculinity surrounding your childhood burns down around you

Roxy: idk It’s probably a gender thing man

John: I didn’t say the word gender-

Roxy: It’s ok babe no pressure, we can hash it out later

John: Hmm, later then. :)

Roxy: (Turns and looks towards the camera with a knowing smile)

shit all that imagery makes me think of Roxy as that picture of the small kid smirking at the camera while a house burns in the distance XD