#idk how this would influence gender in alternia? its never talked about but

[mithrifer]

while the responses aren't exactly right in that condy actually held all the power in alternia and could basically do whatever the fuck she wanted (it's beforus feferi that's more limited, and beforus is the noticably misogynistic planet), they are right in that there's no misandry in alternia, we never get any hints or implications towards there being any. because "whatever the fuck she wanted" for condy generally translates into "whatever doc scratch manipulated her to want" which translates into whatever caliborn wants. and he wants all the limebloods to die cause they are the color of his bitch sisters self insert.

' why does alternia have gender and misogyny ' bc caliborn made it u stupid bitch . he loves that shit

[momestuck]

Epilogues: Meat ch 18-27 [Epilogue 4]

So that happened.

In this chapter: a struggle over narration itself.

Dirk Strider has assumed control of the narration. Not unprecedented - Homestuck loves to put its narration in-voice for various characters - but in this case he’s making out that it was him all along, which has like, consequences I guess?

chapter 18

Dirk is narrating, and John actually notices sometimes - when Dirk uses words like ‘functional necessity’. But because Dirk has control over his internal monologue, the plot presses on.

It seems that just about the entire Furthest Ring has gone into the black hole, except for John maybe? Dirk narrates that John starts to blame himself for all this, and thereby decides not to go back to Earth C. He then directs John to find his dad’s wallet, floating in the void.

Despite what Dirk has said, he certainly has a different narrative voice to the preceding narration.

It’s notable that John seems to have some independence from Dirk’s narration. He can directly respond in dialogue to Dirk’s declarations, including to challenge them. Dirk’s power as narrator seems to be limited, not equivalent to the full powers of the ‘author’.

chapter 19

Dirk continues to narrate Jade giving an economic presentation to Roxy and Callie, on the subject of how Jane wants to basically recreate capitalist hierarchy, but on the new world, and that’s a pretty dreadful idea. She actually says the words “capitalist hierarchy”, and declares “none of that stuff works”... Homestuck’s politics seem to have changed, at least somewhat. (Perhaps due to Cephied’s influence..?)

Roxy is reluctant to get involved in politics, and concerned for Jane... and Dirk says something which I think will be important.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Roxy’s the only one left I haven’t been able to crack. Her mind remains a total enigma to me, just like it always has. If I had to guess, it’s her Void powers that make her invisible, even to increasingly omniscient parties such as myself. For all intents and purposes, it’s like her thoughts don’t exist. She’s the same person, as far as I can tell. She still wears her heart on her sleeve. But the bottom line remains: Roxy Lalonde is still utterly fucking inscrutable.

Anyway, then something else significant happens... Callie says they’re nonbinary.

CALLIOPE: yoU are absolUtely not an asshole!

CALLIOPE: i didn’t mind being called a girl. i still don’t really mind, it’s jUst not exactly... accUrate.

CALLIOPE: bUt i did take comfort in “being a girl” for a very long time. this is something i’ve only recently decided.

Roxy likewise says they’re enby too... this causes Dirk to have a bit of a meltdown.

I never would have guessed. Not that I’ve spent much time contemplating issues related to gender. I’m pretty secure in my expression of masculinity, and...

You know what? Fuck this. I don’t owe anyone an explanation of any sort on this topic. I’m confident with who I am, what I am, my gender, as well as my understanding of the concept. You want my honest opinion? It’s fucking fantastic. Good for them. Both of them, I mean, but also, both of them in a singular fashion, since each one can now individually be referred to by the conventionally plural word “them.” I’m ecstatic for this personal development they’ve embraced, for the people they are, the lack of gender they identify with, and the pronouns they prefer. I’ve got no problem with it whatsoever, and frankly, it’s fucking insulting anyone would ever imagine otherwise.

So yeah, I’m gonna allow it.

‘secure in his expression of masculinity’ was not the impression I had of Dirk personally, but I guess we’re going with this characterisation here.

For the rest of this chapter, Dirk keeps misgendering Roxy and Callie in narration - seemingly not deliberately, he swears and corrects himself shortly after.

There’s another interesting conversation where Calliope talks about how ideas of gender were, ‘circuitously’, transmitted to Calliope/Caliborn from watching Earth, and how these shaped Alternia (ok this one’s a little confusing because they didn’t make Alternia? though of course Doc Scratch did affect Alternia). So the system of gendered social relations is literally a “copy without an original” - Baudrillard was more right than he knew!

Anyway Dirk interrupts this discussion to narrate that Jade has a sudden vision of the black hole, and passes out...

chapter 20

Jade ‘wakes up’ in the furthest ring - was there a Dream Jade out here? i thought all the dream selves died but I don’t really remember anymore. Over here, she’s injured - she’s got a big piece of ‘the absence of a future’ skewering her.

Dirk narrates how she’s drawn towards the black hole - ‘the dead cherub is making her move’. At one point, his orange narration is interrupted by red text - the word ‘come’.

Of course, we now know that this dead Jade will fall into the Candy universe, where it will be inhabited by alt-Calliope. I am rather confused about how this came about though. Who’s this almost-dead Jade floating in the Furthest Ring? Why did Jade’s consciousness get shunted into her body?

chapter 21

Dave and Karkat are witnessing the first brood from the Mother Grub. Dave figures it’s kind of gross... and Karkat agrees after ribbing Dave a bit for being insensitive.

Anyway they’re here to try and win over Rose and Kanaya to the election campaign, only, they’re being predictably very Dave and Karkat about it, which is fun. Dirk’s narration is almost taking a backseat here... though occasionally stepping in to point to a trait of characterisation as why he’s going to win.

It’s nice to have Kanaya give some proper dialogue! She talks a bit about troll reproduction, the latent potential for fascism in both Jane and... Feferi. Which, fair.

Anyway Kanaya is rightly pissed about Jane’s plans for troll eugenics.

Dirk occasionally editorialises. Morality, he declares, is a cultural construct (complicatedly true so far as it goes) - it’s “pure ego” for them to think their morality will guide them to the “most effective” laws (that’s also a cultural construct you fucking idiot!)

Dave, continuing in his capacity to make everything as maximally awkward as possible, starts speculating about ectobiological ‘Rosemary babies’ (Kanaya has apparently not considered the term ‘Rosemary’ before, and declares that she hates it).

Kanaya gets concerned and calls Rose - and Dirk reminds us that she’s unconscious on his floor, and answers for her, but explains nothing. Because “John’s doing something important to the plot again” - and Dirk has to be there to narrate, I guess.

chapter 22

Keen to complete his full assumption of the role of ‘anime villain’, Dirk’s narration starts talking about breaking down the boundaries between people to become gods - to become ‘one god’.

Anyway, in this chapter, John bumps into Meenah’s ghost. She steals the Ring of Life that he previously took from Aranea while performing his current spate of retcons, and jumps into a ‘server’. (What did the servers do again? I don’t remember... ok apparently they’re just there in the Furthest Ring, as places people can store such things as wizard fiction and ~ATH programs on them...)

anyway it seems that Meenah can go through the door in the server somehow. presumably ending up in the Candy universe? idk. The wiki didn’t say a lot about what these servers do.

chapter 23

Not much narration, just dialogue. Kanaya arguing with Dirk, specifically. She’s not impressed by Dirk’s excuses (Dirk briefly interrupts to declare that she doesn’t really ‘understand’ Rose, even though she loves her) and sets out to retrieve Rose. Dirk keeps this a secret from Rose...

chapter 24

Minimum editorialising from Dirk this time. John floats around endlessly, and runs into... Terezi! Sure am glad to have her back :D

chapter 25

Dirk and Rose have an argument about... intimacy, identity, and other such philosophical things. Kirkegaard is name-dropped, and it comes out that Dirk (like me lol) gets most of his knowledge from Wikipedia, because obviously he grew up in a post-apocalyptic world...

ROSE: Who exactly were the academic cognoscenti of your era to determine which sources were deemed respectable?

DIRK: That would be me, obviously.

ROSE: Ok.

DIRK: I suppose you’re going to tell me you haven’t read enough Wikipedia articles on loads of scholarly shit to fancy yourself an elite academic by 25th century standards as well?

ROSE: No, I guess I have.

ROSE: I’d be one of the top intellectuals by that measure.

ROSE: A measure set by, I guess, literally one solitary self-absorbed teen boy for the express purpose of making himself feel clever.

DIRK: Absolutely correct.

They agree to have an ‘amateur philosophical debate’, which comes around to whether ‘free will’ exists. Oh boy. Dirk gets Rose to try to stand up, but then doesn’t ‘narratively allow’ it.

Dirk lectures her on the origin of her condition: the disappearance of boundaries in the ‘ultimate self’ amounts to an ‘unbundling’ of experiences (subjectivity, I guess) and the physical processes connecting to it. Dirk, supposedly, is strong enough to withstand this - so he offers to support Rose as she opens her ‘other eyes’, seeing what Dirk sees - presumably the ‘entire story’ that they’re in?

In this state, Rose is also able to see across into the Candy story. She describes both branches as a kind of ‘gross conceptual clumping’, comparing it to congealed sugar in a drink.

Dirk invites her to ascend - that she won’t be ‘her’ anymore, but ‘better’. This is described as an intimate process of perfect knowledge of the other person... and leads Dirk to start speaking possessively of Rose, his daughter in every respect, including ‘soul’.

Oh no Rose... this isn’t ideal :/

it’s funny, I have written before about such a ‘coming together’ of people, of ‘ascension’ in a similar sense, in my story ‘hacker’. but that wasn’t about assuming an ‘ultimate’, godlike form - the gestalt was a different person with different concerns, but not a ‘perfect’ person. here it’s a much more negative thing - a way for Dirk to take control over the ‘ultimate’ Rose.

chapter 26

Dirk’s narration seems to be perceptible, at least in some sense of inner monologue, to Jade. He’s trying to persuade her not to descend into the Black Hole (which, we now know to mean, the Candy universe) through his ‘metatexual’ messaging.

But he’s not succeeding. Alt-Calliope once again interrupts the narration at one point - and Dirk previously did not seem to recognise that it’s her doing it, but now he does.

In Dirk’s eyes, what he’s trying to prevent is a suicide. We know that going into the black hole is not suicide, but going to the Candy universe.

Notably when Dirk has the narration outright declare that something happens, that does not mean it takes effect in the way he describes. He is literally an unreliable narrator.

chapter 27

At this point, alt-Calliope and Dirk are outright fighting to contradict each other in the narration. (i’m gonna keep using ‘she’ pronouns for alt-Calliope, since to my understanding she’s a different person than Calliope)

alt-Calliope’s descriptions are adorably alien - referring to the ‘layers of flesh over her skull’ that maker her ‘expressive’, for example.

Apparently it’s not Jade occupying Jade’s body back on Earth C - the Meat!Earth C that is - but alt-Calliope. Alt-Calliope starts lecturing Dirk in the narration of the corrosive effect of his ‘megalomaniacal’ intentions. Somehow, she pretty much entirely shunts Dirk out of the narrator role. Dirk’s text - complaining rather than narrating - shrinks, and ultimately disappears.

There’s a fucking amazing moment when alt-Calliope gets Dirk going on a whole rant about katanas and how she’s supposedly metaphorically using them wrong.

But ultimately, what she’s going to do is just... ignore him. Or rather, talk about him like he isn’t in the room; use his metaphors, but do not allow him the dignity of response.

experiences such as the sensation of presiding over a vast, empty ocean. his ocean, which terminates with his horizon. it is a barrier, not real, but psychological, symbolic. no matter how much power he achieves as a man, he knows there are horizons he perceived as a boy which he may never cross. and yet i have crossed mine, with the express purpose of perpetually and eternally reminding him of his limits, and of enforcing them. limits, which like his vast, empty ocean, serve to remind him that he is phenomenologically, if not literally, alone. that he has experienced loneliness intimately and absolutely, just like i have. but unlike me, he is terrified by it. and i, unlike him, understand all too well that the children left alone are those who most despair at being ignored.

Epilogue 4, in summary

Damn. I can see why they call this the ‘meat’ route.

So.

Dirk has found some way to assert control of the narrative voice. In this capacity, he’s run roughshod over the various events trying to mechanically arrange them to achieve... some kind of end. But his carelessness in attending to the specific characterisations, instead of relating everything back to himself, somehow left him vulnerable to be excluded from the narration by alt-Calliope.

Whatever Dirk’s plan is, it seems to require... Jane and him to assume rulership of Earth C, and... what else? Well he wanted Jade to go into the Furthest Ring, but not to enter the black hole (because ultimately that allowed alt-Calliope to enter the narrative). He wanted John to do various ‘plot relevant’ things, like... presumably hand over the ring to Meenah, acquire the wallet, and meet Terezi.

Where’s all this going? Fuck knows lol!

We can try and talk about all the issues of identity, ‘free will’ and so forth towards the end, and the interesting attempt to connect that to gendered subjectivity, once we’ve taken in the story as a whole.