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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[mmmmalo]

Been reading all of your psychosexual analysis of homestuck + it's characters and god this stuff is fascinating. It can be real hard to find any writing on sexuality, kinks and fetishes in fandoms but it seems that hs is almost like a gold mine when it comes to this topic thanks to the coming-of-age theme. The murder = sex post hasn't left my head since I read it and now when I see any scene mention / involve either of the two I can't help but think about how the other could be relevant. Never thought suicidal ideation could be so masturbatory before this.

Glad to say your posts have helped me get a slightly better understanding of anything I read. I'd never really thought much about things like positioning of characters in frames / panels, sequences of events and choice of words since I didn't really care for literary analysis before I got into homestuck. Sort of a 'came for the cool flashes, stayed for the writing' type situation, which is a pipeline that makes me thankful for the animations Hussie made because I'd only ever inferred that the writing was bad from conversations I'd seen people having about hs.

Anyway, you talked about how Rose's fear of drowning (loss of control) correlates to her non-con kink and now I'm wondering what you think the other characters fears suggest about their sexual interests? I'd assume John's fear of heights has something to do with the fall, and from there some sort of corruption kink / a fetish for anything generally 'sinful'; which would explain his interest in 'bad' girls like Vriska (and the way he eagerly adopts her mannerisms).

The planets tend to include each kid's fears / insecurities so it's not exactly hard to figure those out, but I'm not sure whether I'm making the "right" connections, since I'm just making the best with what I have (bare minimum literary knowledge) and homestuck makes a lot of references to outside works.

Extra request: if you've got any good books / posts / articles / whatevers on psychosexuality or such please tell me. I'm curious and bored

I'm glad you're getting something out of the blog! Goofy fetish talk is kind of rare, but it is striking when you find it: I watched Good Luck Chuck at Karkat's recommendation and that turned out to be a central motif. Sex/death substitution is a bit more common... here's a write up on Pulp Fiction you might like. You might also like these posts by SMG on Prometheus, he is the one who introduced me to a lot of the storytelling strategies I discuss on this blog. More generally though, I recommend looking for articles about movies you like and adding "psychoanalysis" to the search -- if nothing else, it's an easy way to find people who take sexual symbolism seriously.

Evaluating your own accuracy is tricky, but I can only recommend that you regard your current model of the story as provisional. Even as you search for information that strengthens your current understanding of the story, you'll likely stumble upon another framework that works just as well or better. Keep an open mind, some things have multiple answers

Re: fear-becomes-fetish motifs, the last major piece I wrote in this vein was about Dave, I think? It's kind of outdated though. My focus on individual psychologies faltered as I reoriented myself towards like, similar fear>fetish material on a societal level. One example: people inclined to worry about being Replaced by other races are the impetus for miscegenation porn, which repurposes feelings of resentment and inferiority for titillation -- this gets channeled into the "black always mates white" narrative of doom in Sburb, Derse (black) launching "seeds" at Prospit (white)/Skaia, Caliborn sexualizing his predomination over Calliope, etc. You can see traces of this narrative show up in characters like Kanaya (who agrees with Eridan that race purity matters, only to be haunted by cuck jokes like Watching Oblong Meat Products Tumble Into Places They Dont Belong) but its not like she even knows what black people are -- she's an alien. So when she tearfully agrees that Dirk can take better care of her wife than she ever could, it only /refers/ to the miscegenation porn structure, casting Kanaya as the impotent observer suffering yet another Lalondian "black out". There's a degree of abstraction at play that makes it difficult to say Kanaya "has" the kink being discussed through her, at least not in its entirety.

All of which is to say that while the kink angle is occasionally useful, it's not my current approach. Like you technically can link Jade's fear of lightning to her being a furry, but despite John explicitly referring to furry as a kink thing (and Jade having a daughter named Yiffy), the earliest reference to furry stuff is better parsed in terms of misogyny and transphobia, imo. You might be able to find more stuff indicating that Egbert secretly enjoys the Fall of Man (like her professed love of apocalypse movies, or the cheeky Save Rose From Corruption roleplay), but also the entry item could indicate a fixation on the Adam's Apple in the throat, as an early hint of June motifs. Or maybe I've just been away from this methodology for too long, and Egbert's traumatic fall from the slimer pogo indicates that the fear of heights should be linked to manbro bukkake theatre??? Idk, but again, that's not really my element anymore

[the-meat-machine]

Hi. I'm rereading Playing House to refresh myself on it, and I decided to write some author's commentary as I go along, just for fun. This commentary will contain spoilers for the fic up to chapter 17 (the most recent chapter as of the time of writing).

So, yeah. Chapter 1 commentary, under the cut! (And for the record, I don't expect all the commentary to be as long as this one is; I just have a lot to say about the fic in general in this first one.)

CALIBORN: DIRK. WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY PANTS.

Ah, humble beginnings.

When I first started this fic, it was just supposed to be a silly, raunchy ovi fic that I was banging out for fun in between some of my more serious stories. It had a little plot right from the start, but the plot was pretty much entirely just "an egg happens." There wasn't nearly as much stuff about Dirk and Caliborn's relationship as a whole, and DEFINITELY none of the stuff about… well, whatever it is Caliborn is time traveling about in the most recent chapter.

But as I was writing it, I gradually started folding in ideas from a separate Dirkuu relationship study that I was considering writing, and within a few chapters I decided to just merge the two fics into one. Which I think was the right call, in retrospect. I really think the story is a lot more fun this way, and the egg has worked out as a surprisingly good framing device for everything else going on.

But at the time when I was writing this first chapter, I didn't know any of that. This was supposed to be nothing more than a horny egg fic, and the chapter reflects that. It's also much shorter than most of the following chapters. I kinda like how short and punchy it is, actually. I have perhaps become a little too long-winded in some of the later chapters. Actually, that happens almost immediately, as we'll see in the chapter 2 commentary.

Caliborn literally hisses at you. You assume it's supposed to be a threat, but the sight of his tongue winding out from between all those sharp, sharp fangs mostly just makes your dick go doki-doki.

The first appearance of Caliborn's tongue. Dirk's preoccupation with Caliborn's tongue and fangs surely does not mirror the author's.

DIRK: Face it, between your skeletal posterior and my own tragically concave rump, ours is a no-ass household. DIRK: When the ass famine comes, we'll be the first to perish.

This is still one of my favorite lines in the whole fic.

CALIBORN: MAYBE YOU USED THEM TO MANIPULATE THE JADE BITCH. INTO REMOTELY TAMPERING WITH MY TROUSERS. DIRK: Dude. DIRK: What did I tell you about calling my friends bitches? CALIBORN: … CALIBORN: ……….. CALIBORN: …………………………… CALIBORN: THAT EVERY TIME I DO IT. IT MEANS YOU GET TO PICK OUR NEXT MOVIE DURING DATE NIGHT.

Here we also get the first appearance of Dirk attempting to dog-train Caliborn into being a marginally less shitty person. This will come up again with absurdly long-reaching consequences in the Jane chapter.

This line also implies that Dirk considers Jade his friend. That would be a great dynamic to explore. Probably won't happen in this fic, though, alas. Maybe I'll post a deleted scene about it someday.

Also, it may be interesting to note the quantity of punctuation that Caliborn uses. Eleven is a thematic number for the cherubs, and Caliborn frequently repeats things in sets of eleven throughout both Homestuck itself and this fic.

DIRK: What's the magic word? CALIBORN: FUCK YOU! DIRK: Eh, close enough.

Dirk cares far more about Caliborn being rude to his friends than he does about him being rude to Dirk himself. Almost nothing Caliborn does really bothers Dirk on a personal level. This is part of why they're so compatible. It also gives Dirk yet another reason to doubt his own morality. What does it say about him that he's so emotionally unfazed by any of the awful shit this dude says and does? (It says that he has low affective empathy. That's all. Doesn't mean he's a bad person. Try convincing Dirk of that, though.)

CALIBORN: IF YOU DO NOT FIX THIS. YOUR POSITION IN OUR GAME OF "HOUSE" WILL BE IN JEOPARDY.

Ah, House.

My very earliest plans for this fic didn't involve the game of House. All I wanted was to write a silly story about Dirk and Caliborn laying an egg.

The problem with writing anything remotely fluffy about Caliborn, however, is that in canon, he truly and genuinely just wants to fucking kill everyone. He WILL kill Dirk. He WILL kill all of Dirk's friends. This is a core part of his goals. So… how do you get him into a place where he won't just slaughter everyone and be done with it?

In this fic, I've resolved this by giving Caliborn a different game that he's decided he's playing: House. Now he's constrained by a new set of rules--ones that say he has to try to play nice. That he needs to learn assorted domestic skills. And perhaps most importantly, that he can't just fucking murder all of his opponent/partner(?)'s friends--because if he does, he'll lose the game. And Caliborn cannot abide losing a game.

Someday we'll get more about why, exactly, Caliborn has decided to play this game. But for now, all that matters is that he is, and so he's bound by its rules. This turns out to be VERY narratively useful for me.

Not that that's why you've been playing along with his "game", no matter what certain friends of yours might believe. They always do want to think the best of you, and there is absolutely no fucking good explanation for why you would want to shackle yourself to the biggest asshole in Paradox Space. But regardless of your motivations...

Dirk trying really hard here to avoid directly admitting that he's in love with Caliborn, not even in the narration. This will be a running theme.

It occurs to you sometimes that what normal people would actually call this game is "marriage".

Damn, I really just came out and put this right in the first chapter, huh? I mean, it's true though.

CALIBORN: RUB MY BELLY, CUDDLESLUT.

Yeah, so. I started this fic with a scene of Caliborn growing out of his pants and then followed it up immediately with a belly rub scene. I was NOT attempting to be subtle about what kind of fic this is--which is to say, a belly fetish fic. I'm genuinely shocked it's grown to have this much of an audience outside of that community.

The fic HAS grown to encompass a lot more than just the fetish shit, though. I guess by now I'd consider it basically the equivalent of one of those fics that has plenty of plot and character development, but also fairly frequent sex scenes. Except here, half the time instead of sex scenes you just get weirdly lascivious descriptions of how much candy Caliborn is scarfing down. I promise this is hot to some portion of the audience.

DIRK: The fuck have you been eating, dude? CALIBORN: WHY. DIRK: There's like a lump in there. Right here.

And here's the first appearance of the egg! The entire raison d'etre of this fic. Really, what else is there to say about it? It's an egg. It's made of candy. It's inside of Caliborn. Presumably one day it will be outside of Caliborn. One can only hope.

[strangeharpy]

Fanfic Writer Interview Meme

Tagged by @redtailedhawk90 <3

How many works do you have on AO3?

I currently have 83, though that's about to go up by the end of this week... :3c

What's your total AO3 word count?

449,334. Jesus, almost half a million.

Your top 5 stories by kudos:

Out of This City - TAZ - an Angus character study.

nothing's changed since the witching days - 3rd Life - some fraught Scarian.

part-time soulmate, full-time problem - 3rd Life/Hermitcraft - Written with @lotsadeer, just some fun Mumscarian Mumbo angst.

Indelible Ink - TAZ - my Johnchurch soulmate AU.

Once, We Were Gods - Homestuck - a very old, very abandoned Beta OT4 fic.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I got really overwhelmed trying to respond to every comment and ended up not responding to a bunch and now it feels awkward so I just don't respond and I feel bad about it. >.<

Do you write crossovers?

Technically yes? I mean, the Life Series and Hermitcraft are two things I often pull into each other, and I've written some crossover stuff for gift exchanges, but I'm more of an AU girlie (gender neutral) most of the time.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do, and it tends to vary a lot. I think most of the smut I've written has been Cass/AuDy though lmao

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I'm aware of, though part of me wants to try translating something into German just to see if I could manage it.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I sure have! Co-writing is so fun and I want to do it more.

What's your all-time favourite ship?

Cass/AuDy is the ship that taught me what an OTP really IS. Like, I've had ships that I enjoyed and I thought they were OTPs, but no. Cass/AuDy will be with me forever, even as I kind of drift away from being as involved in the FatT fandom.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I don't know that I'll ever finish Arranged Candidacy AU. It's just too big and ambitious and I love the concept but I don't think I have it in me to do it justice.

What are your writing strengths?

I've been told my character voices are good. A comment I got that I think about when I feel bad about writing involves the phrase "(disgraced Merle Highchurch creator Clint McElroy gives up. "Yes, harpydora is the Merle person now")."

What are your writing weaknesses?

Pacing. >.<

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I have a very silly idea for some musical!Beetlejuice/adult Lydia fluff that I want to write for Danielle. I just have to clear my plate first.

What's your favourite fic that you've written?

light up the way, hands down. It is still in the top five longest things I've ever written, and I frequently go back to it because I'm still pretty happy with all the character beats. It was so self-indulgent.

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do this too! Tag me so I can read it!

[shiveringgroovy]

coming off anon to feed you more headcanon asks

you answered an ask about social medias but heres for the real good stuff

fandom headcanons? who watches what, who reads, who is blissfully unaware of the community they're surrounded by, etc

jesus christ i'm going insane for this one. started this in april uhm hi chat i'm alive again (october)

ATSUSHI

doesn't participate in fandom spaces tbh

but he's into some old-school games

don't ask me why i think this but he's an emulator guy

DAZAI

HOMESTUCK. HE WAS IN THE HOMESTUCK FANDOM NO I DO NOT TAKE CRITIQUE

crazy into it too. keyboard warrior about it. ranpo was there

bless his heart

YOSANO

cult classic films !!

really into the craft, kill bill, maybe the scream franchise ? also perchance saw but not after the third movie

doesn't participate in online fandom spaces because she has better media literacy than everyone else

RANPO

homestuck and hetalia

need i say more

KYOUKA

saw because yosano got her into it. (her favorite is saw 3 because yuri)

and sanrio. ik it's a common headcanon but i think it fits !!!

loves a lot horror films/franchises but saw, the exorcist, and alien are her favs

also i think she likes cheesy shoujo romance anime!!!

HIGUCHI

you can't tell me she's not a himefujoshi on ao3 and tumblr

into tons of animes and shows

writes insane comments on ao3 too. many an author has questioned her sanity

has gotten into proship discourse before

she also like vocaloid, her favorite is megurine luka and has visceral reactions when you call teto a vocaloid

CHUUYA

be fr he would not give a shit about fandoms

dazai tried to get him into some of the stuff he liked as a teen but it never worked

he watched breaking bad though i guess

GIN

they loveee the scream franchise

has a ghostface mask they post pictures with from time to time

does not play at ALL about stu/billy

TACHIHARA

also into scream

really likes video games as well!! legend of zelda and the elder scrolls WHOA WHO SAID THAT

LOUISA

she's a fujoshi. draws yaoi on her plans

only really into fluffy stuff

tumblr girlie for SURE. hides her account like drugs even though it's just fluffy bl manga and art

NIKOLAI

he's a horror fiend and lurks online for content because duh

watches heavy gore/body horror films like it's instagram reels

i think he tries to keep his digital footprint clean for obvious reasons but if he sees a take so bad he'll tell op to die brutally

he's totally that guy to say "this is MILDDD" to the people he's watching american psycho with. he's an ass about his preferences sorry

SIGMA

they have better things to do ???

TERUKO

idk how to explain it but she's really into nana, tomie, uzumaki, and other darker/grittier manga/anime

and yuri/gl. she doesn't play about her toxic screwed up yuri

she seems like a whump fan. fucking up that dead dove with her hunting dog teeth

[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

[aewinning]

Ohhhh I LOVE that Zhongli-as-Houyi concept! I really adore all the classically inspired ideas you have but I fully empathize with not writing them all out; that kind of stuff tends to take a lot of setup. But thank you for sharing, I'm glad to have heard the idea at least 🥰

As for the ones you asked...under the cut for length! I'll answer them from the perspective of Genshin fandom only since some might apply to multiple fandoms but people here don't really know my Homestuck works.

3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

Either "Wilting Flower on Crumbling Stone" or "Softly, Gently, Love Me" - both are Zhongzhu fics with an emphasis on accommodating Baizhu's illness, so I suppose it's safe to say I enjoy them being soft with each other as a general concept. Wilting Flower is a bit less overtly horny and a bit more focused on accepting what are commonly seen as flaws, but it also came after Baizhu's release so is a bit more accurate with the characterization.

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

Realistically probably most of them in my giant file of ideas just because of my staunch refusal to treat writing like a job and only work on it when the creative juices are flowing (I burn out easily if I force myself). But one comes to mind that I'm not sure I'll ever write because it would be long and I'm historically just bad at keeping up the momentum to write longer fics (I won't even start posting shorter multichapter fics unless I'm done, because I want the assurance that I won't leave anyone hanging).

The idea is that Diluc needs some information from the Fatui that only a Harbinger would have, and he's smart enough to realize that a Harbinger isn't someone you can easily extract information from with violent threats like you can do with the underlings. So he decides to take a leaf from Kaeya's playbook and try to seduce Childe while he's in Mondstadt for something - only for that, he needs to actually learn how to seduce someone. And who better to learn such a thing from than Kaeya? So he swallows his pride and initiates an arrangement for Kaeya to teach him the art of romance, only to realize during the lessons that he's not as over Kaeya as he'd like to be.

I didn't have much planned out beyond that as for how the issue with Childe would be resolved, but I know that in order to do that concept justice it'd need to be a behemoth of a fic.

15. How do you come up with titles for your fics/chapters?

A wide variety of methods! Often it's a line of poetry or a song lyric I think fits, and we all know I love my shitty puns. Occasionally I just snag a line from the fic if something stands out as a good title.

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

(promptly forgets everything I've ever written)

Hmm...the “Please don’t antagonize other dragons, love.” from Zhongli to Childe after Neuvillette just knocked Childe on his ass in "Justice is Served" makes me giggle every time. Just the absurdity of the situation and the calm way Zhongli says it really gets to me.

19. Give us a small teaser from one of your WIPs.

I know my published writing has been slowly lately but I have two zine fics done, a short Wriochi sickfic that I just need to edit and post at some point, and most of the "Clorinde fists Wriothesley while he cries of overstimulation into Neuvillette's lap and gets his hair petted" sexploration fic done. This is a snippet from the last one:

Clorinde thrusts the plug back in as suddenly as she removed it, and Wriothesley huffs out a surprised noise against Neuvillette’s stomach, still obnoxiously layered with robes. He’s seen the man with his top layers off at least—lean, not much muscle, a trim waist that begs to be held—but they still haven’t managed to coax him to take his pants off. Which: fine, whatever. It’s not like he jerked it to the thought of tasting the guy’s cock after that time they tied Neuvillette up together. That would just be embarrassing.

27. Is there a fic you were nervous to post/share? Why?

I'm a little nervous to post any fic; it's just a performance anxiety thing, I'm always like "oh god what if it's terrible and nobody likes it?" even when I know better. But there are a few that I've been more anxious to post than others: the Kaeya/Diluc fic and the dead dove Ayato/Scaramouche fic come to mind. I'm very much an oldschool "write what you want and tag it adequately and nobody has the right to yell at you about it" kind of person, and the Genshin fandom is, uh. Not super full of those people.

But I posted them off anon despite my aversion to drama so they could act as rent-lowering gunshots, so to speak. I sometimes write more mainstream ships or popular kinks, but that doesn't mean everything's gonna be vanilla and wholesome, and every now and then I feel the need to remind people of that so they can leave if they're not cool with that. I am who I am, I write what I write, and at the end of the day if others don't like that it's fine, because I write for me first and an audience second.

Surprisingly neither led to any drama that I can remember, though I may have just forgotten if there was because if anybody tries to drag me into drama I tend to just block them and move on with my life haha.

Fic writer asks: 5, 14, 17?

3, 5, 15, 18, 19, 27 for you!

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

I had an AU thing for Zhongli where he is actually a deified folk hero, much like some of the gods in Chinese pantheon (e.g Guan Yu or Zhong Kui), and he plays the role of Hou Yi in this story (because I'm obsessed with him being an archer).

He starts out as a normal guy, and got tasked by the emperor that he serves to think of a solution to save the land from getting scorched by 10 suns. These 10 suns are actually Jinwu (三足烏) and got playful but did not know they were harming the people (or didn't care). So when negotiation didn't work for them, Zhongli shot 9 of them dead with his bow and arrow.

Despite saving Liyue, Zhongli got himself exiled because the emperor feared his influence and power, yet dared not execute him outright lest the people riot. For his sin of murdering its siblings, the last jinwu cursed him with immortality. 

The story is supposed to follow how Zhongli will inevitably lose the people and places and things that are dear to him because of the curse, but the only thing that stays constant is his bond to jinwu, even though all the bird does is to mock and taunt him.

I couldn't actually figure out where their relationship was going though, and gave up.

14. If you could see one of your fics adapted into a visual medium, such as comic or film, which fan fic would you pick?

Hmm... for Genshin Impact, it would be either Gift (Rezhong) for the cuteness and intimacy or spoonful of sugar (Zhongchibai). I'm fond of palace dramas and the scenes that I enjoy most are the 'behind the scenes' where people play a front before those they are not close to (among many other reasons, especially between the emperor's women and the emperor himself) and only show their true colours when in a private setting.

For DCMK, it would probably be Be Not Afraid because of how unsettling it is. I actually wrote that fic on pen and paper during free time at work and I'm immensely proud of how it turned out. The segmented, seemingly non-continous structure feels like it would adapt to a visual medium well.

17. What’s something you’ve learned about while doing research for a fic?

Researching dirty talk and humiliation for a fic (I forgot which one) as well as non-sexual d/s stuff people could do and 99.5% of it turns me off so badly. I had to come up with it myself. It's not my personal preference in reading or anything where humiliation is achieved by calling the bottom degrading pet names. It just feels so, so cheap. So that was one thing I learned about myself.

Also: One of the emperors that ruled ancient China loved pens (calligraphy/writing brushes) so much that people kept sending him pens as tribute and gifts. At some point he got to over twenty thousand pens in the palace and he had to officially go NO. STOP. NO MORE FUCKING PENS. (but in a nicer way). Also when the emperor shows up he has a whole orchestra playing music (emperor bgm) upon his entrance during special events. (information obtained from museums) (you probably know this already)

[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