#if theres one thing about me i will choose the least accessible route and set my fucking heart on it

[vitamin-zeeth]

HELLO YOU’RE A TECHIE AND I DIDN’T KNOW??? YOU’RE SO SO COOL FOR THAT I LOVE TECH

HIIIIIII YEAHHHH IM A TECHIEE my schools drama program is legitimately nonexistent tho so I get to do 0 tech :( but yea genuine career goal is theatre tech I'm applying for a theatre tech course in college next year and everything I love the pretty lights and the pretty sets and the funky wires :)))

[tt-squid]

OKAY SO. this is going to be partly a discussion of the cannon facts, and my own made up interpretation of the various forms of cannon, and how the squiddles acts as a narative foil/mirror for jade harley

also... its 12:25 am rn as of me starting to type this up? so idk how coherernt this is going to be...? BUT. in terms of 'cannon' squiddle lore, theres three main sources:

the comic propper (specifically the flash where jade dreams post the death of her dreamself, pre the creation of the dreambubbles)

the fan-created-but-lets-be-real-its-cannon squiddles album

jades pesterquest route

(squiddles lore begins under cut!)

homestuck propper

in the comic, the squiddles are a subconsious reimagining of the horrerterrors blah blah badly reviewed tv show that ran from 2000-2004 blah blah you get the point, youve all read homestuck. the horrorterrors are the fabeled blackdeath trance of the woegothics to the squiddles tangle-buddies and candycorn-shrimp

theres skipper plumbthroat and his crew, the squiddles, various other unknown creatures including narwals

hussie also states at somepoint (idk when or where exactly) that squiddles are a 'cute, approachable fachade' that the horror terrors present themselves as

music

in the squiddles album and the additional pieces that go with it expand on the squiddles by giving names to some of the squiddles (princess berryboo), and setting up some sort of synopsis? im not exactly sure what it was doing its just a great album if your into the squiddles lol

ADDITIONALLY TO THIS: mobius trip and hadron kaleido, which is a great album btw, and presented as songs that could have been played in the homestuck universe (paraphrasing here, i cant find the exact quote:) 'in order to prepare the kids for sburb'. the main song in the album that relates to the squiddles is 'lies with the sea'

this on its own isnt exactly related to the squiddles in anyway? but im stretching those straws together to make a basket and in that basket its a piece of paper saying that if the horrorterrors project themselves as cute little easily marketable characters, and mobius trip and hadron kaleido is setting up the kids (subconsiously) for sburb, then it works

ALSO IN THE SQUIDDLES ALBUM, and accessible from the unofficial archive, is squiddlevid.swf

its basically an intro for the squiddles show, but seeing as it dosent have any names, nor a specific squiddle, inkabelle, described in jades pesterquest route whos the main focus of this essay, its null and void

still a important piece in the squiddles cannon! but its just not relevant to this tangent im currently on

i lost where i was going with this.

okay try again. 'lies with the sea' in this long rambled theory relates to the next point (perfect seguae :]) in which we talk about two specific squiddles mentioned in jades pesterquest route

pesterquest

the most interesting thing about jades pesterquest route (for me anyway) is when shes talking about the 'silly cartoon show rose dosent like'

(this is from a transcript i found of the game cause i dont have the energy atm to grab a screensht from somehwere)

so jade 'lonliest girl in the world' harleys favourite squiddle is the one that gets lost in the dark scary place at the bottom of the ocean all alone with no friends or sense of where she is

HRMMMMMMM... making any connections yet?

well gee sounds like someones missing their friends a whole bunch, and is relating to a squiddle from her favourite cartoon show

through this its very easy to draw the paralell between jade and inkabelle, with podlight being whoever is placed as jades 'savior' (who this is depends on what part of jades story were choosing this to link to)

discussion: the podlight dilema

so.

jade is inkabelle, but who is podlight?

whilst its never speficically mentioned, its presumed at least (?) that podlight is a squiddle. HOWEVER. unlike previous exampleswe cant take this at face value. cause do you really think that squiddles wouldnt be leaping with joy to make friends with whatever they see? theres probably a squiddle out there whos dated a rock or something idk :\ (this really means nothing i just needed to say this for my own comfort lol)

theres a few characters in homestuck you could place next to podlight and say 'welp! that looks good enough, no im gonna go see if that whashings finished yet...' and go do that, forgetting about the previous topic entirely (definitely havent done this multiple times lol)

some of these include:

alt calliope

calliope (for the purposes of this, theyre different people)

dave/davesprite/davepeta

feferi

alt calliope:

during the later acts and sub acts and intermissions of homestuck as well as in postcannon such as *sigh* homestuck^2 and rhe epilogues, alt calliope tracks down jade multiple times , forcing her to furfill her duty as the witch of space (isolating herself from her friends in doing so, you know how it is with space players u_u)

seeing as the squiddles are manifestations of the horrorterrors, and skipper plumthroat is the main antagonist of the show, its not too much of a stretch to connect skipper plumthroat to lord english seeing as (from my memory at least) in his destruction of the dreambubbles, lord english was killing off the horroroterrors like theyre pieces of dust in the path of a laser beam

seeing as podlight 'tracks [inkabelle] down and saves her' in the original run of the squiddles cartoon, this would allude to alt callieope tracking down jade and 'saving her' by telling her about what it means to be a witch of space

WHICH IS BLEAK AS FUCK NO WONDER JADE CRIED WHEN SHE WATCHED THE SHOW AS A CHILD

like seriously give the girl a break shes had her whole life guided by the clouds of her dreams, only for that to be taken from her when her dreamself died, to the point where she dosent even remember what the colourful reminders on her fingers are for bar one, and then shes thrust into sburb where she spends the majority of the time alone or dead or asleep, before getting told by alt callie that 'OH YOUVE GOTTA BE ALONE CAUSE YOUR A SPACE PLAYER AND STUFF' like bro dude mate give her a break!!! (and then davesprite comes along and is like 'nah lol just vibe haha whats gender again? B33')

calliope:

after her death in the game over timeline (or whatever it is, idk this part makes NO SENSE AT ALL THEY SHOULDVE JUST STUCK TO ONE OR THE OTHER) callie plays the role of helping to illuminate jade on what was happening in the realm of the living outside of the yellow brick road and how she died!

dave/davesprite/davepeta:

theres SO MANY paralells between dave (all versions of him) and jade (all versions of her). from time/space to derse/prospit to the different forms of isolation, LIKE THEREES LOADS.

but thats not about them

this is about a fictional tv show in a webcomic that ended over half a decade ago.

SO PODLIGHT!!

theres the thing about knights and helping space players in their quest to bring about the creation of the genesis frog, which is described by kanaya. dave does thi for jade in homestuck, and even knowingly causes his death in the proces (for long winded reasons relating to his ascention to godtier blah blah boring stuff!)

the main part i want to talk about with the daves and the jades is two things!

one being jadesprite and davesprite on skaia before jade ascends to godtier. jadesprite is sad, alone and lost, and has to come to terms with the fact that all her friends on prospit are dead (taking note now: i just realised that cause prospit crashed into skaia theres the chance that jadesprite found the ruins of her old life ouchie)

but anyway!

davesprite finds her, does the comforting stuff, and presto! paralells between this and podlight finding inkabelle in the murky brineswallows and rescuing her :3

ADDITIONALLY - as you can guess by the image above, davesprite finds jade in the void and darkness (hint hint murky brineswallows hint hint) of space near the green sun after her talk with alt calliope and is the one to save her by waking her up so that she can... distract some doggos.......?

the dave(collectie) theory is the one i think has the strongest connection to podlight personally but, as this is a throwaway line from a dubiously cannon game i HIGHLY DOUBT that there will be any conclusion to this lol

feferi:

okay i know this sounds far fetched. BUT. after jade looses her dreamself, she has the weird dreams everyone gets when one half of you is dead as a corpse

in that dream

feferi is the one to enlighten her to her deathness after some weird rainbow almost trickster related..... stuff

in this!!! its important to note that there a lot of ties to the squiddle universe (the squiddle theme playing throughout, squiddles, but also candycorn shrimp, the narwals i can never remember the name of and other stuff, and the horrorterrors)

after hade and feferi (not pictured) party in the void of whatever is happening here jade 'wakes up' (taking this from the flash title)

the flash in question fades/glitches out to horror terrors presumably not having a good time out in the far reaches of the furthest ring connecting to the whole lord english/skipper plumbthroat thing

-

(theres also something you could say about jade and her rejection of the standard tropes for homestuck (how she fuses with her sprite, interacts directly with the narative esppeacially in early homestuck, and how she has her introduction segment) and how she, princess of prospit, also rejects the steyreotypical tropes for princesses of being rescued by a knight (in reference to how she breaks off from both knights in early homestuck, dave/davesprite and karkat)

but thats not exactly a fully formed thought yet -_- )

an additional thing i forgot to mention in the above section: jades theme from pesterquest contains the same motif as in the song 'carefree princess berryboo' (or vice verca? they share the same motif anyway)

in conclusion:

and finally! okay so its now 3:19 am, time to wrap this babey up:

its ;ate and im tired -_-

jade is inkabelle :B

the identity of podlight is up for debate :/ but dave is a very strong contender!

i know squiddles lore you couldnt even dream of (made it up in their head)

[tumblunni]

also wtf who designed rune factory 4 this way THIS IS MY ONLY COMPLAINT IN AN AMAZING GAME why are all the romance routes entirely random?? even after youve reached the relationship milestones its COMPLETELY RANDOM whether the event will start every day same for every friendship event and town event and even some plot events you just have to sit there at your bed constantly skipping days for multiple years til the random number god gives you the marriage scene you did EVERYTHING to earn this marriage scene and you have nothing left to do but wait and youll never see any new events with that character until it happens, and you have a very limited amount of dates to go on while youre waiting, and they all do NOTHING except raise the relationship bar over maximum which does nothing. doesnt even increase the chance of the random event?? why even LET me increase it over maximum if it does nothing? thats just tricking me into thinking i havent unlocked the marriage event yet! when I HAVE and i just need to WAIT A BAZILLION YEARS OF RANDOM

anyway i finally got Leon’s random marriage quest and it was Awesome and So Many Tears and now im even more conflicted on who to marry gahhhhh its such a shame you cant resolve everyone’s plot unless you date them, i feel so bad dating all these people when im not able to marry them all, just cos i wanna fix their lives and make them happy but then theyre gon be sad that we didnt get married aaaa

and Leon is especially saddddd

now cos his whole plot is that he had a depressing scenario with a friend as a kid. She loved him but he saw her as just a little sister, and he jokingly promised to marry her once when they were too young to understand. And he didnt know she took it seriously until after he DIED and reincarnated as a fox monster person centuries later too late to do anything about it. And he’s crushed full of guilt that he somehow led her on, and he was never able to apologise, and he’s scared she spent her whole life waiting for him to come back. and then you get this very cool series of sidequests thatre a realistic look at translating languages, and its really motivational how leon is able to help bring knowledge of a dead language back to life and preserve the ancient culture that people thought was lost BUT THEN ENDLESS FUCKIN TRAGEDY kiel accidentally finds an old diary of leon’s friend (WHAT ARE THE ODDS) and he has frickin detailed anxiety attacks unable to even hold the damn paper cos he’s shaking so much and you go on a big treasure hunt to find all the pages and he’s just CRYING SO MUCH mr playboy man! mr flirty asshole! mr stoic! he’s fuckin crying and he cant hold a book without your help and aaaa and his whole story is about how he isnt really the negative stereotypes of a flirty character, he really REALLY values love and he feels depressed he cant love everyone who loves him, so he tries to fake it. And he tries to push people away whenever it seems genuine, but also like... entertain them enough that they dont feel he doesnt love them, i guess? and no matter how promiscuous a person is, they still cant love EVERYONE, you cant just force a relationship on them and say they must be asking for it cos they date other people and enjoy sex. its so depressing that he considers his biggest flaw that he wasnt able to force himself to love someone he didnt, especially when he did care about her, just as a best friend instead! if theyd just talked about it, it would have saved all this heartache for both of them! so then we start piecing together this book and it looks like his worst fears are confirmed, she spent her whole life waiting for him and hating him and its really fucking EXPLODINGLY SAD and then the quest is a bit confusing so i spent several days stuck on this point not knowing who to talk to next, going through random dungeons in case that somehow helped. turned out i did find the right spot but the quest just doesnt progress until you talk to the right person first GAH! stuck for five days on crying leon scene!! NOOOOOO but I finally got past it and CLIMACTIC HAPPY END or bittersweet end more like we find out we mistranslated one bit which was actually PAGE NUMBERS, and we were missing a page all along! and then the final page reveals that she actually moved on and found a new love and had a happy family and grew old together, and her only frustration with leon was imagining that he couldnt find the same thing, worrying that she’d betrayed him. So this wasnt a diary, it was actually a letter she wrote for him to find, having confidence he’d wake up someday and have another chance at happiness! She just wanted him to know that she kept his memory alive and she’s sorry and she was happy and AAAAAAUUUGH im tearing up again the bit that really got me was that we find out that leon’s favourite romance novel was actually written by her. It was so popular it survived into the modern day as a literature classic, and it convinces him that she really was happy with her new boyfriend if she could write something as beautiful as this. And he wants to embody the spirit of the book with you, and keep his new promise to her to have a happy family of his own :) ... AGHHHHHHHHAAAAAHHHHH why cant i marry everyone why do so many of them have plots where it seems like they wont be happy unless i love them... even now i dont really think the leon pairing is my favourite, i wish i could have had this plot as a friendship route! i think it would have resonated just as much since the whole backstory is about him being friends with someone who had unrequited love for him. i wanna be leon’s bestie and ultimate wingman! I like him a lot but I dont really think i wanna marry him! IM SO SORRY LEON AAAA he’s such a soulful beefcake dammit I’m sure he’d find a bazillion better lovers! I’m sure a lot of players did marry him! WHY DO I FEEL SO GUILTY AAAAA its not fair, aaaa arthur was the first one i dated and i also really care about him but in his case his way of acting in the romance isnt very different to when youre just friends so i dont think i wanna commit to that relationship maybe? it might change when i see his final random event but i dont get much ‘he’ll be happy with you’ vibes, its just strengthening their powerful brotp that they had from the start of the game. he feels like someone protagonist would indeed date, but theyd part again on friendly terms after it didnt work out, and then be amicable exes who still care a lot about each other. and I just feel like I wanna marry dylas even though he’s had the least tragic events so far. gahhhh! he just seems SO HAPPY dating you, and has loads of character development since it started, unlike the other two ive seen the dates for. he feels like he’s actually getting something out of this that he wouldnt if we were just friends? its so hard trying to weigh up the pros and cons of romance options in games when im inacapble of actually being attracted to anyone, its just ‘i care about you all and i wanna give you the best possible ending’. I haaaaate when games have it so that romance is always the best possible ending for every single character and they all suffer forever if you dont pick them :P and I havent even seen the romances with the other three dudes yet! GAHHHHH!! Theyre all the ones I wasnt immediately interested in dating, but that opinion could totally change, i could end up with a six way tie :P ... ALSO RANDOM BUT is anyone else really uncomfortable with the queerbaiting in this game? there is a LOt, a LOT of ‘lol maybe gay’, sometimes so clear that it seems the game is outright canonically stating this character is gay or bisexual yet you have no option to marry them unless youre the opposite sex. It gets REALLY uncomfortable with Dylas, he just,,, does not express any interest in women at all unless the player pursues him. And his mutual crush with doug is CONSTANTLY REFERENCED, and called out very clearly for what it is. IOf the game didnt keep pointing it out i would have been able to shrug it off as just accidental chemistry from a failed rivalry plotline or something, but we have EVERYONE saying ‘oh a lover’s quarrel’ and ‘be honest about your feelings’ and ‘i bet you wanna see doug in a swimsuit’ and ‘gee i really wanna see doug in a swimsuit’ and IT CANT BE ANY MORE CANON THAN THIS. And.. like.. Dylas even says he DOESNT wanna see women in swimsuits, he’s just here at the beach cos Doug might come along. He does not express any interest in women at all except the protagonist! It makes me feel SO uncomfortable! it feels like he’s actually gay, when with most other characters they seem bisexual?? I dunno how to explain it, thats just how it comes off to me. Why is there no option for him and doug to date, why cant i date him as the male protagonist?? His romance route is so totally gender neutral, i did the postgame protagonist swap cheat and it just feels more in-character for him this way. if im gonna steal him away from Doug i dont want it to be a weird gay conversion therapy type thing, it just feels so WEIRD. The one and ONLY stated crush he has on another character, and its gay, and theres NO OPTION FOR IT TO HAPPEN and then he suddenly becomes 100% straight and never talks about doug again if a fem protagonist dates him. SO WEEEEEIRD... I’m just gonna sit here on the non-canon bonus feature dylas x male protag train and never leave. If you cant have doug you shall have the transitioned me! Its funny cos he’s like the only batchelor i very vehemently cannot ship with fem protag, yet do with male protag :P but GAHHH leon deserves a family and i could give him a child and aaaaa SO HARD TO CHOOSE also i am sad that the postgame cheatmode lets you switch to any character but if its not one of the two protags its only your overworld model and not your face portraits. Its weird because every batchelor and batchelorette has the exact same full set of emotions and costumes, so why cant i access that?? its also a shame cos it means i cant roleplay my doug and dylas marriage properly :P CMON MAN WHY U EVEN TELL ME THEY IN LOVE IF THEY CANT BE IN LOVE :P they have the best portmanteau ship name too! douglas! :P