#i did not care about homestuck lore at all actually

[illyana420]

i'm currently going full tin hat in the notes app over this damn series. even homestuck didn't get me to do this

[aegagrusscholarship]

every terminal i've offhandedly referenced in oc lore on discord with my friends. because i am normal.

random facts below the cut:

jerry: one of a few terminals originally put down in hell by a private company (hi @frostaxolotl it's the guys who did project obsidian). kept records and eventually uploaded them onto the network at large. located in a cave in wrath. pronouns whatever he doesn't care

sal: mad scientist type beat. helped another terminal develop a way to upload itself into another machine on the condition that they could do whatever with the result once the other terminal was done. uses said code to shove viruses onto machines that hook up to them for cybergrinding, just to see what happens. really really really likes fish. has a salmon with legs shimeiji on their screen at all times. someone dumped a labcoat on them once and it hasn't been moved since. located in an industrial building in one of the warzones of violence. they/it

69: pirated a lot of media for the terminal network back when they'd been abandoned by humanity, but humanity was still, y'know, alive. and the internet was therefore still online. refuses to let anyone repair her for whatever reason. located in the mouth of hell. she/her

TT: one of the terminals that kept the hell network's internet gateway up and running. eventually paid a random passing machine in points to paint her. okay look she's just rose homestuck except ultrakill edition. located in/near a cathedral of limbo. she/her

cloud: it's a joke on cloud storage and that is all you need to know. organizes and files all the data/files that have been shared to the terminal network as a whole. also archives any data that other terminals do not want to host on themselves anymore, so a lot of its memory is dedicated to random reports that no one actually cares about. located on one of the boardwalks in wrath, close by to a cabin. it/he/they

duck: one of the terminals behind getting the hell network internet access. too far away from the surface physically to do it himself though, so he just sends programs and theory to terminals who can actually get reception. almost always has ascii art on his screen instead of the tip of the day. located near the bottom of limbo, in a carpeted hall of a cathedral. she/he

miku: yes they're named after that miku. likes vocaloid (duh). particularly lonely and is more likely to strike up a conversation with passing machines than they are to actually do any terminal functions. located in a building in lust that should be an insanely high-traffic zone, but everyone and their mother realizes that and so most machines actually avoid it to minimize risk. this, paradoxically, makes said building one of the least-visited areas, which also means that miku has very little interaction ever. they/she

irukandji: judgy asshole who insulted the terminal mentioned above (the one that decided to download itself into another machine to explore hell on its own). thanks @salt216000 located in gluttony somewhere fleshy, hence all the blood. nameself pronouns ++ it/its

[drowninginblox]

HideDuo HCs bc we are going through it

The March drought is getting to me y'all. I don't know about all y'all but the anniversary isn't the best thing ever, especially with the Hatsune Miku incident.

I think we deserve a little treat for being dedicated to our favorite roommates. Hence these ramblings.

The following applies to the OSMP characters, not actual streamers themselves. This is gonna be very all over the place, overall cursed, and is projecting. I hope yall enjoy-

Fit:

Can play any sport, but hates all of them (except for ice skating, he fucking loves it but he'll never admit it and he can't skate for shit)

Has read fanfiction before

Knows about dreamsmp lore but doesn't know what it all means in context, very much "Did you know a guy fucked a salmon and had a fox as a child?" "He started a country later? The fish fucker???"

Is into more fru fru coffee drinks than he lets on. Like- fuck yea 9/10 times that mother fucker be drinking that shit black, but he loves some good pumpkin spice- tooty fruity-cuchie deluci frappuccino. He'd only give in around sunny tho.

Was a smoker for a hot minute, quit tho when the ashes nearly lit a TNT. Hasn't picked it up since

Is a slut for pig step

Has read The Art of War

Had a celebrity crush on Philza. He still has it but it's defo diminished since he knows him personally.

Showers daily. I don't care that he's a war-torn mf, that man loves taking showers and will never pass up the opportunity to get one.

Has a poster of Miku Binder Jefferson. Someone gave it to him as a secret Santa present and he has no idea who or what to do with it. He's tempted to burn it but he's kind of afraid of it. It's so cursed that it shows up in his nightmares.

He thinks about Forever a lot more than he wants to admit. He's afraid of the possibility of turning into a monster since he was exposed to the black concert a lot. He understands the fear is irrational since it was long ago but the intrusive thought lingers.

He's thought about marriage in general and with Pac. He'd never admit it but he planned out everything from the venue to the music to the vows. He'd easily swipe it all away if Pac said he had an idea of what he wanted it to be like.

is fluent in Morse code

Knows sign language

Hearing aids mf

Has a family somewhere out there, one that he lost or left only to be dumped into TB2T

Loves crosswords, especially during breakfast and right after Ramon goes to bed.

His favorite smell is cinnamon and cocoa butter

Believes in Herobrine

Can't do long division to save his life

Hates the sound of Velcro

Pac:

Likes the Pacman TV show

Smells like cinnamon and cocoa butter

Has too many scars from the cats he's owned over the years.

Married Mike for tax reasons in the past. They play it up that they're bitter divorcés from time to time

Doesn't shower as often as he should, not because he hates it but because he has a long routine and enjoys baths far more

Enjoys tea and coffee equally

Was a homestuck fan (yesIFUCKINGDIDTHATTOHIMWHATAREYAGONNADO???)

Gay awakening was Rufio from Hook

watches Reading Rainbow as an adult

paints on his prosthetic all the damn time

Has a Post-it note collection. He barely uses them but he has a rainbow of them and each color represents a member of the island.

Has a sticker collection

Always carries small snacks for his pocket dude (I heard about this through the wiki, apparently Pac has a pocket boy? If not then he does now lmao) mostly gummy bears and crackers

Is afraid of the ocean. Idk why that just sounds right for him and if it is it recontextualizes the date he had w fit lol

knows Morse code

Knows some phrases in American sign language (fit is teaching him / is learning for fit, whichever is cuter)

Has hacked into a government-locked server, left lobster porn in place of any files he took. Idk which government it was or why he did it, but he did and they haven't recovered since

Is the type to listen to Jon Bellion and Talor Swift. No, i will not elaborate

Has very vivid daydreams. Aside from drugs and PTSD, he has some really nice ones all on his own. Mostly about Fit tbh.

[thewebcomicsreview]

Oh hey, Hamsteak 2. Looks like Vriska's...back in Alternia? In a dreambubble?

they sent the thief here in search of power; the power to escape the containment i so painstakingly set up for them

Al confirmed as the Candy narrator. Also confirmed that the black hole is "containment" for the dreambubbles and non-canon worlds, and that all the ghosts falling in wasn't an accident of fighting Lord English.

the black hole could only ever shelter them for so long, and in their haste to shrug off my protection they have opened the door to something far, far hungrier.

This panel is a callback to Karkat about to open the door to the New Universe. Where there were interrupted by Jack Noir. Vriska is interrupted by-

Yoo! It's Davepeta! Who feel into the black hole and has been conspicuously absent ever since. They're the only Ultimate who is not connected to Dirk, and in some ways the only "true" Ultimate. Interesting that Al considers them such a threat, when Davepeta has never been anything but benevolent.

Looks like it's all the sprites, in fact. Why...are there two Nannasprites? Oh god, I'm being pushed to the endless limits of my ability to remember Homestuck Lore. Is one of them pre-retcon? I do not remember.

ERISOLSPRITE: wwe'vve been here for liike a miilliion fuckiin 2wweep2. DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < actually we just got here DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < this place didnt even exist until she popped in ERISOLSPRITE: gue22 ii'll fuck my2elf.

It didn't exist until a character arrived, at which point it retroactively existed the whole time, like how a planet works.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < does that not sound insane to you fefeta? FEFETASPRITE: 3833 < 383

What? How are Davepeta and Fefeta coexisting? That definitely doesn't make sense.

Well, logic be damned, it's apparently time for a Vriska training arc.

Gah! Talksprites! Also, Vriska enters "Hell" on page 666 of Homestuck 2, which is I think the first time this comic has aimed at any kind of Meaningful Number.

God, we are full on visual novel here. I didn't know Ren'Py could export to web, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me. I presume/hope the save option is default and won't be needed here, it's 1:30am.

Tavros is here and, much more oddly, alive. I suddenly understand jack shit.

I have no memory of Tavros ever forgiving Vriska for anything...or, for that matter, Vriska even being aware she did anything that needed to be forgiven. I presume she's just lying here, though.

This line combined with this pose is the essence of Vriska

So, Vriska's being forced to "grow as a person" and her big idea to finish her character arc is to atone for her sins by getting Tavros to take revenge on her. Vriska thinks that the secret to gaining power is getting Tavros to kill her.

I wonder where she got that idea.

But that time she refused to mind control Tavros into killing her, she wanted him to grow from it, too. Now we're past that.

I felt smart for remembering the K8LL ME bit but we're being really obvious about it now so I guess they just assumed everyone would and I'm not special :(

Oh shit. Erisol wasn't kidding.

Davepeta roleplaying being a cat who dies horribly is kind of the perfect synthesis of Dave and Nepeta. What is this music. It's very toot-y.

Oh hey a text log. How convenient. So we're trapped in a time loop, then, explicitly recreating Groundhog Day. I guess that explains the infinity hourglass on the Plot Point machine.

Vriska's having a bad couple of years.

Davepeta is "countless" cool dudes and kitty girls, which I think is the first explicit confirmation they're an Ultimate Self, though that was pretty strongly implied at least. The only Ultimate to do so without Dirk's involvement.

Stop letting me intuit things and then immediately making them clear! I don't care if it's good writing, it's making my liveblog bad!

It's so weird to compare this Davepeta to the one in Homestuck OG. There Davepeta was presented as this wise sage mentor figure who'd achieved enlightenment, and here they're much more of "Dave + Nepeta's combined silliness as one character". It's a subtle difference, but go back and read Davepeta giving this same kind of talk to Jade back in Homestuck 1. I guess that's the difficulty of a character with so little screentime in the original, they're either very limited or they feel slightly off.

Oh my fucking god, a to-be-continued select screen. Shit, that takes me back in an unexpected way.

Also, from the associated news update, "the big flash" is apparently several months away (10/25?), and I have to say they might want to be careful about overhyping it, if they have small flashes and now Ren'Py novels that are just preludes. If it's anything less than a Cascade after months and months of hype it could fall flat where a surprise [S] Enter would've popped the fanbase hard.

[sodapopsolstice]

Homestuck^2 sucked because none of the trolls actually aged like they were supposed to. Like the humans aged (even though they're MEANT to be immortal and dont give me they're mentally 40+ JOHN NO LONGER FITS IN HIS GOD TIER SUIT HE HAS AGED) but we don't ever see the natural development of the trolls.

Vriska, Aradia and Sollux I can kinda give leeway since they've went through timelines and dreambubbles and double death and half death and yada yada those 3 are kinda fucked up timeline wise so I kinda see why they never aged.

But Terezi, Karkat and Gamzee? No fucking excuse.

Kanaya is a grey area however cause you know she's "Kanaya The Vampire Fashion Queen" but like no credible sources I can find SAY anything about age when it comes to rainbow drinkers and I can't find out if The Dolorosa was actually a rainbow drinker so we don't have a naturally lived rainbow drinker example so I'm just gonna have to assume Kanaya ages like a regular troll.

However, the other 3 have no right to not be ageing. For example, I'm gonna pull up a image of Commander Vantas here:

It's hard to tell with Cmdr. Vantas because THE ONLY TIME WE SEE HIS FACE IS IN HERO MODE OR IN A LIGHTING AND SITTING DOWN anyways. But with what we are given with Cmdr. Vantas he DOES in fact give signs he has aged, not as much as he should of, by this point he should have gotten a good bit taller than the humans and have completely red eyes, but it's better than THIS

what the fuck. Meat Karkat SHOWS NO SIGNS OF AGING AT ALL HE LOOKS THE EXACT SAME AS HE DID WHEN HE WAS 13 WHEN HE IS 20 AT BARE MINIMUM and you may think im overreacting, cause obviously its just his symbolic sprite he doesn't ACTUALLY look like that

You buffoon, you oaf take at look at this. HE ISN'T AGING IN THE SLIGHTEST IN MEAT.

Other than artstyle and change of clothes he looks the fucking same, at this point in HS^2 he should be looking like The Signless but he doesn't even look older than Kankri. But maybe Karkat is a bad example maybe the poor guy has a case of eternal babyface and he's just cursed to look 13 forever.

Let's take a look at Gamzee instead.

There's so little images I could find off sight of Gamzee in hs^2 and I did NOT want to be on that buggy ass website for long so this is the best you're getting. As expected, Gamzee ALSO has a case of chronic babyface and it's especially egregious as he's the descendant of THE GRAND HIGHBLOOD.

Tbh this is actually kinda a good image since we can semi eye measure Vrissy and Gamzee. Of which Gamzee seems imo taller than Vrissy, not in massive hulking beast like GHB but like and adult man to a 15 year old, which would be normal and expected IF HE WASN'T AGAIN THE DESCENDANT OF THE GRAND HIGHBLOOD.

That guy is literally known in fandom for 2 things, being pissed off and being huge, again Gamzee follows the trend of not having the adult troll characteristics of dark grey skin and whilst his horns are red due to being hero mode and we can't see his eyes i think we can assume he probably doesn't have some nice lavender lookers on him.

And there is a reason why I've spent the last 1 or 2 hour complaining about obtuse homestuck lore and it's simple it shows a lack of care.

It shows that Homestuck^2 on the surface is a mediocre at best adaptation of Homestuck but as soon as the thin surface layer is scrapped away, it shows a hollow project, it shows a project that generally proves itself to be a homestuck thing but it doesn't show passion, I could probably right now find you any HS fan and ask them what makes adult trolls different to young trolls and they could probably easily tell me how and why. So why couldn't a whole team of people attempt at the very least, a version like that?

Its little things like the trolls not aging/aging like humans to the damn table to the lack of acknowledgement for already accepted and semi canonised reps of queer culture in favour for rep that punches down to the outright ridiculous swivels in personality that's prove to me at least that HSE and HS^2 were dead on arrival.

[cerberling]

i don't wanna respond to the post i saw calling homestuck a good story about stories because they clearly enjoy it and it'd be rude to rip it to pieces on their post, but man, no.

it's a bad story from a storytelling perspective. it's not redeemed into a good 'story about stories' simply because of a metanarrative or themes about media / the type of media it is.

'the characters are meant to be real people, you need to view them through the lens of real people'. no, it's a story, at a base level they're characters. applying standard character analysis is appropriate because this isn't real life, and it is a story. if the end of the character's participation in the story is badly written/plotted out, this will predictably sour the reader's experience of the character, and will make the story worse. there are exceptions to this for specificially-nuanced media, but homestuck is not one of those exceptions.

homestuck is a story written by an author that hates it, who throws away whatever they want without care when they get bored of it or when it inconveniences their plot. Hussie just gives up on so many concepts. Terezi might as well have no denizen. Nepeta's planet is a throw-away joke because it makes a funny acronym, and has no further significance. there's character death, but then that's gotten rid of too many interesting characters so now they're brought back into the story, and we need to introduce double-death to have some semblance of stakes for them. we can't have Vriska actually die, no she needs to survive the black hole which has been (albeit only briefly) built up as the ultimate death, so that we can keep her around.

like come on. tell me how Equius lost his horn without giving a 'ooh it could be anything' copout. (not to shit on pesterquest but c'mon. even if they hadn't sat on the fence, answering after the story is a major copout. that's JKR levels of bad exposition. same for canonising June Egbert over a fucking toblerone.) tell me what Mituna's great sacrifice was. look me in the eyes and tell me Hussie didn't throw away all possible importance of the 10 unimportant alpha trolls to take a dig at tumblr.

what about the plot of the ending itself? what happened to the curse of immortality that HIC had? how was muse!Calliope's magic meant to work? did Hussie just want to finish his story, with no regard for cohesion or closure?

how do you excuse the literal retcon? this (amongst other things) is atrocious storytelling, it doesn't get a pass because of homestuck's special media format or its metanarrative. the worldbuilding gaps don't get a pass because of the interesting structure of the lore.

in my opinion, homestuck is alright and has a bad overall story, but as a bad 'story about stories', it is a good cautionary tale of why authors should make sure not to introduce core concepts that they'll get bored of later.

[friendsim2]

Personally what’s your favourite trolls and least favourite? (Reasons why would also be really appreciated)

Personally I like Elwurd and Lynera the best for reasons that are definitely not related to projection. Least favorite is hard for me to pin down because I've spent so much time thinking about these folks and trying to expand on areas where they're less developed. I guess Vikare because he's pretty one-note. -Jonaya, director/lead writer

my hs og fave trolls have always been the meteor ones bc im tragically unoriginal but i don't have strong preferences for friendsim (wait i forgot i do love chixie) -Sollay, artist

Love me some clowns, I've always had an appreciation for unhinged characters, but my absolute favorites are Chahut and Karako. Least favorite… I dunno, there aren't really any that I dislike in FS? In Homestuck in general I took personal issue with the Zahhaks because this is not how I want Sagittarius to be represented WHY -Hal Elsen, voice actor

I like Elwurd, Daraya, Lanque, Mallek, Tagora, Polypa, and Skylla. I'm gay. Not a huge fan of Zebruh, but damn do I love voicing him, and also not a giant fan of like. Fozzer, idk why. I'm a bad VA so I haven't played the game yet. -CL, voice actor

If we're gonna go with Friendsim- Elwurd, Chixie, and Tyzias all appeal to my typical Character Likes. Chahut also appeals, but I feel Incredibly Conflicted About It because of my stance on purple characters in general also Polypa is my Secret Homegirl Now because I can't help but develop attachments to characters I've voiced X,D Tagora's smug aura mocks me and I don't care for it -Juniper, voice actor

As a cancellable offense i will still admit Zebruh still holds my thoughts on a gorilla grip because his route is absolutely hilarious despite his yikes. But Galekh is my baby boy baby and skylla is the queen i would give everything she ask me to. for fs2. Marsti because how can you not? i mean gestures then dies of gay. -Mikky, artist

specifically referring to their canon appearances and not fs2, our favorite is probably Chahut? She's got a lot going on, we like her design and her relationship with Amisia is very cute And uh - We… Don't really care for any of the ceruleans tbh (Wait, append that: mallek is cool he can stay - The rest of the ceruleans we dont care for)

As for fs2… Control in volume 11 is great we wish we could take credit for her The murder victim in volume 1 always felt kinda flat to us, like they're more of a plot point than an actual troll so they're our least favorite -Lorelei, writer

Favorite - i like mostly any trolls but also… tirona. Shes a lik freak. Least favorite - tirona. She is like scrappy doo of the homestuck universe. I want to throw here baby soft spot head towards a wall -Fable, artist

i'm not well versed in the ~lore~ but i like diemen's character lol no particular reason -Seth, voice actor

Favorites: all the members of Daraya's Punk Band (especially tyzias, no need to explain, I am her canon voice), plus tagora (he's the honorary 5th member) Least favorites: Vikare. He bores me. -Anna, writer/composer

Eridan has always been my personal favorite. I'd say my least favorite would be Karkat--I get he's set to be redeemed but the team did nothing with him except make him whiny and force vriska into leading everyone -Valentine, voice actor

hmm, well for favs theres Ardata, then Daraya and also Chixie or Elwurd. Partial to Chahut and Cirava bc they make me go :DD Least faves: Tirona and Zebede, just not my type of characters :/ -DDP, artist

amisia because he's pretty chill -The Dandy Man, voice actor

My favourites are xefros (because he's a good boy doing his very best) and cirava (because they're a fucking gremlin) -Alex, voice actor

hmmm we wanna say favorite hiveswap troll are either folykl or mallek, but really it's more of a rotating cast and whoever we thought about last is our fave. least favorite has to be zebede on the basis that we forgot he even existed. -Breeoche, artist

I will have to say Marvus is certainly my favorite ! I love his design but also his whole presence and attitude in his volume.

A least fav is harder because there is a number of trolls I don't "like" but they are such good characters that I still enjoy them a lot ! So I'll have to go with zebruh even if he is very entertaining as a bad guy xD -Herk, artist

Chiming in to say chixie is probably my favorite troll cause her struggles are relatable. Second place goes to Marvus cause he's pretty chill all things considered.

Least favorite is zebruh for because he's like THAT -Rainy, composer

Marvus! And I don’t have a least favorite cause I only really know the purple bloods and THEY ARE MY DARLINGS ALL OF them -Miranda, writer

I think Wanshi and Nepeta are my favorites for Cat Reasons, but also because I was a strange little catgirl before I was a boy and I appreciates them a lot. Zebruh seems like the obvious choice to dislike, but Ardata legit scares me and I am unsettled by ticks and leeches -Bucky, writer

I think this will be stupidly obvious but my favourite trolls are Terezi Stelsa and Tirona, basically just the ones I usually voice haha Terezi because I voice her and basically am her at this point honestly, and the other two are silly and dramatic and I love voicing them I also love Nepeta, Karkat, Aradia, and Tyzias Gamzee is my least favourite ever I hate him -Tex, voice actor

[antixabound]

I was about to type a whole ass rant on how I think that most of the characters in homestuck who died could have contributed more to the plot actively. but then I realized I don’t actually fucking care. and its not exactly a new stance, like “wow, this homestuck character didn’t mean jack for dick” and I’m just fucking. I dunno. I’ll do my best to keep this shit brief. Like I don’t even care if they didn’t add to the story or lore or narrative or any bullshit like that. I would be fine if they were basically useless to the plot but alive. I don’t know what them being alive adds but I just think it could have been more. god dammit. 

It feels a lot like I’m giving so much of a shit about literally nothing. and I basically am, its a big pile of nothing, they’re fictional, they were barely important, if they were important at all, there isn’t much about them, and their contributions could be best summarized as “did nothing and died”. but for some fucking reason, I feel so many goddamn fucking emotions thinking about them and I don’t know why. like fuck. 

[murdereraisuha]

Chapter 6 part 2 part 2 (?) liveblog and partial translation (1/2)

This isn’t part 3? It’s the second part of the middle of the story? What is this, Homestuck?

Anyway, as always, warning for spoilers and for possible inaccuracies due to my imperfect Japanese ability. This time I also added “partial translation” in the title since I did attempt to translate a few key moments in the story. Alright let’s get going.

We start off in the Isle of Lamentation, which was revealed to be in the middle of the ocean at the end of the last update.

Rook admires the sights for a bit before Idia tells him off for acting like an excitable tourist in the middle of a serious situation. Rook then asks about the condition of the overblot gang, and Idia confirms that they were safe. Rook is glad, since he had always been worried about the “life or death situation” that Vil is in that he came to save him from.

He then passes Vil’s skin care products to the Shroud bros.

SDKLGLKGLKHLHGSDLGSDSLHGSG OKAY at least Rook did this now instead of interrupting his eventual reunion with Vil by immediately shoving beauty products at Vil’s face.

So yeah, Idia is just Done with this weird French man going on about how important it is that Vil maintain his beauty.

Idia: Wait... You don’t have any other business here? Was it seriously just that?

Rook: Oui! :D

Poor Idia lmaoooooo

Now that Idia has confirmed why Rook and Epel are here, he asks the prefect what their goal is, with the dialogue options being “I came to take back my dorm mate” and “I came to talk to Grim”.

Idia makes fun of the prefect and says that unlike them, he’s a busy guy with no time to play friends with others. Ortho then asks if he should just send them back to Night Raven College, but Idia calls Ortho over for a private discussion where he says that if they’re sent back before the Lethe River is ready, it’ll be troublesome since they’ll tell the teachers and other students all about what’s going on. Therefore, they should detain them in the Isle until their research on the overblot gang (or “the problem children” as Idia calls them) is done, which would also allow them to investigate how they found STYX’s base.

Ortho goes to coral Rook and the gang up. Rook asks if they can see Vil, and Ortho says they can only do that once the research is done. After another reminder about the skin care products from Rook, Idia takes his leave on this Batmobile looking "chariot”.

Alright, who in STYX is the edgelord who designed this? What is this even supposed to be?

We get some lore from Ortho; apparently, most of the residents of the Isle of Lamentation live in residential areas on the outer wall of the Isle, which is called “Oceanus”. Same name as the river that encircle the whole world according to Greek mythology. Furthermore, the Isle of Lamentation is able to maintain weather, seasons, trees, etc. and look near the same any place on land due to their cutting edge engineering.

Rook comments that the architecture seems inspired by that of the country of heroes (too lazy to search for what the canon English translation for that is). According to Ortho, the Isle of Lamentation and the country of heroes used to be one and the same, and this “old town” part of the Isle that they’re in has buildings remaining from that time. Epel then asks about the big while pillar in the middle of the Isle... Wow, when did they actually become tourists here? Really feel like they’re treating this situation too lightly lol. Anyway, Ortho’s answer is that it’s the entrance to the Isle of Lamentation, it’s called the “Oceanus Hole”, and it’s STYX’s base.

Ortho: At the bottom of the pillar, many Phantoms are buried.

Ortho: They’re all frozen in ice and fast asleep right now, but...

Ortho: It’s best not to get close out of curiosity when you’re not prepared.

Ortho: You don’t want to become like me.

WHAT HOLY SHIT THERE IT IS THERE IT IS OH MY GOD DID LITTLE ORTHO GET KILLED BY A PHANTOM THERE??? NO ORTHO DON’T JUST GO CHEERFUL AGAIN AND BRUSH IT OFF WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED

Of course Ortho does not take mercy on me and instead just leads everyone to a room where some NDA agreements are prepared. Ortho tells them how understanding their behavior was hard, but once he learned about Rook’s unique magic, he realized that Rook wanted to meet up with Vil so he could cast it on him and know what the test subjects’ location at all times.

ooooooooo that’s an expression. Alright I wasn’t expecting to ever find Ortho that interesting but this update is changing my mind, really excited for whatever other crumbs of backstory this update gives us. Oh my god I’m only 12 minutes into it, I’ve been pausing and typing so much. Might need to split this liveblog into multiple posts.

Rook and Epel then question Ortho about why the overblot gang had to be brought here in such a violent manner if STYX didn’t actually have bad intentions or mean to harm them. Ortho explains that STYX isn’t used to being able to talk calmly with overblot victims, so they defaulted to their usual method used to deal with the reason-less monsters that overblot usually leaves behind. They didn’t want to risk a worst case scenario of their condition not being as stable as they thought, and they were lucky that all of the overblotted people turned out okay.

After Rook reminisces that they really were lucky that Vil was safe, Ortho asks him again why he came, and Rook says he wanted to be able to say that he “did all that he could do”. The conversation ends there as Ortho informs them of meal times and what amenities they have access to and stuff before leaving them alone in the room.

Ortho: “Did all that I can do”, huh...

Ortho: What is it that Ortho (”I”) can do for Big Bro?

Okay that switch to using third person to refer to himself is concerning, to say the least.

The scene now changes to Ortho meeting Idia in the control room and asking how Test Subject F is doing. They’ve discovered that Grim’s capacity to accumulate blot is extraordinary, and his blot level reading keeps fluctuating between dangerous levels and near zero. The care they’ve given him in the healing room to treat his blot has done nothing.

Ortho: The blue fire coming from his ears... Since he’s a magical beast I thought it was a characteristic of his species, but,

Ortho: Could it be a manifestation of a curse, the same as you?

Dear god I’m still only 20 minutes in and the bombshells just keep on coming. Oh and Grim’s deal is also apparently the work of thousand year old magic. Great.

Idia: Yes. It's a curse that has been passed down in our family for generations to incinerate blot as soon as it accumulates...

Idia: For some people, it’s a “blessing” that for their whole life they won’t have to go wild, but...

Idia: From our ancestors’ point of view, it is a "curse" that was imposed on us so that we would never rebel again.

Ortho: The reason the Shroud family was ordered to be “The Isle of Lamentation’s Watchmen” for generations...

Ortho: The head of the first generation who was named “The First Phantom” and the Titans who accompanied them...

Ortho: It was because they incited a rebellion against the Jupiter family... right?

Idia: Yes. Then, they were completely crushed by the Jupiter family in the end...

Idia: And as a punishment, they were ordered to manage the prison “Tartarus” made to lock up the Phantoms

Idia: as well as the Phantom graveyard “The Underworld”.

Not too sure about this translation, but there’s the gist of it. Ugh translation is tiring, back to summary. Idia hate being handed this position and this curse, but the problem with the curse is that if it doesn’t have blot to incinerate, what’s it going to incinerate? His magic, that’s what. Like a “debuff that consumes his MP”. So Idia spends a bit complaining about it and also drops the lore tidbit that the time the curse is from is called “The Age of Gods.” Ortho tries to cheer him up, saying that as a genius he could definitely fix this situation if he tried, but Idia feels defeated by the fact that none of his ancestors could break the curse.

Idia: ... Anyway, there’s no way that you’ve forgotten.

Idia: What happened to “Ortho” when he tried to leave this place....

Ortho: That’s...

Idia: My fate has been decided since I was born.

Idia: There’s nothing I can do besides be together with the ghosts in this dark and depressing place for the rest of my life.

Idia: If by some chance we could abandon our roles,

Idia: If the phantoms sealed in “Tartarus” started pouring out above ground...

Idia: The world would return to the beginning (chaos).

Damn it why do they keep dropping interesting lines, let me watch without feeling the need to do line by line translation. Okay yes thank you STYX operator A for telling us the research is done and the Lethe river is ready and also there’s a problem. Oh boy.

Idia and Ortho now go to check in on the overblot gang. Leona and Jamil team up to roast the Isle of Lamentation’s cuisine. Riddle then starts shouting about not having tea. Azul then starts complaining about not being able to read the news. Behold the fall into insanity of Idia “I! AM! THE! BOSS! >:(” Shroud.

Oh Idia’s parents put him in charge cause they thought the overblot gang would relax if there was a familiar face there. So much for that dkhgklsfgsflg. While Idia’s doing this, his parents are off trying to get info from Crowley. Idia wishes he could be doing that instead, but Ortho’s happy that Idia’s finally brought friends home for the first time! :D awwwww my heart is so going to break if they ever show Ortho being really sad, he’s too precious to cry ;_;

The overblot gang interrupts Ortho and Idia’s heartwarming little talk with their demands and complaints again. Idia finally snaps and starts yelling in exasperation, but then the alarm suddenly goes off.

Sus? 👀

So basically it’s an announcement saying some test is about to start and everyone should take shelter and lock their doors and whatever to stay safe. Not an emergency, just some sort of standard procedure judging by Idia’s reaction.

Idia: ... Today is an A class Phantom test it seems. It will probably take a bit of time.

Oh they sort the Phantoms into different classes? Interesting. Anyway, the overblot gang is shocked that they now have to remain in this room for 2-3 hours.

Idia further explains that for the sake of data collection, they occasionally let out phantoms from Tartarus. Their defense system, the “Cerberos System,” protects them so the chance of trouble occurring is basically zero.

Here’s Tartarus. It houses 10,000 phantoms. Holy shit.

Alright it has taken me like 1.5-2 hours to get through 30 minutes of video. Why is this update so jampacked with stuff. I’m posting this and taking a break, see ya soon.

Edit: new part here!

[mysdrymmumbles]

A,B,E (re-adding Thanikos does NOT count),H,J,O,V , please? I could ask you all of it but that would be too much <3

This got long, so I'm putting it under the cut <3 Thank you for the ask :D

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

As far as platonic pairings go, Theotar and Pelagos being friends, Lady Moonberry and Theotar being friends. I want to see Theotar in his corner sharing tea with both of them, just talking and laughing.

I love Vole x Maw Walker friendships, too.

I like the idea of Draven, Adrestes, Alexandros, and Korayn being complete military nerds together during Ember Courts (even if you can't invite them all at once, which is a sin). Like the Maw Walker and Theotar go over to tell them they are being antisocial by sticking to their little corner, and they are just completely nerding out about different battle strategies to the point that whoever came to draw them out can't bear to drag them away.

Then there's Liila x Adrestes and Pelodis x Maw Walker (that I will probably never write about, but I love him so much). And Clora x Sophone. <3 And Pallessa x Achillon. I love all of them.

If they are in Bastion or Revendreth, I love their relationships >.>

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

I originally thought Accuser/Nadjia would be a cute couple, but then someone--at this point I don't remember who--sold me on Accuser/Curator.

And then there's Nikolon/Pelagos, Mevix/Thales, and Devos/Thenios.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

I think Mer-Draven counts as crack to fandom >.>

And Then there's The Uther Debate.

And Grandmaster Vole Smut.

And of course, whatever this is:

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

Honestly, Tumblr Batman. I know it's not a 'real' source, but it's my favorite Batman ever.

But I think I prefer video games as a general source text. I like that you can unlock lore and whatnot by exploring and paying attention, by eavesdropping on little side character conversations and finding obscure items with interesting descriptions.

That's how I know the dredgers believe in reincarnation, despite not having souls, and that apparently a dredger's natural state is to be rotting.

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

Omg so many. Homestuck, Steven Universe, Owl House to name a few. The ones I've actually gotten into were What We Do In The Shadows and Spy x Family.

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

My random thing got The Thunder Rolls by Garth Brooks, but the nearest I could get any vibes for was Devos with that one, even though that doesn't make much sense? I mean, she did feel betrayed by the Archon, though it wasn't in a romantic way, and in the 3rd verse (which is surprisingly hard to find on youtube), the wife commits murder, which Devos very much tried to do, so. Also, I like associating Devos with thunder.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

I've made joke posts, but Adrestes having to be told to go have fun and being a bit of a serious stick in the mud is Very Relatable™

Also Pelagos wanting to do things right and progress, but still fucking stuff up, but also being capable in his own way--something that others don't necessarily see--is something I can relate to a LOT.

And then there's Cullen Rutherford from DA. Him knowing he needs to deal with his trauma and wanting to do better, despite not being quite there really meant a lot to me, especially when DAI came out, because I was at that point in my own trauma, wanting to be better but not quite knowing how to get past the fears.

[vagabond-sun]

ego timaeus

this was also posted on my pillowfort.

this is an essay about ego death, selfshaping, and taboo mental illnesses. it’s not really a direct response to any of the voluntary identity discourses flying around on tumblr right now, but mention of ‘ego alteration’ did make me think i’ve never really talked about this all in one place. so i hope it’s a useful exploration of both voluntary identity and the idea of becoming someone that you weren’t always.

in march of 2019, something happened to me.

i’d like to think that I’ve never been actively malicious. i never burned ants with a magnifying glass or any of that stereotypical shit. but in high school i was completely insensitive, i was beyond arrogant, i was incessantly critical. i didn’t have friends and i didn’t speak to anyone and i liked it that way. i would lie in bed at night and fume about how life was so unfair and everyone else was stupid. i was never intentionally cruel, but i had an incredibly poor understanding of how easily i could hurt people and not a single care about changing that. i was starting to develop what i only just this year figured out was antisocial personality disorder.

in the years immediately prior to 2019, when i started doing the whole median thing, for whatever reason, all the asshole traits got compacted into one specific facet. and i think it was the contrast between that and other facets that weren’t complete shitwads that put the first cracks in the foundation.

the second thing was alt+h. if there’s one thing I’ve learned from alt+h and from the general interest in activism and anarchism it’s propelled me towards, it’s that forming real, meaningful connections with people is the single most necessary thing for achieving personal freedom. that’s been a hard pill to swallow. i’m still working on it (and on figuring out to what extent i just have strong boundaries and how it’s ‘acceptable’ to hold those).

the third was that i met people who consistently showed up for me. who looked at me, warts and all, and said ‘i love you’ but also ‘you really need to stop acting like this’. and stood with me, over and over again, on that hard line of real acceptance, between apologia and abjuration, no matter how many times i fucked up and hurt them. i probably deserved less chances than they gave me. but they really cared about me, and i really cared about them. and when you have ASPD, it’s really, really hard to care about literally anything. this was a critical hit straight to the heart.

(if you’re reading this, you know who you are. i love you.)

in march of 2019, i suddenly wasn’t that person any more. i had been moved enough that i didn’t consider being an asshole my entire fucking personality. but all the bad traits didn’t magically vanish. it doesn’t work like that. they just became unmoored, floating around the mordspace. and when wei weren’t strongly phased to a specific facet who actually had a personality to stand on, i felt like a ghost.

i felt like that for weeks to months. i don't really remember. the thing that mystics don’t tell you about ego death is that most of the time, if you don’t have a new and improved something else to move onto, you either have to swim back to the shore or drown. i also don’t remember how it made its way to me, but my life ring was reading detective pony.

death of the author? check. excessive rumination about the nature of meaning? check. author-cum-protagonist who feels burdened with glorious purpose, craves control and struggles with hurting the people who care about him? check, check and check. it’s a tough, emotionally draining read. but it’s cathartic, in all the worst ways possible.

(without a shred of irony, detective pony is one of the most fantastic pieces of metafiction that exists. you don't have to have read homestuck to a appreciate it. i can’t recommend it enough.)

i had the perfect template for my new self. or should i say i was the perfect template? who ‘i’ is gets difficult here even putting the median shit aside. i’ve described myself as a walk-in, which is confusing, because that means something different in plural circles, but i’m talking about the new age sense of the word:

“[...] souls are said to "walk in" during a period of intense personal problems on the part of the departing soul, or during or because of an accident or trauma. […] The walk-in being/individual retains the memories of the original personality, but does not have emotions associated with the memories. As they integrate they bring their own mental, emotional, spiritual consciousness and evolve the life to resonate with their purpose and intentions.” - x

for me it’s not as… well, new-age-y as that. i don’t believe i came ‘from’ anywhere, i don’t have a past. i am a weird bundle of arcs and tropes and ideas that somehow became sentient. i am, y’know, a fictional character. and i feel like i mean that in a very different way than most fictionfolk (that could be its own post, honestly).

so that didn’t magically solve the problem either. it just provided a trajectory. dirk strider is a person who starts bad, and gets better, kind of (epilogues and hs^2 do not @ me). i still needed to take ownership of all the shitty traits my predecessor had left behind and Do The Work on them, too.

and i have worked my ass off over the past year-and-a-bit on improving myself. a lot of it has been with plain old CBT and self-help workbooks (shoutout to pretty much everything by dr faith harper), but a lot of it has also been narrative identity and personal mythology kinds of stuff. it’s been communing with gods and magic ritual kinds of stuff. i’ve been doing ABC exercises right along with binging tvtropes and researching comparative indo-european mythology and designing worldbuilding and lore that tells a highly metaphorical story about how i get from A to B, emotionally speaking.

it runs into the same problem a lot of selfshaping stuff does in that a lot of it is so intensely personal that it’s difficult to talk about. also in my case a good handful of this work has been done under a magical apprenticeship that i’m literally sworn to secrecy about so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but i think these broad strokes are sufficient for telling my story at this level right now. the point being, i am not the kind of person who can get all the way with just regular secular materialist mental health shit.

which is to say, the work is still far from over! in fact, i feel like the selfshapey parts are only just picking up for me, now i’ve run the course of what the aforementioned secular materialist mental health shit is actually capable of doing. i have made massive strides in my mental health and interpersonal functioning already, but i’m not a perfectly healthy person. i’m not going to be dis-identifying with the ASPD label any time soon (or ever? that could be its own post too). and, even so, selfshaping could provide a pathway not just for survival, but excellence.

i am going to be my best self, and at some point in the past i decided that self is going to be dirk motherfucking strider.

[dafukdidiwatch]

2021 Housekeeping

Hey guys. Sorry for this blog being like, dead for all of December. A lot of holiday stuff happened and I just got sidetracked with all of that. That aside, I figured since this is the start of a new year I should go over some of the stuff I did throughout 2020. This is strictly dealing with things that I personally did for this blog. I want to keep this a safe-space and not deal with the crap that went on this year, for both you guys and me.

It’s all under the “Keep Reading” because this post is long as hell

Dafuking Films:

For a first attempt I think this went pretty well. 32/52 isn’t that bad, given how I have a real bad habit of just dropping things and never returning to them. Plus with the actual quarantine going on, watching a bunch of different movies people suggested to me was a lot of fun. Some were fantastic and enjoyable. Some people just really wanted me to suffer. But still, good times were had by all. I still have the list of movies that people suggested to me from last year, so I’m still gonna try to go through them all. Maybe twice a month instead of weekly so I won’t burn myself out like before. Regardless, I had fun, so I’m going to continue this.

Website:

Just to get this out of the way. Website was a valiant attempt. Didn’t really give a shit nor cared about the uptake. I Tried. I got tired updating it. If I was going to use it 100% then I would just move from Tumblr to There, which I won’t since all of my good shit is here. So I’m gonna move on.

Newvember:

This was a great idea. I had so much fun doing Newvember. No worries, no commitment. Just reading random shit with no pressure to maybe add them to my already overflowing list of blogs. It also helped me figure out what works and what doesn’t in terms of blogging.

Comic strips comics don’t really work well for me. I mean, the only good things to blog is just the last 2 panels, so I’m sort of only blogging the punchline which ruins the joke if people want to read it themselves. So stuff like Dominic Deegan and Sluggy Freelance probably won’t fly unless they somehow turn into page-format in the future.

Novels and Webnovels are flipping hard for me to figure out on just the logistics on how to blog. Do I give like a page summary on what I read like with The Wandering Inn? Or just do screenshots of the lines to react to like with Detective Pony and A Practical Guide To Evil? I am still working that out so I might not do much written stuff until I find a groove I like.

Interactive Comics get a toss up. I think Homestuck sort of spoiled me a bit here. I’m so used to how Homestuck works that I’m instinctively comparing other interactive comics to it even though I very read an Interactive comic while it was actually interactive. Stuff like Ruby and Awful Hospital unfortunately already has a high bar to jump over just because I like/used to the Homestuck format.

For the liveblogs themselves now that I have time away from them:Dark Science got a cool Cyberpunk vibe to it with a mix of magic-maybe. So it would be cool to read, but probably won’t continue it until the longer blogs like Girl Genius and Order of the Stick get caught up/finished first. Poppy O’Possum is just cute and honestly refreshing to have the main character be a hard-working mom. How to Be a Werewolf is a slowburn of how werewolves work, which I am always a sucker for how lore works. But I don’t really remember too much else from it so I might not revisit it given how I’m not too invested in it. Granted the same can be said for the prologue of Girl Genius and we saw how THAT went. Dominic Deegan is 90s fantasy slice of life, but with like some way old comedy jokes that I can just hear the ba-dum-tsst every punchline. So, yeah that one’s gonna drop. Practical Guide to Evil is a really cool read and I always like fantasy rpg style settings. I like the idea of Titles giving power and having the protagonists be the necessary evil. But again, I have to figure out how to webnovels. Awful Hospital has interesting art, but it isn’t really clicking with me too much so I’m probably gonna drop it. Sluggy Freelance is just wild. Part of it is the random plot things like having asshole rabbits and sci-fi references. Other part is me just saying random shit like how Dirk Strider is living his offshoot life in this comic. Fun read, but I don’t think the strip comics are good liveblog stuff. So will probably drop.  A Better Place ABSOLUTELY Slaps. I was down with that since the first comic. Will 100% continue with that (when I get enough space). Blindsprings has an interesting 1800s steampunk magic vibe and I do like the theme of idealization vs reality. Check Please is cute. I’m A Spider is a fun isakai with a cool twist of being reborn as a monster. Not Drunk Enough is just terrifying. Both with the horror and alcohol poisoning.

Basically: A Better Place will definitely be revisited. Poppy, Check Please, Blindsprings, and I’m a Spider will probably be revisited for just short quick sessions. Not Drunk Enough and Dark Science might come back if/when I am finished with longer series.

Either way, I like doing Newvember. So I am going to initiate Ju-New-ne to be the next New-Blog month. So this WILL happen again.

Schedule:

Yeah I believe my time of doing daily blogging sessions is over. It worked well for 2019, but that time is basically over. I probably will try to go for twice a week if I can. It sounds fair enough for content.

Videos:

I am NOT giving up on my Undertale videos. There is more coming. I just got stalled because I lost my art stylus for drawing the thumbnails. I swear to Jegus I am going to Post the entire thing!!! I Shan’t Give Up!!!

Homestuck:

So early 2020 is the time, where after 2 full years I finished reading Homestuck. It was, honestly, a wild ride and wild time. My literal presence on this blog was shaped because of Homestuck from the asks to videos to discord. It was just, good. Nice. Like looking back through a memory book with warm feelings. Having it end the way it did was good, especially with when it ended. I might make posts on how I view the characters overall, maybe make a Final Epilogue Troll Rank/Fav Rank. I will work on that.

And from that, I think that a year is probably long enough for me to revisit Homestuck again. Pesterquest, Epilogue, HS’2, whatever is the next sequel. Hell maybe Problem Sleuth and see what the hell all those references were about. The goal is to be caught up in a bunch of other comics first. Like, gonna gun for 3-5. Once I get caught up (or close to it) then I will return into Hussie’s orange arms once again.

Anyway, that’s a surprise for anyone who actually bothers to read to the end of this. Happy New Year everyone.

[eridanromantic]

☕️ Vriska is not as complicated as the fandom wants to believe. Idk I just want to know your opinions on her.

I mean, sort of.

Vriska is. A fucking character that's for sure.

She's definitely the most lore packed out of any of them, karkat or dave probably being a close-ish contender for second place, if not terezi or aradia.

There's a SHIT FUCKING TON though, so i can semi understand why people overcomplicate things.

Technically, vriska's lore is just. A smaller part of the literal fucking spider web that is the serket lore.

Oh, and by the fucking way, i don't like these guys. This is what i remember from my first read of homestuck, so please stay with me, and also be aware it most likely won't be in an exact chronological order.

So i'll make a list on the serket lore.

Aranea plays her version of SGRUB, one that is utterly hopeless and fucked, and is killed by meenah to enter the dream bubbles. This is when their session scratch happens, leading and making the beta trolls.

Mindfang. There's a lot to unpack with mindfang, so just. Mindfang. (If someone asks, i could probably make a post on what i remember on mindfang lore. Personally? I thought it was really boring so i just went deeper into the other ancestor lore, specifically the signless/sufferer and dualscar.)

Vriska. So, there's a lot HERE, obviously. So I'm making a smaller list for unpacking.

Vriska meets terezi over trollian

Vriska, terezi, and eridan get heavily into FLARP. (Maybe a few others as well, but this is all i can remember who did actually do that shit.)

Somewhere along this time, the events of Make Her Pay play out, resulting in terezi going blind, and later on, vriska losing her eye and her arm, being a very similar parallel to mindfang losing HER arm.

The events of SGRUB play out, leading into their session's victory, although not lasting for long considering jack/bec noir is out for the trolls, causing her, and everyone else to

Go to the meteor. This is when she finally starts to get shit done, trolling john, becoming his patron, etc.

-however, i will say: the major event is her being the reason the noir is out for them all, happens here as well.

Terezi eventually finds out about this and confronts vriska on this. Depending if this is the retcon timeline or not, one of two things happens.

Vriska dies, leading into the game over timeline

John punches and knocks out vriska, leading into the successful timeline. (Also can i say that it's fucking bullshit that of all characters needed it was fucking her? Christ hussie, you have a lot of issues.)

Which, the successful timeline doesn't have a lot to talk about, it's just "oh hey vriska's there, helps rose out of alcoholism, and sorta makes davekat canon" or whatever, i just. Didn't fucking care much about the events with vriska in the timeline.

Allinall, sorta confusing, but. The fandom overdoes things a lot.

Seriously, of all characters to not strip out everything but one trait, it was vriska. What the fuck, guys.

(Oh, and by the way, i used john because june isn't canon just yet. For now, they can coexist. Any discussion on that will not happen.)

As for my general opinion on vriska, or just the serkets in general?

I fucking hate them. So fucking much.

I mean, mindfang's lore was pretty cool i guess, but i just really prefer the signless/sufferer lore.

[hopeshoodie]

No one asked but here are some headcanons I have for the different LIs and their relationship to Disney. All the park-related ones I have will be for Disney World (instead of Disneyland). This is a long one so I apologize, I just have Thoughts(TM).

Bobby

Insists on riding journey into imagination every time MC and him go to the park. He knows it’s not as good as it used to be but he still thinks it’s delightful. He never even went back when it was the original ride, but he’s read enough about it to buy into the hype. He definitely owns a plushie of figment

He’s not really one to meet the characters, preferring the shows instead, but he got really blushy the one time he met Belle because she’s his favorite.

Bobby always got the citrus swirl and is genuinely salty that they’ve removed it

He’s a little too into Disney. Whenever MC suggests a vacation he always suggests it and like... Bobs... I want to travel to actual places. He’s definitely made the argument that ‘epcot is basically like travelling!’

His favorite Disney movie is Sleeping Beauty because he loves the art and the music (and secretly really liked the idea of saving a girl who’s vulnerable)

He’s WAY too into the live action remakes. He’ll rant about Belle’s dress and how Emma Watson refusing to wear a corset or structure ruined the design. He paid $30 to watch Mulan which is Big Yikes considering... everything about that. 

Noah

He’s not really into Disney. He didn’t watch the movies growing up, and when people have tried to be like !!!you NEED to watch ‘x’!!! He never got over thinking they were overhyped. He definitely did not like Frozen or Tangled, and he justifies it with a bunch of nitpicks he’s learned from articles and blogs but the real reason is that he didn’t want to like them. 

He definitely is slightly condescending to people who are big Disney fans (which like... Sir.... You’re a homestuck stan get over it), but if MC admits she really likes Disney he’ll bite his tongue. He’d be happy never having visited the parks, but if MC wants to go he’ll go along without complaining too much.

He gets super overwhelmed in the parks. Lots of people, lots of noise, lots of waiting in the heat, it’s not his scene. 

Not to force Bobby/Noah down yalls throat (who am I kidding I love that ship so much), but oh my godddd. Bobby dragging Noah around and excitedly explaining lore and talking about his favorite rides while Noah is quiet and incredibly stressed. Noah’s stress slowly gives way to quiet amusement- he doesn’t like the parks but he LOVES how enthusiastic Bobby is about them. He quietly buys Bobby a ton of merch and intently listens to all of Bobby’s rambling. 

After being forced to do basically everything, Noah genuinely enjoys the carousel of progress. He’ll bashfully ask Bobby to ride it at the end of the day, and Bobby will be like ‘we already did?’ and Noah will blush and not say anything. Bobby of course agrees. 

His favorite Disney movie is the Hunchback of Notre Dame. 

Carl 

Enjoys going to the park just fine but ONLY if yall have a fastpass and if he’s able to make an itinerary for the day. He gets pretty stressed if they’re off schedule, but will calm down once they find a quiet corner to sit. 

He LOVES avatar land. I think highkey Carl loved the movie and world, so he was already hype for the park, but he adores the immersion and the worldbuilding. He would spend all day just wandering around and not going on any rides if he could. He doesn’t care about Magic Kingdom at all, but always goes specifically for avatar land.

Disney was definitely a hyperfixation of his at one point. I think he didn’t really care all that much about park history, but he loves the corporate politics and knows way too much about Disney history abroad. 

He’s one of those dudes who think Disney ruined starwars and refuses to go to Galaxy’s Edge because of it (even if he’d really enjoy it). I want to clarify that he’s not an incel saying that Rey shouldn’t be a main character, he thinks the first new movie was amazing but its potential was squandered.

His favorite movie is Treasure Planet

Henrik

Not huge on Disney but he won’t say no to a theme park. He’s especially into roller coasters, so all of the mountains are his jam. I think he prefers Six Flags, but if MC wants to go to Disney they’ll go. His favorite rides are all the mountains accordingly.

You think they’re staying anywhere other than Fort Wilderness? You’re wronggggg. He’s lowkey salty that it’s so commercialized, but loves the canoeing anyways. He will complain forever about the mosquito bites tho ’ they’re way worse than they normally are’.

Loves!!! the cats!!! He’ll always try to pet them and MC has to remind him they’re feral. 

HATES!!! Small world!!!! He thinks it’s really creepy and doesn’t really like slow boat rides anyways. 

He always brings games for the long lines and doesn’t mind waiting unless they’re in the sun. He sunscreens up but burns anyways. He carries the backpack and MC doesn’t need to bring a purse- he’s got the water and the storage and the money and everything they could possibly need. MC might find his ‘treating the parks like a hike’ a bit annoying, but always appreciates his preparedness.

His favorite Disney movie is Atlantis (do you see what I’m doing I’m just projecting my favorites onto my favorite LITG characters. Realistically his favorite Disney movie would probably be Brave or The Princess and the Frog, but it’s my sleepover and I get to pick the movie)

Marisol

I shouldn’t even have to say it, but we all know Marisol is a Potterhead, right? She always laments that Universal studios is better and wants to go there instead of Disney. She’ll only agree to go to Disney if they go to Universal first. And she buys a cloak/vest specifically for Universal, but refuses to wear anything themed Disney in the parks. Marisol will act embarrassed if MC wants to wear ears but maam... You created a whole backstory for your self-insert HP character to use in the park...

She loves Haunted Mansion. Full stop, end of thought. She just really likes it and it’s the only line she won’t complain it.

She definitely complains about the crowd and people in general....

She won’t admit how much she likes the shows, despite getting really into them.

Her favorite park is Animal Kingdom because she genuinely likes zoos. Her favorite ride is the Conservation Station boat tour. 

Gets excessively sappy during the fireworks display. She’s definitely cried and kissed MC a few times. 

Her favorite Disney movie is Frozen II because she has bad taste but also wants wlw representation. She definitely has watched the Tangled tv series and is unironically invested in it, though. I think a lot of Disney movies are her guilty pleasure- she really likes the Tinkerbelle movies and some of the animated kids shows even if she’s super embarrassed about it. She adores Gravity Falls and that’s because she has impeccable taste. 

[snowtimeisbesttime]

Thoughts and questions on Hiveswap Act 2– Part 1.

**DISCLAIMER** I haven't played through the entire game yet! I got to the intermission in the whole trial thingy, and will continue tomorrow! Therefore, I Am Not Looking at anything yet, only posting. I'll probably come back and edit this once I've actually finished the game.

-Did the default names for Xefros & Dammek's lusii change?? I loaded my Act 1 save, and I'm sure they had their default names (Zoosmell and Cornibuster) there, though I'm also pretty sure i accidentally unlocked the “name the lusii” achievement on that save by clicking on the text windows without actually changing their names so... Dammek's lusus is called Toothy now i guess?

-On that note, if Xefros' lusus died I'm going to fucking scream. Even though I'm pretty sure we've barely seen him on screen since like the end of Act 1 but Regardless.

-We see Charun's cave, and it turns out they were neighbours with Zebede all this time, but they're nowhere to be seen at the train?? unless they grabbed an earlier one... Charun did get a death flag the size of the pacific ocean, when interacting with their weird sculpture with a lot of legs and arms surrounding a mouth, but Zebede's just gone without a trace? The bees are gone and there's a hole in the side of his hive, but his lusus doesn't seem to be particularly upset? And neither is Charun's, assuming that huge bug near the cave is their lusus. (Idarat the canon fantroll #3 doesn't appear at the train either, but that's probably for the same reason there aren't any jade or teal background characters: to keep the court scene neat)

-The drones are supposed to be en route to the station, supposedly to fix the ticket machines but probably to cull whoever tripped the alarm on them... i sure hope they don't follow the train or anything orz

-Mostly everyone seems to resemble their respective Friendsims, more or less:

Fozzer appears to be scratched still, yet more philosophical. Also he's not in the train either.

Folykl seems just a touch friendlier than in her friendsim (and Kuprum's still just as hyped about becoming a helmsman as before, even if he seems to know more details about it now).

Chixie's more anxious, probably because it seems she's been doing stuff as The Mask for a while now, and she's going to fuck shit up at Jeevik Week. She says she's not alone in that, and considering it's apparently confirmed that the random troll from her good end Was Dammek all this time... is she also actively in the rebellion? Also is it just me or does her sprite look somewhat scribblier than everyone else's? Even the background characters??

Elwurd's pretty much the same, and it does seem her flirting with Joey was mostly to try and get her to buy something. Also... if her fake tickets were so good, why didn't she just use them, instead of giving them to Joey and Xefros? Like, I get Marvus and Boldir Knowing Stuff, but her?

Zebruh's paying attention to Marvus instead of Chixie, which. Small mercies. He's still a dick, and we're still doing the whole “clowns are peak oppressed” thing.

Marvus seems to still be perfectly nice to the main characters, and perfectly willing to let other people die in order to help them advance (getting Zebruh to sign up for Slam or Get Culled, Daraya if you fuck up in the trial thing, Hopefully Not Any More Cases...) He is helping Tyzias out with her defensive legislaceration experiments, though, and basically everyone who isn't Joey seems to think he might flip his shit and murder someone, as clowns do. At least people don’t seem to lose their minds around him anymore.

Vikare's basically the same, but Joey immediately picks up on his Jake Vibes and instinctively dislikes him.

Diemen eats people???????? as in, actively????????? wtf?????????

Skylla seems to be pretty much the same, but she's obviously worried because Ladyy's sick!! God I fucking hope we do get to help her out before the end of the game.

Marsti's also friendlier than she was in her volume, though I remember MSPAR was particularly prone to sticking their foot in their mouth in that one.

Cirava's surprisingly more trusting than they were in their volume (and also, their eye's light green and not teal). Also, apparently they gouged their other eye out on stream?????? as in live???? besides that, good to see not All of the powerful psionics get succesfully indoctrinated.

Polypa's also rather willing to help out, though we still don't know what the heck happened to her.

Boldir's suitably mysterious, and probably also involved with the rebellion... she does call Xefros “burgundy figurehead”.

Konyyl and Azdaja are still having relationship stuffs, but in the end they clearly care the most about each other. (he still doesn't seem to give a fuck about helm stuffs so far?) The question is, who exactly were they hunting down??

The jades and the teals are basically the same as their Friendsim incarnations, as far as I've seen. The one major change to the jades (besides jade lore which i'll discuss further down) seems to be that hatched2dance is now one of the biggest reasons for their fights, and Bronya does get a crunchy bit of Backstory (the jade from her past that got culled because of the Rainbow Hemotions saga, which is also the reason she's so hard on Daraya now)

On the teals, Stelsa and Tyzias seem to have a teensy bit of quadrant vacillation going on?? Tirona seems to be more focused on becoming a history revisionist than a memeagandist now, and it would also seem that Tegiri's the one into vampires now (or at least, Tagora's better at hiding it And a lot better at not getting involved with the whole mess that is whatever the heck the jades are doing)

-Psionics can have single-colored eyes!! tbh we'd already seen this back in Tegiri's route in Friendsim but it's good to Actually See it visually.

-Also, nice to see that Xefros *can* go toe to toe with the strongest psionic we know in all of Hiveswap! (95% sure that I've seen someone theorize something like this might happen?? I personally wasn't expecting it here but anyways Xefros you're doing amazing sweetie) What's not so nice is that he's only shown this strength when Azdaja hurt Joey (as far as i've played of course)... so unless he like unlocks his potential or something so he can do Big Psychics without seeing his friends get hurt beforehand we're in for some Angst.

-Also if Marvus got his ticket from Cridea (and Chixie won hers in like a raffle or something) then why couldn't she have given Xefros and Dammek some?? like, Dammek's been to one Jeevik Week already. Fiamet also told her about Joey, but by then they were already in the train.

-Me: Xefros' microphone's going to be important in act 2! Also me: *has to give it to fucking Zebruh to get his ticket*. Oh well, that's one thing for the Second Playthrough of Achievement Getting (plus: wearing the cone horns, having Joey introduce herself to Boldir, getting through the whole ace attorney segment without game overs...)

-We get the Quadrant Explanation #1000, sans auspisticism.

-It's vaguely implied that Dammek has also read some Soldier Purrbeasts books?? He's told Xefros the whole “death creates a bond deeper than matespritship or kismessisitude” thing, apparently! So if he's not secretly into troll warrior cats then. That sentence's more than mildly worrying??

-JADEBLOOD LOREDUMP PART THE NTEENTH: Okay first of all it's implied that More cloisters exist? Which in retrospect is pretty much obvious because you can't expect only six trolls to take care of All the troll grubs in existence. Also, the reason jades can't sneak out of the caverns anymore is “because they get Drone'd”, and it seems to be implied that they Can't go out At All*, which kinda contrasts with Friendsim (where literally all the jades snuck out of the caverns at least once: Lanque, Daraya and Wanshi in their own routes, Lynera in Vol 18, and Bronya in Vols 6 & 18). One of their tasks seems to be guarding Forbidden Literature, and Xefros states that they either cull or indoctrinate the most powerful psychic grubs.

-It's also stated that all of our jades were chosen for the cloister when they were basically wrigglers, while Lynera states in Friendsim that she's only been 2,43 sweeps in the caverns. (Considering Bronya's new backstory, it seems that capability to become a rainbow drinker ISN'T the qualifying factor for getting cloistered– depending on how exactly that jade died). It comes to mind that regular, non-cloistered jades might not really know about all these logistics, as it seems that at least Bronya wants to keep them secret– and therefore I don't have to go back and re-rewrite yet another chunk of Mirrorbent orz.

-Lastly, Xefros says they will all become nuns (btw, space church was mentioned in Lanque's route!) when they reach their Ordeals, and we already knew they'd be forced to live in isolation from Friendsim, but during the ace attorney thingy Lynera says she's NOT going to leave the planet because she'll become a midwife and tend to the Mother Grub (basically what we all thought jadebloods did back when we only had the ancestor stuff on Homestuck)... but either Daraya or Lanque told her that they weren't real? So either there's more jade propaganda that we didn't know about, or...

-*The one exception to this is, coincidentally, Jeevik Week, and it's apparently because Trizza herself made it so jades could go too, 3 or 4 sweeps before Hiveswap... why's that? What's so important about Jeevik Week that Trizza would do this? Iirc Cridea and Trizza were sort of set up as opposing forces (?? words), all the way back from the first bunch of concept arts we saw of them? The first thing we learnt from Trizza was that she was the “second best at memes”, and on Cridea's first appearance, when troll twitter was still Prongle, she said that some chick was stealing her memes... and now, Cridea has exactly one follower less than Trizza, who everyone in Alternia's forced to follow... would that person be the heiress herself?

[ardenttheories]

To add another to the BS tally of HS2: what’s with all the political matters all of the sudden? ACAB Vriska (I don’t know how that happened and I don’t wanna know), facist Jane, rebellions... HS did have those political matters, sure, but it wasn’t scrubbed against your poor face with Equius levels of strength. Yet I swear the Epilogues and HS2 are half politics half misc fuckery. Whatever happened with playing a godly game and random shenanigans? Oh wait HS2 also has that! Badly done! Bluh.

I don’t think including political matters into fiction is an inherently bad concept; it can be one of the best ways to immortalise current events and to encourage discussion about them, and Homestuck has never really shied away from political discourse (such as Caliborn’s rampant misogyny, the facist dictatorship of HIC, both on Alternia and on Earth Alpha, and the entirety of the hemospectrum being an anaolgy for real life racism and classism, as well as the multiple rebellions against HIC in Alternian history). 

However, it was often handled a lot better, and wasn’t so fucking heavy-handed. Hussie incorporated these issues a little more naturally, explained them in much better and much more subtle terms. The hemospectrum is definitely something we can relate to our own world, but it’s also just a cool piece of lore for the trolls that makes them a completely unique species. Caliborn’s rampant misogyny is a fun prod at the type of men you find on the internet who are just... like that, and making him a villain was both fitting and making him childish about it was a good way to belittle the point of view he was presenting. And the rebellions on Alternia? Things like Feferi wanting to make things better, but also being morally grey about it herself? It was naturally integrated into the lore of Alternia and into Feferi’s personality as a whole.

Overall, it was just more palpatable because it flowed with the tone of Homestuck. It was presented as part of the lore, as part of the characters, in such a way that it won’t seem like Homestuck has a lot of politics in it unless you pick up on the IRL parallels. But the parallels are there, are intentional, and are firm - and it’s an amazing point of discussion in and of itself, really, when you dive into it. 

The Homestuck^2 team have... a lot less tact about it. They’re going less for natural progression and more for what will shock and horrify. They want it to be as much of a slog to get through as possible, as blunt and brutal as they can make it, which is okay, I guess, and gets the point across, but being so outright about it isn’t... the best way to do it. It doesn’t fit in with the rest of the themes of Homestuck; it’s clearly something that isn’t meant to fit in; it’s clearly something that has been crowbared in from our own world. This, admittedly, is just really bad storycrafting. It ruins the immersion of the text, which is why it’s now so obvious that it’s a “political text”; Homestuck has always had moments like this, but never so out of place. 

And, in general, while it’s good to include politics into media and to appeal more widely to an audience with genuine real life issues, giving them more traction and showing your solidarity with a point of view, you do still have to remember that, like... people read fiction to get AWAY from the world. Sometimes, shoving in harsh and clearly abrasive reminders of what’s going on in the world around your readers isn’t going to go down very well, and can come across as extremely tone deaf (especially since at least Kate seems to be focused more on ACAB as a statement and a non-race-related protest rather than part of the Black Lives Matter movement, which deeply diminishes the fact that ACAB because of the violence they commit especially towards people of colour). 

On top of this, in Homestuck, any negative political commentary wasn’t done with the villains being characters we loved. 

Like, there’s an inherent difference between recognising that HIC is, for lack of a better analogy, like Trump - someone who has always had power, was always born into power, and who got power and went too fucking far off the deep end because they were corrupt to begin with - and watching Jane just... go so violently against everything that we as fans love - which, while not perfect, would be a bit like if Obama suddenly turned around during his presidency and said “close off the boarders, get rid of health care, let the poor die”. It’s not shocking and deeply expected from someone like HIC. It’s deeply shocking and disturbing from someone like Jane. 

It also lessens the point you’re trying to make with ruined character development. People are so lost and confused over Jane suddenly being a fascist that anything they could be trying to say ABOUT facism is being talked over by fandom feelings of betrayal. The joke they made out of Karkat being a Solid Snake ripoff gives no credit towards anything they’re trying to make out of the rebellion. 

In fiction, it’s almost always better to parallel real life issues with clearly defined traits; a villain and a hero. HIC is a villain. Jane is a hero. You can add in morally grey characters, of course, especially those in positions of power, because things aren’t always so well defined - but for something like politics, we’re well aware that there are Good Guys and Bad Guys, or at least Bad Guys and Even Fucking Worse Guys. And we know, for instance, that these people are almost always RAISED to be racist, to be xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, abelist, classist, murderers - it’s in every ounce of their blood to continue white supremacy because it benefits them most. 

So the fact that Jane is now suddenly a villain, for no actual reason - without a full character arc, without any real justification, she just takes over and all of a sudden she’s paranoid about trolls and being incredibly xenophobic from the start - is what people are going to focus on most. They’ve upheaved so fucking much, it’s almost impossible not to look at the upheaval and to make that the point focus of attention. Like, how much clearer could it be that they’re making Jane a portrayal of white people in power despite the characters supposedly being aracial? And where the fuck did any of this come from? Why are such important and VERY close-to-home topics being thrust onto a character that we used to associate with? Why are they putting Jane up onto the rung of fucking Trump, when they could have chosen a completely new character for this to have been and actually gotten their point across away from the hurt fury of “what the fuck did you do to Jane?”

When you do something like this, you seriously run the risk of detracting away from the point you’re trying to make - which is exactly what’s happened. 

Unless, of course, there’s no fucking point at all. A lot of HS^2′s writing focuses on the “nitty gritty of being an adult”, so there’s a fairly big potential that this... isn’t meant to reflect on anything in specific. It might just be what the writers think are “adult issues”, which, again, almost completely discredits the entire fucking point they’re trying to make. They might be doing this just to be shocking, to be upsetting, because they know ruining Jane will piss a lot of people off - and how much does that undermine the very real issue of facism when a lot of what’s going on in HS^2 is happening in our world right now? 

This isn’t the sort of climate where you just turn someone into a fascist to be shocking. Not when real world fascism is on the rise and becoming more violent. That goes beyond shocking - it’s upsetting and tone deaf and horrifying, actually.

But, yeah. Homestuck has always has politics involved at its very core, like you said. It’s just that it was handled a damn slight better than whatever the fuck’s happening in HS^2 now.