#it feels so lame to explain it like this but its inspired by the le temps des fleurs mv...

[thecreepiestcarrie]

17. Outside the Inside

It had been so loud all night. Your second-nature wants to label it as ‘unbearably noisy’ but you stomp this down. Repeatedly. You correct yourself, pushing yourself into thinking more positively. This is good noise, this is the kind of noise you should crave. It’s a happy time, everyone is laughing and enjoying themselves. Why aren’t you – why can’t you be like everyone else? You smile and try to mimic what you see all around you.

 You notice a hush has fallen over the group you stand amongst. Something is happening in the loose circle you are part of, the people around you are smiling expectantly. You look to your companion, but they are looking at a man with a puffed-out chest (what is his name again?), an amused smile worn easily on their face.

 A sense of anticipation is spreading amongst the room with members of the circle pulling others in. The constant noise is losing its power. It seems something exciting is about to happen, but you feel nervous, not knowing what to expect.

 “You have to hear Alex’s joke…” You hear a woman say to someone she is pulling over to stand next to her.

 Alex is like a president standing before a room of supporters, smug as he starts to speak. “Pourquoi le poulet…”

 The smile freezes on your face, but everyone around you leans in closer, already barely containing their giggles. You appear to be the only person who doesn’t understand the foreign language he has suddenly slipped into. Your companion has practically forgotten about you, they are simply too excited to hear the end of this joke.

 You do as you have been doing all night – copying what you see around you and trying to blend in with the other partygoers. Inside you feel inescapably uncomfortable.

 But if anyone was to look at you (they’re far too preoccupied to do that, but still you worry) all they will see is another smiling face. Hopefully they won’t look closely enough to spot the confusion and worry in your eyes.

 When the first of the laughter breaks free you force yourself to join in. It doesn’t feel right and all you hear is how fake you sound. Alex is still looking smug as seemingly the whole room joins in laughing. Everyone is sharing in the enjoyment of this joke, some are even holding their stomachs.

 You feel empty inside with the confusion trying to overpower you. You continue to smile, even as there is a sting of tears in your eyes.

 Everyone has switched back to English too late, using it to reflect on the hilarity of the joke.

 “I love the way you tell that one.” A woman is saying and your companion nods alongside her.

 You feel ashamed of yourself, knowing you must look stupid. You face no difficulty in removing yourself from the group. A path has opened up through the rest of the crowd and you seize your opportunity to escape. No one stops you to catch you out in this moment of foolishness.

 You wouldn’t have before thought it possible, but you manage to find an empty room in the noisy house. It’s only an illusion of privacy with the sounds of the party still reaching you. At least it is quieter in here and you can hear yourself think again.

 This is the kind of environment you are more familiar with. You can relax and let the fake smile disappear from your face. For the first time since you arrived you can be honest. You wonder how much longer your companion will want to stay, maybe you can run out those hours by hiding in here.

 You can hear people still laughing at something in the other room. The party is clearly not suffering from losing your presence, if anything it’s gotten louder. You weren’t really contributing much to the group, unable to get on the wavelength everyone else seemed to be sharing.

 You can see the stars out the window and you step closer. When you are standing close enough the glass no longer reflects your image and you are able to peacefully observe the stars.

 “Hey, there you are.” Your companion comes into the room, they sound short of breath. Before you turn to them you swipe at the moisture underneath your eyes.

 “I was looking for you all over. I wasn’t sure if maybe you were in the bathroom, so I just had a really awkward conversation with a stranger.” They take a deep breath and finally focus their eyes upon you. “Are you okay? I turned to explain the joke to you, but you were already gone.”

 “I just needed some air.”

 They reach out for you; their hand is warm as it comes to rest on your arm. “I didn’t realise they’d be speaking French tonight, you must’ve been really confused.”

 “Yeah.” You neglect to add the bit where this is how you’re usually feeling.

 “It was just a dumb chicken crossing the road joke.”

 “It didn’t seem that dumb when literally everyone but me was laughing at it.” You can feel the prickles of fresh tears in your eyes.

 “No, really, it was. I can tell it you now but it’s super lame. Why did the chicken cross the road? He wanted to get to the chicken strip club.”

 They don’t laugh and neither do you. You stand there, dumbfounded. You can’t believe everyone made such a fuss over a dumb joke. You suppose it would have been easier to enjoy with a group of people to laugh along with, but that opportunity has passed you by.

 “Do you get it? Strip club, but it’s chicken strips so it’s food.”

 You give a small laugh at the absurdity of this whole situation. “It’s a really lame joke.”

 “Yeah, I told you so.” They say with a smile. “We can go home if you’d like.” You nod and they put their arm around you as you head for the front door. “I’m sorry, I know socialising isn’t the easiest for you.”

 “Humans are just so hard to understand.”

 “Except me?” They ask hopefully.

 “Except you.” You take their hand and squeeze it.

  The End.

 Author’s Note: Just a short little story to explore alienation with a literal alien. This story was inspired by my own asexuality and how estranged from society this leaves me feeling a lot of the time. You don’t notice how sexual literally every little thing in the media is until you can’t connect with it and being unable to connect sucks. Luckily I have a companion of my own to keep me from getting too adrift from everything.

[betweengenesisfrogs]

OTCHS FOLLOW-UP #1: HEARTS AND MINDS

So, Tumblr seems to have eaten the message, but re: my last post about the nature of the self, someone messaged me pointing out that I completely neglected to mention the Heart aspect, which basically represents the very thing I was talking about: the ur-Self! Which inspired some great reflections, so let’s touch on that before I drop eleven pages of Gnosticism on you later tonight. If that was you, please let me know so I can give you credit!

EDIT: Ah, I figured it out! It was homeschool-winner! Thank you for the terrific message! :)

So, in the past I wasn’t much for classpect analysis ‘cause I kinda saw people trying to use them predicatively, like “this will happen because Character X has Y classpect,” and there was always just such a wide range of interpretations available that any claim to certainty seemed a bit dubious. But now that Homestuck’s over, I find I’m fond of them, not as predictors but as tools for understanding all the weird symbols in Homestuck’s hyperflexible mythology.

I totally agree that Heart represents the Ur-Self. It clearly represents the soul, as Calliope tells us, and we see it on full display with Dirk’s ability to suck out souls (and put them in something else). He’s the Destroyer of Souls, and possibly also a destroyer by means of souls (by accidentally creating the Calsoul and thus Lord English? By duplicating his soul in the form of AR/Hal, whose soul is real enough to be part of a kernelsprite and the Calsoul?) Dirk fucks things up with/for souls. That’s pretty clear.

But these souls also seem to carry enough of their person’s qualities to represent their Ur-Self. LE certainly has qualities of all the people in the Calsoul. It seems pretty reasonable to interpret Heart as relating to people’s Self. That would make Dirk someone who destroys or suppresses Selfhood. Makes sense; Bro was certainly able to suppress Dave’s self, as we see it emerging by the ending. And LE’s Hal definitely comes out in Doc Scratch’s manipulations, which serve to rob others of their agency. So it checks out.

I really love the way souls are represented in the SBURB Glitch FAQ/Replay Value AU (which is an awesome AU, btw, y’all should check it out), where they’re nicknamed shinies, and basically everything has one. They’re the code for rocks or grass or game objects or people, and Heart Players can mess with them as one of their means of exploiting the game engine to compensate for bugs like the debug menu in a Bethesda Game. It’s awesome.

Imagine a game engine that calls up individual manifestations of you, which behave like different entities but they’re all called from one base file that’s copied and modified for different circumstances. That might be the kind of game we’re working with here.

But no classpect is ever just one thing, right? That’s what’s fascinating about them, they’re often multiple meanings fused fluidly together. Light is Luck, but also Information, Knowledge. Even Time and Space have subtler qualities. So I think we need to look at the Leijons as well.

When we first hear about Heart, it seems like it might be a silly, power of heart aspect, right? Because we (all too easily) dismiss Nepeta, and see Heart as just meaning love, meaning Nepeta’s shipping.

But I’m gonna say that Shipping, Self, and Agency all roll together into one concept called Heart. By pairing people up, Nepeta is exploring compatibilities among archetypal versions of people. Terezi fits with Dave in some ways, and Vriska in others. A Rogue of Heart might be able to move people around to their benefit to find better combinations. (A Thief of Heart would of course ship people for her own benefit rather than theirs, a classic seducer and heartbreaker...but maybe she’d also be someone who could steal a literal soul.) Meulin does this too, but more directly, as matchmaker more than shipper (the Mage at work). Heck, I think Davepeta’s very existence is a strong argument for this, right? The fusion of Nepeta and Davesprite’s souls created one hell of a positive, affirming combination. Like a bird and cat-themed Garnet. Meanwhile LE’s souls amplify a monster.

So yeah, in Homestuck Heart means: Soul + Self + Agency over Events+ Compatibility + Love.

Thinking about Heart also got me thinking, interestingly, about Mind. They’re an obvious aspect pair, right? One is the soul and one is the brain, duh. But I was never able to explain them on a larger level than that.

And then just now I got it. Because Mind in Homestuck means Choice. We see this everywhere in Homestuck. Terezi’s Mind abilities allow her to see what choices people will make and how to get the best results from them, to the point where she can use people’s choices to defy luck. Her retcon arc (which I will talk about in so, so much depth later) is about rewriting her own choices, or really giving herself the freedom to make new ones. Meanwhile, Latula uses her own choices as a shield but can easily interpret the choices her peers made as the Ancestors.

So, like Time and Space, Light and Void, and so on, Heart and Mind are a balanced pair where the further you go from one, the closer you move into the other. Heart is your Self and your role in the cosmos altogether. Mind is the individual choices you make to differentiate yourself from all your other selves! Heart is what’s consistent across all timelines, Mind is what makes individual timelines exist! Heart is Dave-ness; Mind is the difference between Doomed Dave, Dave, and Davesprite. Heart is what’s unchangable about you; Mind is what’s changing. Every self matters, but so, too, does the eternal Self

You could almost think of it as if Heart’s your base stats in a video game, and Mind’s the stat boosts you gain a long the way. Say, Pokemon. I bet Terezi would be really good at EV training. >:)

Hell, this even gets spelled out for us! Remember how Karkat introduced the concept of different game sessions to us?

CG: TRY TO THINK MORE ABSTRACTLY. CG: THINK ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. CG: WHAT'S AN EARTH GAME YOU LIKED TO PLAY? CG: NAME ONE. EB: ummmm... EB: crash bandicoot? CG: OK I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS, BUT I HAVE A FEELING IT'S A REALLY LAME EXAMPLE, BUT THAT'S FINE, IT'S NOT THE POINT. CG: SO LET'S SAY YOU PLAY YOUR BANDICOOT AND I PLAY MY BANDICOOT. CG: THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BANDICOOT, SAME APPEARANCE AND DESIGN AND BEHAVIORS. CG: BUT THEY ARE STILL COMPLETELY SEPARATE BANDICOOTS ON SEPARATE SCREENS. CG: SO WE BOTH HAVE OUR OWN ASS BANDICOOTS TO OURSELVES, THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. CG: SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES.

Think of all the Dersites and Prospitians, and all the different roles they take on. Jack and all his gang and even WV and PM at different points in their history. Funnily enough, in many ways the players of the Game have a lot in common with its NPCs.

We are all our own individual Bandicoot, yet still part of the much larger Bandicoot that makes us who we are.

Which means that Heart and Mind aren’t just any other aspects. They tie very directly into one of the biggest thematic concerns of Homestuck itself!

That’s so freaking cool!

So yeah, thanks so much for this insight! :D

(PS: Also, I really dug the point that the ur-Self could be described as the Platonic Self, that the “archetypes” I keep talking about really resemble Plato’s theory of Forms. A connection that’s worth checking out, especially when Dirk, Prince of Heart  has the username timaeustestified, a reference to a major Platonic Dialogue. Dirk is the Platonic Form. It’s him. Thanks for that insight, too!)