#i say; homestuck! can't live with it & can't possibly live without it

[vellichorom]

Opinion on homestuck? I have not read anything about it but I got cursed by it a little and made sprite edits lmao

OOH! that looks extremely on point to the homestuck style! awesome job !!!!!

but OH BOY, what can I say about homestuck...

well, I'll be honest with you, I started reading some odd years back, got 1000+ pages in, & I hhhhhaven't picked it back up since. I'm sorry, I'm sure SOMEDAY I'll finish it, but my brain shits the bed at the thought of 8000+ pages & probably 8000+ games. it is an IMPRESSIVE work from what I understand, both in length & for it's undoubtable charm that's kept readers & players coming in & staying for YEARS, to the point that the story itself has become one with history & internet culture as a whole, which is truly incredible.

despite the jokes we make with it, that is NO easy feat. & yeah, I know too that its obviously got its issues; jokes that didn't age well, jokes & allegories that weren't at all necessary to begin with, the creator's not great - ect, but nevertheless. not everything important or great is squeaky clean & without it's problems, of course. but it's just !!!!!! my god.

& i think the concept of the trolls is honestly a really creative one, actually - EVEN IF I DON'T UNDERSTAND ALL THE BLOOD HIERARCHY STUFF, just. allegedly giijinka-fied internet trolls & they all suck. i've always had something of a fondness for eridan ( to no one's surprise ) & i've just recently learned a bit more about him when my friend looked into the friendsim game, & oh my god. geekass loser, my favorite flavor

MORE PROMINENTLY, my friends all like homestuck, so it's become a running gag that anytime someone so much as mentions it, i seethe

so as you can tell it's got a place deeply woven into my soul,

[applestorms]

DN ask game: how about 18 and 23 (23 I will amend to 'one of your current favourite moments,' in case you are me and hate choosing favourites in any kind of absolute way haha)

CACKLES oh you know me so well =3=" original ask game

18. what do you think about Wammy’s House?

MY GOD. what do i NOT think about wammy's house. i feel like i've already talked a bit on wammy's house in Various Essays, but i suppose to coagulate some of those kinda random thoughts...

it Fucks those kids up. by nature of what wammy's house Is, i don't think it's possible for a single kid to get through it w/o getting at least a little fucked up. that goddamn orphanage is releasing a Storm of incredible messed up little geniuses on the world and the world will never recover. you can't create a fucking organization based around concepts like Live Up To The World's Greatest Detective or Never Ever Use Your Real Name (guess that's probably KIRA motivated, but still) without screwing over the sense of identity of an entire generation. nobody's doin it like them fr.

i really really really like the idea that people toss around about KIRA = god of the new world, therefore -> L = god of the old world, and i think wammy's house maps onto that idea super well as a kind of cult of the old god. something something greco-roman mystery cults, L as a void player homestuck classpect-wise, the Secrets and Idolization inherent to that entire entity. oh yeah it's all comin together rubs my hands eviley.

i saw someone say the LABB murders novel was bad the other day and almost cried because i personally Adore that book, for the additional naomi characterization + beyond moments yes, but also for the extra lore it establishes about wammy's and L more generally. having actual Generations within the house is so fucking fascinating by how you can break it down, especially when you try to fit L into it and maybe have a generation where he was interacting with the other kids during his kinda Rise to Power. i definitely think beyond and L interacted quite extensively at the very least (headcanon basis for that mostly, i just like the idea + it explains why he even got the idea to emulate him so closely), and the existence of A in and of itself is such a fascinating mystery, i love seeing how people mess with the idea of them in different ways.

also everyone go read heirs and spares for fantastic light-at-wammy's house content that almost reads like some of the best earliest parts of the promised neverland and also has some great L and light childhood worsties content. go go

also kira bless time speaks for writing that entire timeline where light and L go live at wammy's and traumatize mello w/ their horrible terrible flirting that is fucking saving me. i am so Desperate for more lawlight interacting with wammy's content i have no idea why that sets my brain off so bad but it Just Does. etc etc L negligent parent King for the win, i need to see near and L have the most horrible terrible psychological battles monologuing so loud it stinks up the entire damn room while mello and light are beating each other with bats in the background. please. lord.

also also roger's characterization in the seals are good series is unironically my accepted characterization for him now whoops. btw i don't think i have many Deep Thoughts on watari, he's kinda just a shitty old man philanthropist to me :/ though i do find him more interesting and Paternalistic with a good L genderbend.........

23. what was your favorite moment and why?

you said current favorite so honestly... ok i'll limit myself to two.

FAVORITE SCENE OF ALL TIME: LIGHT DYING. ez. specifically in the manga. there is legitimately no better scene in the entire series. this fucking panel haunts my dreams it's so goddamn Good

there is nothing i love more in this world than watching light yagami bloody and pathetic crawling on the floor and begging for his life only to die like every other criminal he killed. his fear is so Palpable it literally makes me sick. i've read this final sequence, like ch.105-107 but especially this last bit so many goddamn times istg it's burned into my eyelids LIGHT YAGAMIIIIIIII. also his laugh in the anime is fucking incredible in both dubs 10/10 no notes you killed it fellas

FAVORITE SCENE AT THIS MOMENT: been thinking a Lot about both naomi and matsuda lately and their various notable scenes, oddly. i think i need to reread his entire comedy of errors during yotsuba again alskjfskjd and also check out naomi's death again esp in conjunction with LABB murder stuff?? idk. they're both characters that i feel i haven't talked much about (also kiyomi, thought i've been getting Thoughts on her LMFAO thank you forever @kiyomitakada) so i wanna get my image of them cleared up more in my head. also all of the SPK too, halle especially. damn i guess that's a whole lot of moments actually :P WHATEVER.

anyways ty for the ask <33

[obstinaterixatrix]

i've finally read no home after seeing a few comments about your liveblog about it but wanting to hold off until it ended and now that it's over i have to say it's sooooo good. i feel like a lot of people have already spoken at length about haejoon and euyoung's relationship which is so very. itself. and i'll leave at that but i think an underrated part of it is how juwan fits in because they're the three mcs who live in the dorms together while the girls don't/can't. so they form this interesting trio where juwan not really dealing with the same money + grief/abuse issues as haejoon and euyung have respectively makes him the most well adjusted of the three. so while he can't connect to them about familial trauma in the same way he provides each of them a sense of normalcy as a steady companionable best friend for haejoon (that's his person A and i think haejoon reciprocates his dedication in his own way) and even for euyoung who kinda disregards juwan a lot but comes around to really relying on and having a really normal friendship with him where they can just chat and text and hang out without any expectations esp since his relationship with haejoon is often so contentious for obvious reasons. he's both practiced in and good at friendship and despite having his own issues around conflict considering how his parents are and becomes really good at mediating between them (telling haejoon to lay off when he's being suspicious of euyoung, telling euyoung to be patient when haejoon is super intense about studying). without him around i get the feeling things would have been a lot more volatile a lot more of the time. he's a bit of a brat at times esp at first but i genuinely appreciated him and i'm rooting for him in all his loser bisexuality lol

was tempted to make a homestuck auspistice edit and leave it at that lol. but legit, I’m sooo glad you read and enjoyed it!!! no home is so good!!! I feel like juwan’s a point of reference, he has his issues but is able to correct himself. I also feel like even though his problems are comparatively ‘smaller’, he does get validated—it *is* upsetting when you feel stifled and you don’t feel like your privacy is respected. plus, it shows a kid-parent relationship where repair is achievable and positive which imo does a good job of emphasizing why repair isn’t possible for some of the other kid-parent relationships in a grounded way. No Home Good

[godsfavoritescientist]

Bill Cipher: Lord of Hope (the homestuck classpect)

explanation for why I picked this classpect for him under the cut

First of all, a brief note on how I interpret classpects: I think classpect is heavily influenced by one's narrative role in a story. It's influenced by personality too, of course, but someone with the exact same personality could have a completely different classpect depending on how the story uses them.

Lord is an extremely powerful class reserved for the big-bad in homestuck. It means having unimaginable amounts of control over your aspect (which here is Hope). It's also a volatile, destructive, and self-serving class. It's also the mirror and opposite of the Muse class, which is equally powerful, but wielded passively for the benefit of others, often using methods more like setting up all the components of a rube goldberg machine behind the scenes, rather than the Lord's preferred method of steamrolling over things whenever possible.

Second note on my classpecting philosophy: Each aspect has an opposite, and I think these aspect pairs meaningfully influence each other by virtue of being on opposite ends of a continuum. You might even say they're opposite sides of the same concept.

Hope is the aspect of imagination, limitless possibilities, belief, and the literal meaning as well. It also has a ton of religious undertones. Its opposite aspect is Rage, which, other than the literal meaning, is all about doubt, skepticism, tearing down facades, and seeking the truth at all costs. It carries a deep disdain for the unfounded and the sugar-coated. Instead of living in a world of fanciful ideas, it cares about pushing past anything it sees as substance-less to uncover the way things really are, no matter how ugly the truth might be. They both need each other--without Hope, Rage becomes misery. Without Rage, Hope becomes completely disconnected from reality.

Which brings me to Bill. On the Hope-Rage spectrum, he's leaned so absurdly far towards Hope that he's convinced himself Rage doesn't even exist. In his reddit AMA, he literally says "lie until what you want to be true becomes true. Lie until you can't remember what's a lie and what isn't. Lie until you aren't lying anymore." I can't think of a better encapsulation of what it means to push the Hope aspect to its absolute extreme. He believes so much in the power of belief that he simply ignores any truths he doesn't like.

He embodies the Hope aspect in many other ways, too. Originally he was going to be more of a morally-neutral trickster character, whose whole purpose was just to show up randomly in Dipper's dreams and rattle off wild statements of questionable truth and conspiracy theories at him. The kind of things that people hope are true (sometimes to make the world seem more exciting and magical, sometimes for bigoted reasons, you know how it is with conspiracy theories), but the point is: Bill retains some of this in his canon personality. He tells Ford in the journal that the moon landing was fake. When he first meets Gideon, he says the whole "reality is an illusion" thing. He delights in sharing these kinds of things with people, and yeah, it's to fuck with them, but there's still something to be said about the fact that he accomplishes this through the use of things that exist as uncertain possibilities in people's minds, and things that some people have a strong belief in and/or hope to find proof of. He's wielding Hope as a tool, because that's when he's in his element.

Bill also preys on people's hopes and dreams, appearing to people literally inside their heads, and existing mainly in dreams and minds for billions of years--a place where you really can create anything you can imagine. He uses Ford's hopes of accomplishing something meaningful to get him to create a doomsday device. He also has Ford practically worshiping him, calling him a Muse with a capital M, calling his presence 'divine intervention'... the religious themes that often go hand-in-hand with the Hope aspect are definitely present. Of course a Lord would wield the Hope aspect to give himself worshipers who practically see him as a god.

And, speaking of doomsday devices, Weirdmageddon is the exactly what would happen in a world where the Hope aspect ran rampant without any laws or restrictions or concrete truths. In the codes of Journal 3, Bill says, "why should time only move forward, why must cause precede effect, who voted on the laws of physics - rules are perversions against all will, that's why I'm about to rewrite the whole system buddy, and no one is going to stop me."

We also get some insight into Bill's beliefs when we take a look as Mabel's dreambubble. He literally uses someone's hopes as a weapon against them, trapping her inside a twisted version of all the things that could've been true, if only the world was fueled by pure imagination, without any laws of physics or imperfect days or boring moments. Bill is so confident that this trap is infallible that he doesn't even bother to stop Dipper from trying to get her out once he makes it inside the dreambubble. Maybe the reason why Bill is so confident that this trap is inescapable is because he's pretty much trapped himself in a dreambubble of his own creation, where anything is possible and fantasy wins over reality every time (talking about the nightmare realm here), and was so intoxicated by the limitless lawlessness of the place that he spent billions of years trying to expand his little self-imposed prison to cover the rest of the multiverse, rather than ever stop to question himself or consider the consequences. Because with enough Hope, there are no consequences, only infinite possibilities limited only by your own imagination! ...right?

I could probably go on, but I think this is more than enough to support my case for Bill being a Lord of Hope. I'm always interested to hear about other classpect headcanons though!

[29pageshomestuckeveryday]

Homestuck, page 7,928

[S][A6A6I5] ====>

And there it is.

The greatest reunion in Homestuck history. Neigh, the greatest MOMENT. It does not get better than this. It WILL NOT get better than this. At some point, possibly during the 5th or 6th loop of the above animation which you can't seem to stop watching and listening to, a thought occurs to you. You think with a sense of relief, this is it. We made it. This one-page triumph has just retroactively vindicated the long and arduous journey behind it. After every bump in the road, every setback, every nagging doubt about the story's direction, every FUCKING time your waifu got the shaft, all of that just got wiped away in the blink of a tearful eye by the single greatest piece of media you have ever experienced.

You can finally say with absolute conviction that it's all been worth it. It has all paid off. All roads no matter how treacherous brought you to this glory. Every obscure plot thread, every batshit twist, all that retcon stuff, the sprite squared shit, every bit of dubious narrative legerdemain, ALL of it you now realize was designed with excruciating precision to achieve this singular, magnificent result. You'd be blown away in hindsight by these shocking feats of multi-threaded plot prestidigitation if you weren't still transfixed by the looping animation. And your jaw would be hitting the floor by now if not for the leagues-deep sense of tranquility welling inside your bosom now that you know Homestuck's audacious promise has been utterly fulfilled forever.

You're now into your… what is it? 11th, maybe 12th loop of the animation? You've lost track, and it doesn't matter. What's the hurry, you wonder. What's the harm in camping on this page for a while longer. What else do you have going on? Maybe it's time we faced the facts. This is truly all you have. This is your LIFE. Without breaking eye contact with your monitor, you find yourself reaching for your smartphone. Wait, why exactly am I doing this, you wonder? Why am I going for my phone. You are going for your phone because it's time to take a fucking PICTURE, numbnuts. You decide that digital photography is the best way to make this shit last forever.

You nod and go, oh that makes sense, yeah. I'll definitely take a picture of this animation which has looped at least 20 times by now. Make sure you get yourself in the picture too, to prove you were there. You mumble, what? A selfie. Take a god damn selfie of yourself, posing next to page 9828 of MS Paint Adventures dot com. As you contort your body to pose next to your screen and flip your camera to selfie mode, I continue my unhinged diatribe to instruct all other readers to do the same. I want to see SELFIES, people. I need to see your ridiculous mugs next to these two gently bobbing freaks posted publicly on all of your social media channels by the THOUSANDS. Not just a few thousand either. Oh no. Like an old and wise meme once foretold, we're gonna need to clear nine big ones here. In fact I'm gonna need your selfies jacked up so far over 9000, scientists will have to start inventing new numbers to keep track.

Choke the internet with your selfies, or with a horse as my witness, I will delete this fucking website. If I don't see enough selfies out there, I will scrub Homestuck from the Akashic Servers and never speak its name again. I will then dedicate every shred of ingenuity, political influence and worldly resources I have to releasing darkness on this planet. So post your selfies early. Post them often. Post them to save a modern literary MASTERPIECE. Post them to save the lives of BILLIONS. But most of all, post them because you really want to, and were PROBABLY going to do it anyway even if I didn't say all this bullshit.

Song used: Horsecatska by James Roach

[hungeringheart]

If you're still active can I have a Derse witch of hope analysis

Hi! I'm going through my backlog answering a bunch of asks (in appearance order). I'm sorry I took so long, a lot was happening! I have to say thank you for letting me have a reason to do another classpect post, I really liked doing that first one. I hope you like this!

Without further ado, let me make this as lovely an experience to read as it must have been to see the other one for you!

Let me teach you to wonder and worry,

Permit me to tell you how to wage war;

A creature's reach should exceed its grasp,

Or what's a heaven for?

- Leslie Fish, Lucifer

Regarding Hope

Homestuck frames Hope as a very powerful aspect. I would caution people against the assumption that it's always the most important variable in all games -- it was central to the kids' story in a way it may not be in other narratives -- but we get direct statements from Aranea about the power of Hope, and a number of people get stepped on by Hope heroes who shouldn't get stepped on otherwise. This is because, basically, an aspect that runs on not obeying limitations is really effective in a story about unfairly imposed limitations.

That's what I think Hope really means in context -- perseverance at any cost, the faint glimmer of possibility, the boundary between "is" and "might be", the ability to dream and want things you can't have, the part of the future you cannot see and have to trust in. In some respects all players have to learn Hope-type behaviours and understandings (to play the game at all you have to go in blind and trust in the idea it will all be ok), but Hope players have the inevitable certainty that what they're doing will have an effect... and honestly, considering the grind? They deserve it, probably.

I'm not a sadist; I enjoy just being able

To be a witness of

the loneliness

And be a higher power,

In case there isn't one...

In case there isn't one.

I'm not a higher power; I just live in the ceiling,

'Cause I'm lonely on the fringes

And it gives my life some meaning

In the exile -- in my exile.

- Paris Paloma, notre dame

Regarding Witches

Witches, like I've said here before many a time, change and change through their aspect; their task is to challenge and reform things and systems that aren't working. They're supposed to be opposed in this in some way; the operative symbolism here is the Biblical witch, who in context would have been a type of spirit medium, a person who could hypothetically see justice done, call up the victim's ghost, reveal that it wasn't justice at all and complicate things for everyone immensely; we should also consider the more recent witch, the one properly called by that name, and the overall imagery of the outcast and the distrusted.

As the Sylph is the benign and accepted side of this dyad, the Witch is the questionable, dangerous, unpredictable one -- after all, to "heal" and "repair" something sounds a lot less threatening to the people who built it than "fix" and "change". Even if those things are substantially the same in practice, sometimes.

A Witch of Hope, then, is a person who exists challenging common understandings of Hope -- an unusual Hope player who chooses to lean into being unusual, maybe in many ways even behaving like a Sylph of Doom. A Dersite Witch of Hope is one who doesn't accept the way of things or necessarily the framing of their aspect, and whose methods are perhaps more invasive and direct than some others' may be -- but in what way? Let's see.

Tired and worn from the patterns I've carved,

I will do better in the morning.

I'm afraid of who I'd be without you,

I will do better in the morning.

Twisting up smokes, I'm in control

'Til the fire burns down my miniature vacation

And I'm always left with the taste in my mouth --

I will do better in the morning.

- Birdtalker, Better in the Morning

A detour to Prospit

There's something that all Derse dreamers have in common, and we can best understand it in terms of the opposite.

Of course there is the official quiz writeup about the moon sway, which tells us they're all unified by a restless skepticism and an anxiety about time -- but outside of that, and actually maybe even ignoring that, have you noticed that both canonical Derse dreamers had a similarity of journey?

Dave and Rose's struggle throughout the game is essentially the same struggle -- the game is pretty dumb for some shit that has everybody by the scruff of the neck, and the thing that has to change about that before they can approach the problem is their own approach to the situation.

Now, see, Prospitian quests seem to be focused more on external things, connections, social markers of coming of age, the system as it's meant to help growing children -- and Dersites' quests are internally focused, typically between them, some deep thought and the relevant entities one by one. Rose's grimdarkness, Dave's time travel -- oh goodness, the time travel. Why is that?

The answer is probably why Prospit dreamers have a stereotype of being agreeable -- not necessarily, and they don't need to be whimsical extroverts the way that John and Jade are; they just have to be able not to push away people they need, whether because they love those people and were never hurt by them, or because they're afraid of and resigned to them... or because the invisible hand of the game has, like the proverbial monkey's paw, curled a finger.

Not to say that all players don't have to go through both a social and personal maturation before they can create a new universe, but the game might select an arbitrary sway for a person based on a perceived shortage in their life of that element.

In this school of thought, it's popular fanon that abused children are often Prospit dreamers -- they're already on a journey of struggle no one else can see before they play, and if they refuse to externalize it (like Dave does, thus his Derse sway) they end up dreaming on Prospit because the computer is a cheating bastard.

Skaia needs them in shape to play and exploits their sense of order (damaged as it is) to get them in a position to do it -- if you're already really good at accepting existential horrors in your personal life, what's a fantastical computer world of friendly lizards to you? More importantly, might puttering around looking after several thousand mentally deficient salamanders and befriending individual pawns from a culture that hates you (the multiplayer equivalent of forming the Felt) help you heal from the trauma of your own uncaring childhood?

A Derse sway then might mean a typically edgy sort of lone wolf or contrarian for any number of readily worldbuildable reasons, but it could also mean that this person has trouble trusting and relying on themself and their own instinct -- and what better way to sharpen that faculty than making them rely on it all night every night in their sleep?

Put it all together now:

A Dersite Witch of Hope is someone who has to make some internal changes and grow a little around the idea that the conditions and axioms of persistence and faith in their world are flawed; someone who is assigned the task of dreaming about and iterating on these things until they crystallize in some sort of a waking plan or indeed a hope for a way forward.

This person will not be unopposed in the external world, but their internal journey is about them individually, about how they digest the ideas they encounter and grow into the type of person they need to be...

All in all, a perfectly charming kind of thing to be -- and player to have in your game, don't you think?

[lumsel]

I think the existence and success of 17776 runs counter to this narrative. It is still possible to be a success in the new paradigm while still being innovative with the format. It's difficult, sure, but it was always difficult, success was far from a guarantee for even the most innovative webcomic media.

But, honestly, I think there's other reasons why nothing like like Homestuck ever seemed to have happened. One of those reasons was that the only reason Homestuck could be the thing that it was, was because the author was independently wealthy and could pour an inordinate amount of labour into the project. Making something of the scope and scale of homestuck the way Hussie did is honestly insane. They were working fulltime on that shit. Most artists can't afford to do that.

I say all this as someone who is living the struggle, I'm making an independently hosted webcomic (obligatory plug, go read it!) that Does Stuff with the medium, and with that I've been facing some pretty low-scale readership. Maybe it would have been easier to score views in the age before webtoon was a thing. But that's the cost of making niche art. Culture changes, paradigms shift, what was will not always be. I think, if you look at webtoon and despair, it'd be because you're judging the success of art by how many eyes land on it or how many dollars it's able to extract from its readers. The existence of more popular art does not preclude the existence of your niche. I dislike the narrative that Webtoon "drove off" any artists who couldn't live up to their standard, because it is just as easy to host a website and put your art online as it always has been. The only thing that they can take from you is the promise of success. You can still make Homestuck!! Just fucking do it! And then tell your friends, and show it to them, and find satisfaction through that!

And still besides, viewing Homestuck as a unique exemplar in the field of webcomics is still too limiting a lens. Expand your reach to visual novels and indie games and weird experimental shit on itch.io that doesn't have a name yet. It's all just art! Even Homestuck is only categorised as a webcomic for the sake of convenience -- if you really want to carry on the spirit of Homestuck you need to cast off the necessity of categorisation and start looking for what people can do with art without the constraints of medium binding them. The world is so much richer than you could possibly know. You only need to learn to see...!

People don't like to admit it bcs cringe or w/e but Homestuck really did revolutionize the webcomic as a storytelling medium and I am endlessly frustrated that before webcomic artists could really stretch our legs fucking webtoonz swooped in, set a new, more restrictive standard, and then monetized and monopolized the ever living fuck out of the concept of The Webcomic until it drove away anyone who couldn't be a professional quality manga artist for free, and now the only webcomics that actually feel like spiritual successors to Homestuck are so obscure they're basically cult classics that you have to beg people to read.

Like it's just so wild to be in high school and see Homestuck be like "we're using like fifteen different artistic mediums to tell this story bcs we can" and be really fucking inspired by that, only to grow up and see basically every webcomic ever have to conform to One Single Standard or fucking perish.

[erigold13261]

How about… Jade, Mechamaru and 1010? (Any version of 1010)

Let's do 1010 right off the bat being MK-I units! So they are like just joining NSR or somewhere around that time in their lives.

As for Mechamaru... I am still working on what he would be in the Eriverse. I was thinking he would be a set of twins, one was an organic robot and one was a psychic. The organic robot died but held a connection to the psychic twin which barely had a physical body, and so the two lived together as one basically (or well, you know one was the puppet the other the puppeteer).

Kinda don't like that anymore though. So um, let's just say that Mechamaru is kinda really similar to how he is in the anime/manga. Except he is a psychic/puppeteer who lives through a robot with no sentience (or I guess you could say no code. It literally cannot operate on it's own without Mechamaru's input and so has no chance of gaining sentience and being forced to be a puppet under Mechamaru's control).

Anyway, with that all being said, this interaction between the three would be very interesting!

You have an organic robot who is by all means both human and robot by definition, a human having to use a robot as a body to experience any kind of "normalcy" in life, and 5 robots forced synchronized into one hivemind after having their childhood and war memories forced together on top of another preprogrammed set of code to act like musicians and thirst traps.

Right off the bat you have Jade being the most realistically happy of the set, with 1010 acting happy all the time and even doing very empty flirting with Jade (not real flirting with her as she is a minor at 13, even though 1010 is programmed at 17 at this point, but the over the top bullshit flirting they do to any kind of fans), and finally Mechamaru being a pretty cynical and assholey kinda guy who looks down on both Jade and 1010 for being things.

Like I am pretty positive that Mechamaru would not like Jade or any organic robot (heck, I doubt he likes regularly built robots like 1010) because he gets mistaken for being a robot and realizing life would probably be better if he could just cyber-fy himself.

Jade I can see trying to be friends with Mechamaru, but not really pursuing a real friendship after he starts being an asshole to her (she would treat him like the trolls in homestuck and just try to ignore him, since she can't block people in real life).

She would probably find 1010 fun and a bit charming, but wouldn't really fangirl to them? I don't think she would at least. This would probably confuse 1010 (especially if this is the point after they joined NSR and are seen as beautiful and charming robots that have fans screaming over them).

1010 honestly would not know how to act at all with Jade and Mechamaru. The kinda indifference from Jade and hostility from Mechamaru is not something they were prepared for or can handle all at that moment. The 5 would most likely just stick to themselves until the whole interaction was over.

Perhaps Haym or Zimelu (honestly probably both) would reach out a bit more and have a more unique conversation with Jade, kinda prompting Rin and Eloni to talk a bit more openly, but the 5 would absolutely not stray too far away from conformity with each other and Purl would be the one keeping everyone in check to stay in a proper conversation topic area.

So overall, 1010, Jade, and Mechamaru wouldn't have the best kind of interaction with each other. Nothing really hostile but also nothing really good either. It's more of a neutral kinda interaction that just has a kind of awkwardness to it as no one really knows what to say without possibly pissing each other off.

[crazyexdirkfriend]

out of curiosity, how do you interpret that line in the epilogues where dirk says jake does not respond to nice?

Homestuck question, my beloved! (side note: it's been a while since I read any official content, so take from this what you will)

Short answer: Dirk is being a dick. He's a redpilled asshole parroting "nice guys finish last" rhetoric: he was nice to Jake! And look where it got him!

Long answer:

Assumption A: Jake DOES respond to nice.

After all, how would we know. No one is ever nice to Jake. If this is true, then this is ultimately about Dirk and Dirk's perception of Jake.

Dirk believes he's been nice to Jake. Dirk is trying to be a better person! And he really really REALLY is trying. But Dirk's definition of nice historically has been controlling every potential outcome of his friend's lives, giving them robots that ultimately make their lives more difficult (from their perspective anyway) and generally engaging in behaviour or encouraging AR to engage in behaviour that is not received positively.

Dirk has done what he views to be his absolute best and Jake and him? Still not working. Still fighting, still breaking up, Jake still feels controlled and suffocated and Dirk still feels like he's not getting 100% of Jake's affections. (Maybe he isn't- canon is unclear about whether Jake actually cheats on Dirk or whether Dirk feels as though he's been cheated because Jake is His Person and His Person is sleeping with Other People)

(We then need to make another assumption here: assume that Dirk is telling the truth and that Jake loves him. From a solely character perspective (Ultimate Dirk twists the truth more than canon Dirk, and Jake is a giant ??? about feelings) you could go either way on whether that's true or not. From a narrative perspective, we have two narrative foils, bastard soulmates; they're a pair and it makes narrative sense that Jake is in love with Dirk. That's what their bastard wobbily recovery-isn't-linear character arcs culminate in: they're in fucking love, and it's a Major Problem for everyone in the vicinity. )

So Dirk gets his ultimate powers and realises Jake's in love with him. And he's fucking furious about it. Because he's BEEN nice, he's tried to love Jake, he's tried so fucking hard! And here Jake is, in love with him, and it's still not working. And Dirk draws the assumption many men on reddit who topple down a neo-fascist pipeline do: it's not MY fault, it's not a product of circumstances, it's JAKE'S fault. Jake doesn't respond to "nice." So I'll stop being mr. nice guy.

Now.

Assumption B: ...Dirk's right.

How would we know. No one's ever been nice to Jake before. Not in a way that we can quantify (token A of nicety makes the B of love come out). So maybe this is a Jake problem TOO.

Jake is a character who considers a woman who locked him in a dungeon and threatened him with sexual slavery and never even apologised to still be his friend, to still have his loyalties. I don't think Jake would understand nice unless it bit him before kissing him better. Besides: every nicety Jake's ever had has been taken away from him.

He considers himself to be broken, to be unworthy of love, unable to feel things like other people. Dirk is the one constant Jake has, the one thing he determines can't possible leave. Because Dirk loves him, and they're soulmates, and Jake can never ever ever acknowledge that without 7 layers of repression or he won't cope with the sheer vulnerability that comes with. Making yourself known to a person who can then hurt you but never leave.

Which means it's less dangerous if Dirk sorta kinda resents him a little. I mean, he can't leave, right? So Jake can go out and hurt himself (because, let's face it, a non-dismissable part of this is self harm) and push Dirk away and make Dirk hate him because it's easier to make Dirk hate him for something that Jake thinks he's in control of. Instead of settling into love and realising Dirk hates him anyway, and is still stuck with him, for something Jake can't control, for not being Poster Boy.

Is Jake consciously trying to push Dirk away or is he conscious that Dirk will never leave? Who knows. Dirk doesn't tell us and Jake has 0 agency of his own narrative in the epilogues to tell us either. Jake is barely a person in the epilogues because he's being consistently puppeted by every narrative force against his will. Does Jake subconsciously know this? Yeah. And that's exactly why Dirk DOES leave. Because fuck you narrative hope force in Jake's subconscious, Dirk can do what he likes.

But basically, I feel like "Jake doesn't respond to nice" is somewhere in the middle. Dirk is parroting redpill dudebro rhetoric because nice isn't giving him Jake, nice and fixed and emotionally stable. Jake also doesn't really respond to nice because nice is fleeting, nice is suspicious, and nice is something he can't earn, keep, hope to perpetually deserve. It's easier to be hot, and fake-stupid, and unattainable, and keep Dirk on his toes while perpetually spinning on a top for him because otherwise Dirk might look through the cracks and see that Jake is really nothing special at all underneath.

(also final note: he's talking about Jake and Jane in this context. Nice is never going to get Jane Jake, because Jake doesn't want her. Dirk's statement in the context of Jane not using "nice" is...more sinister still.)

[skimblyshanks]

I'll just say.

I was an anti ages 13-17.

I was always a rather passive anti? By 16-17 I was annoyed by most ppl I saw and probably would have called myself neutral. I don't think it's a coincidence that by this point I was in a DBT therapy group where skills were taught to own and manage our own feelings and behavior to the best of our ability.

I look back at the behavior I condoned towards artists who hadn't done a thing wrong and I still get hit by waves of guilt like. I wasn't even active in the harassment per se, but I absolutely rationalized it as being deserved when it just. Plainly wasn't.

Constant crosstagging while feigning innocence toward such behaviour; constant posts and answered asks about how ~dangerous~ an artist was for drawing a ship. Same artist mocks antis for being so pressed abt a 7 year age gap btwn a fictional 18 year old and a fictional 25 year old? They're as evil and bad as plebcomics.

One artist was deemed an active danger to children bc they did nude figure studies and made them homestuck characters. Hatred toward artists was obsessive; new accusations against them to justify continued obsession were often just. Being mad they still existed on the platform.

Anyway, just. I can't get back into the old headspace I occupied. I don't know if I ever will be. But what I've seen since 2020 has only served to make antidom and the behaviors it encourages just. Inexcusable to me.

And I look back at 13 year old me and I just feel bad. Guilty. For all the claims and behavior I'd end up spewing and supporting in those next 4 years. Especially now not only being on the receiving end starting literal months after I turned 18 and getting a refresh every few months, but also seeing shit like the harassment of Bryan Fuller; iamlunasol; seeing an artist, who isn't even proship but merely offered support to one bc they were dealing with a hacker, get "outed" as gay by antis to their family while living in Iran. Quotation marks bc the family member they told already knew, but that wasn't common knowledge; seeing the horrifying reactions to the possibility that a 15 year old killed themselves over harassment received over an rpf shockfic.

I still feel pangs of panic and shame and paranoia while making innocuous content. I have lost a large amount of my capacity to trust and befriend new faces bc of the willingness to turn on me no questions asked. But mostly I see teen antis and just. Either you're going to grow up without understanding why and how what you're doing is genuinely harmful, or else you're going to look back on your teenage years and feel awful. Antis are hurting real people, and it gets harder to ignore that the older you get; the more control you get in your own life. And like idk I just find the whole thing skeevy and v much built around exploiting young people by grabbing them before they can realize all the radfem and otherwise reactionary and conservative rhetoric that antidom is drowning in.

Idk how to end this lmao. Uh. If your side is pointing at everything it doesn't like ad is seeing pedophilia. Ask why the ppl most likely to agree with that assessment believe in pizzagate, the wayfair conspiracy, and satanic panic

[jonayariley]

Hi, so, I generally don't like to wade into fandom discourse stuff, but I feel like there's a couple things that deserve a little bit of clarification, because I'm seeing the edges of some pretty wild speculation, and I'd prefer to just straight-up address it immediately in a way that's unambiguous. I'll try to make this concise and keep it semi-organized, but I can't promise anything.

Before I go through this, I just wanna say that it feels weird to speculate about a real-life person (me) like this (this comment isn't directed at Cro, btw, who is my friend and I appreciate standing up for me). I'm going to respond to this, because I think the clarification is important, but this isn't an opening for a back-and-forth or whatever. I just prefer transparency in general.

The person who's a producer on Hiveswap is me, Jonaya, not "Studio June" as an entity (although that's mostly me and Anna in terms of permanent people - but we've got a lot of folks who've worked with us under that name). Studio June is an independent entity that represents the development studio and publishing name for projects that I have substantially contributed towards. Mainly Friendsim 2, but a couple other smaller games and some stuff we're working on for the future that isn't related to Homestuck.

Friendsim 2 remains unofficial and will always, as I've said several times, remain 100% free. Even if I wanted to charge for it (which I don't), I have negotiated non-commercial contracts with several artists and licensed it using non-commercial attribution licenses. Which means not only is it free, but anyone is free to use the assets in their own projects, provided they provide proper credit and don't charge money for what they make using the assets. I've been super up-front about this from the beginning - especially with the code component, which is something I feel pretty strongly about as a professional developer and someone who's been very vocally supportive of fangame creation in this fandom. If someone at HICU or Andrew or whoever wants to declare Friendsim 2 canon - sure, why not? I'd make a cheeky twitter post about it (because we use the "officially unofficial" tagline) and then go on with my day, because ultimately it's not going to materially change anything about the work or its place in the fandom.

As you might be able to surmise, working as a part-time producer for an indie developer is not a full-time, living wage type thing. Like, I have a corporate job that pays my bills and all that good stuff.

I won't run down my CV or anything, qualifications-wise, but suffice to say I have extensive professional experience in software development and project management (I've been working for coming up on 20 years now). Fandom-wise, obviously Friendsim 2 is a huge project with a lot of production stuff involved. Whether or not you like the game, I don't think you can argue that the production isn't extensive. I'm also one of the SAHCon directors, another big thing that takes a lot of production effort. And I've been involved with a ton of stuff in the fandom. I like it here, obviously, or I wouldn't put so much work into this stuff.

I was gonna specifically respond to the stuff you said about the Sarah Z video, but then you pivoted to some of my criticisms so I'll just address all of that as concisely as I can: I believe it is possible to criticize something without being an asshole about it, and without thinking that thing is therefore irredeemable. I also believe that it's possible for anyone to change how they think and feel about things - and that includes myself. So yeah, I've had some criticisms of how stuff was being handled with Hiveswap and post-canon content. I was critical of the response to the Sarah Z video, which felt both alienating to the fanbase and overblown. And I also saw the outreach that James and the HICU folks have been doing as a way to help build those bridges within the fandom back. So I'm seeing material work being done to improve things, and when I was asked basically if I wanted to be a part of that, it felt like a good opportunity. I've worked very hard to approach people fairly and build positive relationships in this community. Because I believe that, overall, that's the best approach. I'm going to continue doing that, because this fandom and the people who're a part of it matter to me, and if there's something I can do to help make cool shit, I'm honored to be a part of that too. If I felt like things were so bad as to be untenable, I wouldn't be here anymore. There's plenty of things in the world that aren't Homestuck (many of which I've even been involved in!), and if things suck ass, no one is obligated to stick around.

Keeping in mind the stuff I already said about Studio June, I as a person am not involved with creative decisions regarding canon content. If I were asked to take on a creative role, I'd be happy to - but also, that's obviously not where my skills are most needed right now, and I'm more than happy to help with something I love in a way that I feel I'm capable of helping. If I were in a creative role, I'm not sure why I would respond in that way (your initial comment about pretending criticism is always due to hatred). Like, I don't respond to criticisms of Friendsim 2 like that - because it's a work of fiction and you're allowed to feel however you want about it. My philosophy is that as a writer and creator, you make what speaks to you and your team and you try to make something interesting and engaging. And no one is gonna like everything, and that's completely fine. Trying to please everyone just ends up making mediocre art that pleases no one. There are definitely bad-faith criticisms, but I don't especially feel like getting into an extended debate about any of that here.

Anyway, I think that grabs most of the highlights from the above thread. At the end of the day, I'm just a gal who likes Homestuck and Hiveswap a very normal amount and also happens to have a lot of professional experience with project development.

I like this fandom, I like the creativity it inspires, and I like seeing people engage with that. Any criticisms I have I try very hard to make in good faith, and I keep myself open to changing my mind or reevaluating things. I try to see the best in people and their motivations, and I want to help make things better, even if only a little bit.

Y'all have a good day now - I'm going to go play Elden Ring.

i just hope Studio June won't become Snake Solutions 2.0 and would respond any legitimate criticism about CANON material they took control of with "hurr durr you hate marginalized people". Dunno man the holier-than-thou clique behavior is what made me stay far away from the fandom.

Fingers crossed!

Unfortunately for you, they are the same holier-than-thou clique too. There is no way they will be better at this than Snake Solutions. At worst, Studio June gets approval by James Roach and HICU that their Hiveswap Friendsim 2 is canon and the team can be allowed to put a price label on the fangame if it means also giving James Roach and HICU a cut.

[infinitycircuit]

the blanket with the stupid strawberries | tanuki | trial 6.7

[ ♫♫♫ ]

Let's go back to Mokichi Mamizuka and the bottom of the sea.

This time, you aren't sinking. You're standing and smiling, because you're not actually at the bottom of the sea. You haven't just been beaten over the head repeatedly. You aren't losing your grip on life. You're just... standing in a room made to look like it's the sea. You're standing next to Lindsay Tsai, wearing his funny clothes, and watching as strange egg-shaped creatures run around without a care in the world.

It's... nice?

It's nice because you thought you'd always hate the ocean after what happened on the terrible crackling train and on the boat made of mud, but this... this... makes you happy. It's silly, yes, but... sometimes you need silly, right?

Sometimes you need silly... yeah...

It makes you forget, if only for a moment, what kinds of horrors have gone on while you've been living on the train. You forget about the threat of death. You forget about the horrible game. You forget about your worries. It's just you, Lindsay, some eggdogs, and the bottom of the ocean.

Of course, this is just a memory. And like any memory, it fades. All you see now Lindsay sitting there, in that chair, speaking. No more ocean. no more eggdogs. Back to reality. Back to death. Back to the train.

You had a suspicion, but didn't say anything out of kindness for Tomie. You had a suspicion, but didn't want it to be true. You had a suspicion, but hoped and prayed that it was someone who wasn't in this room, someone who you cared about and thought cared for you-- 

You wonder... how much of that was even real...

Were you just being naïve, like always? You didn't think about the possibility? Because you're not a profound thinker?

You can't focus on what he's saying -- you just think about Lindsay painting your nails, you think about showing him that impromptu skateboard and taking a ride on it, you think about that very long explanation of Homestuck and why you're John and he's Vriska, and you think about the chicken nugget shapes... and while you're at it, you even remember the cheer you two made for Lily...

And then, you think about Lily, your shared friend with Lindsay.

i'm so tired, mamizuka-san. i don't want to know where we're going. i just want to go home...

For once, you agree with Tomie. For once, you feel rage. Because if this makes Lily cry again, if she, and everyone else here can't find a way home, for once, you won't be the kind person you are for much longer.

"Lindsay..."

Again, no honorifics. You practically snarl your next words--

"Tell us how to fix this."

[rhythmic-idealist]

[lemme just pop my disclaimer up here k thx]

Oh man oh man okay so I typed up this long silly thing wrt the Kankri post from a few days ago buuuut it’s only marginally interesting and I may or may not post it

But on the OTHER hand

@psock​ and @theenglishmanwithallthebananas wrote some fantastic replies - both to posts involving humanstuck AUs making the Signless and/or Kankri “homophobic because religion,” a fandom trope I’m not a fan of in part because it’s OOC and in part because it would be nice if we stopped writing “everyone who’s religious is going to be blindly intolerant” - and I haven’t stopped thinking about them:

@psock​ wrote (on this post): this reminds me, it's e x a c t l y the same with the signless too. "homophobic fire and brimstone preacher signless, only there to make young gay karkat suffer" is the bane of my existence. he canonically lived under a constant threat of death for something he couldn't control, where would he get off condemning someone for something they can't control in any universe, regardless of what his belief system is??

@theenglishmanwithallthebananas​ wrote (shortened from this post, though I definitely recommend reading their full comment): i think the problem is that kankri is such an asshat but like. guys. kankri a) comes from a world where he hasn’t really experienced a lot of REAL problems that affect him personally, and b) is NINETEEN. [...] Signless, on the other hand, grew up not only knowing what real actual suffering looked like, but also depending completely on the kindness of strangers to stay alive. [...]

And anyway, these both raise the same really cool idea: Homestuck has some really, really cool philosophical questions kinda buried in it about how much of who you are is born into you, and how much is environmental.

This is something I think about a lot - because clearly, Kankri and the Signless are not the same person. A more prominent example, especially in the fandom, would be Dirk and Bro. The comic doesn't really ask questions about this directly, but I think it's pretty clear that Hussie's playing with that - how did Beforus and SGRUB make the Signless into this (and I say this with love) absolute disaster, how did growing up on Alternia make Kankri well-adjusted and loved, what is Karkat supposed to take away from the idea that Kankri is some version of his ancestor?

That's off topic, but just a smidge, I swear. The point is that we see very clearly how different universes - canon AUs, if you will - create these totally different characters. But humanstuck generally serves a different purpose from the Scratch, in that despite the change in environment, we usually want to see the same characters. People even write Kankri and the Signless into the same universe, often both with very similar upbringings. So clearly, something distinctively Signless and something distinctively Kankri must carry over - and if we follow Homestuck’s suggestion that they’re intrinsically the same person in different environments, that’s tricky to accomplish.

So hang on - if the environment is different, why can't we make the Signless a total douchecanoe, why should he understand what it's like to be persecuted?

In my opinion, it's because at the end of the day most humanstuck isn't and isn't intended as an exercise in making characters as different as possible. It's not making the same point as the Scratch, and unless you're pointedly setting out to show how an environment can make the Signless a hateful and discriminatory person, I think you should maybe reconsider. (I mean, his humanstuck backstory isn't constructing you when you’re writing it.)

Your Signless didn't grow up poor? He was never persecuted? He's never had any reason to take to the streets in protest, he's not surrounded by people who are being taken advantage of and hurt and killed, he's never seen institutions harm people and never learned to question them? Then yeah, I guess depending on what you headcanon as the intrinsic core of his character once the environment's stripped away, you can probably justify writing him as a homophobic fire and brimstone preacher.

But here's the thing: you've been handed the canon equivalent of a troll-queer ("transcending the quadrants," transfer that to humanstuck or don't as you will) man of color, born without any rights because his existence violates mainstream religious and political beliefs, represented as one of the most powerful and good historical figures of his time. Honestly, what is even the point of throwing that away?

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Heya, I saw you mention Homestuck in a previous post! I'm a huge fan? Do you like Homestuck? What's your favourite part? If I had to be honest I kinda think Homestuck is a bit of a literary masterpiece. It defies genres and classifications and is quite complex with themes layered through and around each other. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit but I could totally write like a full literary analysis on Homestuck.

I like Homestuck a lot. I feel like I have said too much here already, but I should be able to say some more more soon. I guess I will at least say what I love about it – and I will definitely say it's quite a bit more than "it's very funny." It's something like "its characters are constantly surprising us and sometimes that is done by making their actions feel much more natural than we would think is possible, even when we would think this if we saw them in real life"

I can tell you some specific things that I think are good, but if that doesn't convey why I like it (and I think it does – even just from that one paragraph I could tell you why) then I'm going to have to sit on this for a while and think it over again.

Tavros getting into a giant robot to confront some enemies. This is a theme that comes up a lot, but it's especially clear here: "Look at the people we were, then look at us"

Aranea's transformation into a vampire, which gives the story the creepy, Twin Peaks feeling of someone in the wrong place at the right time, someone who has gone to great lengths to keep a dark secret

Rose, the main character, being a super genius who seems to know everything about the universe and have amazing powers but is still a normal person and can't understand most of the things she's doing – but she is just an ordinary person trying to do her best to make her life worth living, which is great

The troll characters. Some are more fun than others, but all of them are fun in their own way; they're the only characters I've actually seen people dislike, which is weird

The way the trolls treat Gamzee. This may sound like a weird thing to say, since Gamzee is kind of a weird guy, but it was really effective: he doesn't come off as evil or frightening or threatening. There are plenty of people who would be uncomfortable around Gamzee and it never comes across because the story has never given Gamzee anything to make us feel like he's anything other than a friend

John and Roxy. These characters are really close but they're also constantly trying to kill each other for very silly reasons. There is a lot of humor to be had from this.

Rose's relationship with her parents and the way this is handled

Vriska being a giant jerk. I guess I should mention the "Gamzee is Vriska" theory, even though I think it is very silly and I don't even buy it, because I really think the characterizations of these characters can be fun in themselves and that's enough for me to enjoy the story.

Meenah's relationship with Vriska

Nepeta's relationship with Dave and vice versa

John and Meenah's interactions. I think this is a good relationship dynamic but I'd like to read more about it.

Aranea's relationship with Terezi

I don't know how to convey it all without feeling like I'm trying to say "here are the reasons why you should like this story" instead of just saying "here are the things I find attractive about it" but here is all I've got

It's weird to compare it with a lot of things because you'd think that if I thought it was this good, everyone would think it's this good, but that isn't actually true – if I like it a lot I can't imagine it as being bad (or at least not as being "bad") which is a very different situation than if I just think "everyone else likes it and I should too"

So when people tell me, "well it's too weird for me" – or, like, "it's really annoying for me" – I'm not so much trying to convince them I'm right as trying to be able to say "I understand, but that's what I like, and I'm not just saying that." This kind of feels like the last point there, since I guess I kind of feel like people should respect my choice in these kinds of things.

[mantaphase]

nope im still going. but fr the fact that both of these guys are just... dudes. sure, they're living life with super-awareness, but they're still dave. they're still fundamentally human despite being inhuman by definition. really all that's changed about them is that they have access to more information now (and, like, their bodies). they're both still dave, and the only huge difference between them is their ages. and yet they're so opposite that my brain is going 90mph rn.

like obviously davesprite's whole thing is that he's not the "Real Dave", and that's super hard on him - he and rose were just about each other's only lifelines in the doomed tl. he's gone from being one of two people left alive in a hellscape, being constantly needed and in touch, to chilling on a boat and playing fuckin ghostbusters with his best friends who don't seem to realize how much he missed them. (quietly points to callie. thoughts.) he feels Less Than. his relevancy, his reality, dropped off the face of the earth as soon as he went back. like you come back to the land of possibility from a doomed timeline and your dead friends are like "ok sick but we already have a dave sorry hehe!!!" for a kid who spent 13 yrs learning to be invisible, living six months of being needed and then getting shoved into the background again is Not Great!! when he can't recognize his humanity anymore, he stops being able to recognize his personhood, and he thinks he's lost all relevance. he's just an extra now.

meanwhile some 5k years later Real Dave, who's spent his whole life being Real Dave and never knew what it was like to be forgotten, genuinely and literally gains ultimate relevance. like wormholes-his-ass-to-canon relevance. (scare quotes around canon. canon is dead.) suddenly after forty-odd years of life he is Every Dave All The Time Everywhere. he's davesprite and real dave and every other dave there ever was, including all the dead ones. in a story that's become defined by the concept of relevance, davebot hoards it. he's everything davesprite wanted, with friends and a physical form and humanity and friends. plus he's not in high school so that's a HUGE leg up. he's everything davesprite wasn't, and even then it comes back to the parallel. the strong-willed and stronger-minded mfs who made it through the epilogues and homestuck 2 know that after the addition of davebot, the meat timeline once again had a dave double. and i think it's reasonable, with the definition of canon provided to us, to say that davebot becomes that double. he's all daves forever, but still not the right dave, not the one his friends care about.

i think it's a little funny tbh - the Real Dave who davesprite wanted to be so bad ends up losing and regaining and relosing his relevance in like two minutes from our pov. i do think davebot got the better end of the deal though. sure your marriage is a little fucked but whose isn't. maybe you're 80% of the way to a midlife crisis but these things happen. at least he got to choose. it wasn't life or death for him, he could've just met the goddamn sburb obama hologram and gone back to finding shitty liberties. he chose to leave his entire life and identity behind to ascend to godhood (again). davesprite was stuck between a rock and a hard place. either you go back and fix things and hope it turns out better for the you that doesn't really care about you, or you can just talk to your sister who you'll never know is your sister until one of you dies. he talked it through with rose and he saved everyone, because at the end of the day there's not really a choice, is there? i think even without the second chance at (almost) life that he got, dave would have done it anyway. what's one more dave dead if another gets to live?

and that's another thing. sacrifice and selfishness. davebot left everyone behind where davesprite had gone back for them. and i would say it actually turned out pretty okay for davesprite, getting to be davepeta and all. like as a mentally ill teenager i think it would be pretty sick to meet a teenager who's mentally ill in the opposite direction and then you're one person and actually some of your problems end up canceling out??? AND you're part bird??? i would like that personally i think. i can only hope we never actually get to find out what happens to davebot though because that would mean more homestuck 2. maybe he finds his nepeta. pray you'll never know.

thinks about davesprite vs davebot...