#it is important that 1. homestuck characters fuck and 2. they do not do it in good and appealing ways. and the real misstep in post-canon:

[loathsomespider]

bdth readers will never know just how much bad sex happened during the timeskip and that's beautiful

[girlbowser]

What exactly does "gloves is canon" mean, if you don't mind me asking?

let's just fucking get right into it.

Ultimate Rose Pt. 2: Gloves Are Canon

if you haven't seen part 1, here it is. the tldr version of it was to estabish candy rose (at the VERY least) as a liar. i also have a headcanon about ultrose putting alpha earth rose into front in candy timeline, but that doesn't really matter too much. its just kinda fun

anyway. heres the theory.

so you guys know A Threat, Sensed, right?

it's one of the hs2 bonus comics. originally patreon exclusive, but was made public for everyone during the hiatus. and i think it contains some deeply revealing information.

you may be wondering... hey, isn't that the comic where ultdirk talks to hussie about yiffy? like, its hussie's one appearance in the comic. kind of weird.

ahaha. yeah. so. about that.

let's rewind a bit. what's the contents of A Threat Sensed?

dirk wakes up after having the shit kicked out of him in pesterquest.

rose is like huh? huh wuh? but dirk gives her a thumbs up. and then he goes to sit on his computer, and type to god.

and then after that delay, he gets a reply.

etc etc etc. they talk. they chat. hussie talks about his beloved daughter yiffy. normal stuff. hey roll that last one back

let's play in this space. lets play in this space. perspective. daughter.

who's daughter is yiffy?

---

let's rewind.

when homestuck act 6 dropped, it released with one very important page.

this page.

this page, where someone with seemingly grey skin is typing on a keyboard. holy fuck, what a reveal. new troll. oh my god. this is the 13th troll

like, they have to be a troll, right? theyve got the time stuff. theyve got a symbol. theyve got shit going on with them

ah.

they were wearing gloves.

this? this is fucking huge.

in homestuck we see that shot a lot. of fingers on a keyboard. but every single time we have seen it, we have also seen at least one shot of the person typing, right?

with two exceptions. one is callie in the act 6 reveal.

and the other is andrew.

er, sorry.

"andrew."

from the patreon post on A Threat Sensed:

those are fake hands. what. what . what. what.

so

if this comic has a history of having a reveal when it comes to characters where Only Their Hands are being shown

and gloves are canon to homestuck, and have been used to precipitate this reveal

then perhaps

gloves are canon here as well.

if you'll allow me to speculate. on the gloves are canon in question.

yeah of fucking course rose is pretending to be hussie because WHO ELSE WOULD IT BE adjKFJGSKDHdskjgjkfskjgdsf

ITS ROSE!!! IT WAS ROSE THE WHOLE TIME

LETS REREAD.

"is that why you were lying on the floor" a question that Rose had because she saw his ass lying on the floor!!!!!!!

MY DAUGHTER

MY DAUGHTER YIFFANY LONGSTOCKING LALONDE HARLEY

hm purple background. anyway im sure thats fine

hm. hm. hm. psychoanalysis. hmmm. hm.

now if i was rose

if i was ultrose. and i wanted an ultimate weapon against dirk.

if i wanted to Make A Weapon Against Dirk.

what would i do.

how would i create it.

who would i hurt in the process.

anyway. this is all leading up to part 3 of this fucking nightmare roller coaster. but uh. basically. i think this one is like all but confirmed????

like...

We’ve had quite a bit of speculation on whether this is “really” Andrew. To that, I think we’d say that it doesn’t “really” matter. If you’re asking are those Andrew’s actual hands, then no, of course not. Because those hands are fake hands that are on the computer screen.

this sounds like it's telling us no, it's not "really" andrew. and to look at the hands. and we KNOW from part 1 of this theory that rose is incredibly deceitful.

the delay in "andrew"'s response could have plausibly been rose slipping away into her little hidey hole, putting on the stupid fucking gloves, and only then typing.

andrew never confirms who he is. and i'll admit, some of the lines don't sound 100% like rose. but others do. others really, really do.

i like this theory because it makes rose and dirk's rivalry on deltrius interesting. it means she has legs up on him. he thinks he's talking to hussie, but he isn't. she has plans within plans. she's got shit she's cooking.

i like it because it contextualizes yiffy, too.

hm wow it sure seems like the candy timeline isnt actually all that sealed! it sure seems like theres something in there that is a corrosive paradox! something that affects both timelines!

something

or someone!!!!!!!!!!!!

anyway. yiffy is an ultdirk icbm created by rose . rose wore gloves. gloves are canon. that's my theory graaaaaaaaaahhh

part 3 coming soon :3

[homestuckreplay]

To be fair, you have to have a very high wisdom to understand Colonel Sassacre. The mischief is extremely nuanced, and without a solid grasp of mangrit and maturity most of the pranks will go over the typical reader’s head.

(page 759)

If I was making a webcomic, I’d probably take a well deserved few days off between story acts, but not so in Homestuck. We’re back, and kind of, sort of, unofficially, maybe, in Act 3?

For Act3posting, I’m gonna do a couple things.

- Hard cap reaction posts at 500 words. Time to get economical.

- End reaction posts with a command suggestion. I can’t access the actual suggestion box, so can’t influence the story directly, but I still have ideas I’d like to share.

Starting now.

So, there’s a message from Nanna in the front of Colonel Sassacre’s – and not just any message. I’d call this a prophecy. This is real fantasy novel territory, with battles and royalty and chosen ones and protagonists with cool dramatic titles and wise old spiritual guides who know far more than they should. I eat this stuff up even when it’s cliché. I wonder if the story within Sburb and the story outside of Sburb could be totally different genres.

Nanna says this book’s ‘journey will end on the Final Day of [her] life’, with Final Day underlined, so we know it’s plot important. This means she wrote this some time ago, already knowing about John’s future. Signing up to be a Sburb beta tester because it’s the Game of the Year no longer feels like a happenstance. This is cosmically fated somehow, which… is a little sad, because it takes away some of John and Rose’s success from them, if they didn’t get to this point in the game through skill but through destiny. I’m gonna have to get used to that concept, and start thinking through how free will can be exercised in a story that plays with time this way.

These titles are SO cool. ‘...the Heir of Breath and Seer of Light, the Knight of Time and Witch of Space…’ these fuck so hard. I want one. These probably correspond to John, Rose, Dave, and their secret fourth player Todd from Missouri, maybe in the same order we meet the characters, although maybe there will be a surprise shakearound. After all, Rose seems way more associated with darkness than light, and ‘Witch of Space’ feels like it’d fit her way better than ‘Seer of Light’. And no way does Dave have the earnestness and devotion necessary to be a good knight – John, on the other hand, could rise to that challenge.

Nanna’s ‘P.S. HOO HOO HOO!’ could indicate that she knew all along that she would become Nannasprite, and perhaps knew that she wouldn’t be able to deliver this message directly in sprite form, as it would be game spoilers. Or it could be that she always liked to say hoo hoo hoo, carrying the spirit of the harlequin even without being prototyped with the doll. Personally, I hope both are true.

According to the Adventure Map, Act 3 is called ‘Insane Corkscrew Haymakers’. This is really different from the first two act titles, which are both very literary sounding, have musical allusions, and indicate a setup and inciting incident of a story, respectively. A haymaker is either ‘a powerful blow with the fist’ or ‘a machine for curing hay in rainy weather’, and this is not a farm story, so my guess is the punch. Act 1’s title related to John and Act 2’s to Rose, so this should be Dave’s, especially as his narrative is often treated less seriously. Perhaps these insane corkscrew haymakers happen during his rooftop battle with his bro?

> John: Find a prank to play on Nannasprite.

[relatableblorbopoll]

Round 1 of preliminaries, group 6

The first two places get a place on the bracket

Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket

propaganda under the cut

Jesper Fahey (Six of Crows)

No Propaganda

Crowley (Good Omens)

"He's gender. He's been in love with one guy for literally 6000 years and then royally fucks up his entire confession. He yells at his plants. He drapes himself over every fucking surface he sits on. He walks like *that*. He just fuckin makes sounds sometimes. He's me fr."

Dave Strider (Homestuck)

"everything that can be said about Dave's relatability will probably sound redundant, clichéd, or overdone if you are at all familiar with tumblrs sort of blorbo culture. this is exactly why he should be in this tournament.

stop me if you think that you've heard this one before: he hides his genuine emotions behind a persona, deflects sincerity with jokes, but also has a deep desire for validation and connection, so that his persona has many cracks where little bits of his true self slip through. deeply insecure, compares himself to others. a defeatist streak, avoids responsibility. does not wish to be troubled by The Horrors. he just wants to hang out and do his lil creative hobbies (making music and drawing comics). talks a lot to the point of being pretty awkward, rambling, and accidentally saying stuff he shouldnt.

all these things I think tend to resonate deeply with a lot of people, especially on Tumblr - that "person who is insecure and struggles with emotional openness so copes by making jokes" sort of trope, it's just like kin bait (affectionate). he also has a complicated relationship with gender which I know many find relatable (shout out to the "Dave homestuck was my trans awakening" homies) but whether it's about figuring out gender or sexuality or trauma or the apocalypse or anything else, Dave comes at it with an initial, learned, fear and reluctance that I think a lot of people have experienced, because it's very human and very much a part of many readers experiences (we live in a society). but he's always good, and likeable and that makes for a very important sort of relatable character. very comforting. even if he's a mess and he's an idiot you can believe he can get to something better, and you can watch him develop and grow.

also, I think he's extremely relatable because he never really knows what's going on in the comic either. I mean, that's gonna be relatable to most people Vis a vis homestuck. he's confused and he just wants to vibe and make his friends laugh. WHO AMONG US cannot relate?? I do not believe you if you say no.

I wrote too much and got way too weird about it. I'm sorry it's late I'd edit down but I really don't have the brain capacity.. which is very Dave core of me actually"

Junior (Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race)

"i relate to him a lot because his whole character is being embarrassed of his dad who tries too hard to be cool, but still loves him anyways. that is literally me"

Kim Dokja (Omnicient Reader's Viewpoint)

"kim dokja. oh kim dokja. so, without going into spoilers too much, kim dokja is very much a character you are expected to relate to and it makes the novel DEVASTATING. here's just a few things about him: - he is obsessed with a particular piece of media, and finds comfort in it when real life doesn't give him any. he's constantly thinking about it and defending it and trying to recommend it to other people (even though no one else bothers reading it, because it is an objectively bad 3000-chapter webnovel). even beyond that one novel, he's been using fiction as an escape for just about his entire life, something that rings true for a lot of people, especially in the modern world. - he struggles with socializing with other people. the first chapter alone gave me so much second hand embarrassment. it's so real but god it's So bad. he has zero friends and has that sort of loneliness where you're miserable but you can't really bring yourself to feel anything but resigned to it. in general he is just very Resigned to his unfortunate life and can't fully understand or accept it when it finally does get better - he has a complicated relationship with his mother. it's the kind of relationship where the parent genuinely does love their child, but they fail to give them what they need & have to accept that they hurt their kid and that they cannot be the most important person in their life. it's certainly not a universal experience but those sorts of parent-child relationships are woefully common but scarcely acknowledged -the insecurity. god there is so much insecurity in that man. it's hard to even completely tell it's there at first, because it's so ingrained in how he thinks that you don't question it until you know more about his character and suddenly it's all too apparent. he cannot believe that he can be loved (or, if that he can be, that they certainly would not be able to love all of him, only what he chooses to show them), and is selfless but like. the literal meaning of the word, where he will throw away all of his being for the people he loves. in general there is a lot of sacrifice as a love language which like. while i'm not off around throwing myself in front of magic death beams for people or anything i sure would give up everything i could if it meant helping the people i love - ok enough of that. here's some funny things i can relate to. the guy meets his favorite fictional blorbo and instead of worshipping him instead he bullies him constantly and internally complains about how unbearable he is both in the book and in real life. it's like a "i love my blorbo. i would not last 2 seconds in a room with him." You know. he gets so caught up in his fanon characterizations and biases about characters that he completely mischaracterizes them like constantly. he literally kills a guy half because he was his least favorite character. -this is a poll about blorbo relatability. therefore i must mention that kim dokja too related to his blorbo (or at least attempted to) and what is more relatable than that. anyways. kdj made me realize far too much about myself and is by far the most i have ever related to a character (and i Hate it). and tumblr would definitely relate to him too so :thumbs-up:"

"(SPOILERS) He is literally all of us. Reader. Just some guy. And then insane tragic backstory. But he’s also just some guy. He’s special and also just a guy. He’s also god. He can be shipped w anyone. He has versatility and interests and motivations. He also never tells anyone anything ever. He is so me."

"He reads a trashy, long-ass novel as a coping mechanism and doesn't think he's capable of being loved. Bro dissociates when he's emoting too much."

"I'm a homestuck fan, a Dave Strider fan even Never heard of Omnicient Reader's before Voted for the kim fellow because judging by the propaganda it looks like he himself would be a homestuck reader therefore making him more relatable than the homsetuck character himself"

"This guy’s been my companion since I was 11, I’ve grown up with Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint and I think that’s pretty funny since he grew up with Ways of Survival (the 3149 chapter novel) and therefore I’m straight up mirroring him. I, too, scare everyone off by being too enthusiastic whenever the webnovel is brought up! His insecurities are severe but I do see myself in some parts of him (which is worrying but whatever.) He is absolutely The Guy Ever. Utterly pathetic wet cat of a man. I love him. He represents the crazy fandom tumblrina in all of us."

Donutella (Tokidoki)

"she's made of donuts basically like me at this point"

[rancidrubysoho]

having sat with it for a while, and reread it with the express knowledge of what it is, i think i need to write a lot about the recent upd8. full content warning for frank discussion of CSA below the cut.

i was definitely blindsided by (for lack of better words) the shock value of the upd8's content, and i think that being detached from that state of "holy shit that's fucking insane that they did that" makes it a lot easier to say they shouldn't have done that. or, at the bare minimum, they should not have done what they did in the way that they did it.

exploring Doc Scratch as a sexual predator is not a terrible idea, nor is it something Homestuck shouldn't or can't do. multiple characters (chiefly Rose and Vriska, but just about half the cast has beef with the guy) have a lot of completely unconfronted baggage with Scratch, and i think that completely waffling past those aspects of the characters would be a waste.

however.

however.

i think the way Scratch's influence on and abuse of Vriska was handled in the recent upd8 was 1) absolutely not appropriately included in the content warning and 2) absolutely not handled correctly. a lot of other people have said it, and i'll add my voice onto that pile-- this is a subject far too intense to be written as what amounts to whump with a vague, inconclusive content warning.

it's important to note that i still really like the upd8 itself. even if it could've been handled better (the echeladder is in extremely poor taste and the content warning was not ample enough for the content of the upd8), it's still absolutely cutting writing that does not mince words... but it feels like it wants you to think it does, in a way?

Homestuck very rarely every directly says things as heavy as they are. what happened between Terezi and Gamzee is never called sexual abuse, but that's what it was, and Terezi's recovery from it is out of focus but still consistent with that fact. Dave's childhood is clearly shown to be abusive, but the exact extent of it is mostly masked by both the story rarely dwelling on it (or positing aspects of it as heightened/comical) and by Dave himself being a character that does not tackle these things more than a handful of times (in pesterlogs that a lot of people skimmed anyway).

this upd8 calls Doc Scratch a pedophile. this upd8 does not mince words about the fact that Doc Scratch is a sexual abuser of children. maybe it was written in such a way that it was meant to be read as a joke (i.e. Bro throwing Dave down a flight of stairs being a SBaHJ reference, doing something absurd and terrible in an in-your-face way), but that potential comedic reading is completely lost when the rest of the upd8 is like that. it's like immediately following Dave and Bro's strife on the roof with a scene of Dave graphically injured.

i don't really have a conclusion or finale here, just a lot of rambling thoughts. i love Beyond Canon thus far, i think it's absolutely stellar and i can't wait to see what the team does next. i hope this upd8 and its rollout having issues doesn't dissuade the team from doing more heavy things like it; i think clearer, more explicit content warnings are an absolute must if we ever get anywhere near this level again (and that a content warning in the actual flash is fucking imperative for archival readers), but all in all the story being told is worth being told.

[hms-no-fun]

I hope this ask doesn't come off as rude at all-- and I apologize if it does!-- but as an aspiring writer, I'm honestly really confused by some of the early choices in Godfeels, and I'm curious if I'm just not "getting it". I saw some posts about it pop up in the tag (and they WERE very shitty and rude about it :/), but I'd love to hear your explanation/take on June's big character change immediately post-realization, and especially the... "Trickster Arc", I guess it could be called? The former I get to some extent, but I'm really curious about the choice to do all THAT so early in the story with the trickster candy.

Seriously love your work, your narration is honestly a big inspiration to me in terms of how meta it gets and how close it gets to communicating directly with both the main character AND the audience!

no rudeness detected at all! this is a great question, in fact it’s one i’ve been kinda hoping someone would ask because i’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot these last few months. but i get the sense that you’re at least a little new here, so uh, yeah, hello, when people ask me interesting questions i tend to answer at great length. so strap in for that after the break lmao. also as a note, there will be some spoilers for all of godfeels here but please don’t let that scare you away, they’re all contextless and, if anything, might honestly make the rest of the story *more* enjoyable as a result.

as far as "getting it" goes, i've talked at length about the how & why of the violence in godfeels in multiple places so i'll try to avoid rehashing that too much here. but one thing i want to emphasize right off the bat is that i never intended godfeels to be an ongoing thing. you talk about the trickster arc happening “so early in the story” but when i wrote godfeels 1 i didn’t plan on writing more. i didn’t even plan on making john trans! my idea of what the sum total of godfeels 2 would be when i started writing it wound up being completely different from the finished work. i didn’t plan to make this thing so long. i didn’t plan for june to accidentally on purpose kill her friends while drunk and then retcon it. i didn’t plan on turning the whole thing into a space opera. it all just happened to me, man. i kept writing because i kept finding more interesting things to say. and it’s important to specify that when i started gf1 i hadn’t written fiction in years. i think if you jumped ahead to godfeels 3 part 1 chapter 8, no matter how you feel about the content we’d at least be able to agree that in the years since 2019 i’ve become a much much better writer. if you want more insight into how my process has evolved, i’ve written so so so much about it, too much maybe even, in the #sarahposts tag.

anyway, now i want to talk about june's "big character change." the extent to which her trickster arc makes sense or feels in character seems to vary wildly from person to person. what always bugs me about "ooc" as a criticism is that godfeels starts six years and change after the end of homestuck. let's remember that the protagonists of homestuck were sixteen when the comic ended. now i want you to ask yourself if you as you were at 16 would think that you as you are now was "in character." or vice versa! probably not, right? it doesn’t even have to have been six years. i was STILL sixteen when i started to get embarrassed of who i was at sixteen!

that should be all i need to say, but it isn’t. and it doesn't really get to the core of the issue anyway. i am not nor have i ever been interested in writing "a sequel to homestuck,” even though it has kind of just become that anyway. godfeels has always been about the meaty existential drama you can tease out through the complicated character dynamics of these fucked up traumatized gods. godfeels has always been my way of analyzing the themes and ideas of homestuck, the existential ramifications of the mechanics of SBURB and the classpects and retcon (let’s remember that i wrote godfeels around the same time that i took over hosting duties on the perfectly generic podcast). godfeels has also always been about me and my trauma. i even used to joke that june was my self-insert character, though i've seen that line repeated unironically by enough people who haven't read godfeels that i've stopped saying it. because it's not true! june is very, very different from me... i just happen to see my life reflected in her eyes.

to immediately rehash what i said i wouldn't, june eg8ert arose out of my frustration with most versions of the june egbert headcanon particularly in the summer of 2019. let's call her "hairclips june." hairclips june is always smiling, usually with smiling friends, she's wearing hairclips and has nonzero tit and is A Woman Now. as i said in my video, while i don't begrudge anyone their comfort food, this simply was not my experience with coming out as a trans woman. and of all the characters, i’d always identified most with john. also i thought, you know, these kids are SERIOUSLY messed up, every single one of them has died multiple times, they've seen things and done things no one should ever have to. and retcon! god, what a mindfuck retcon is.

those are the primal ingredients of godfeels. what if june came out and everyone wasn't chill about it? some folks say that's out of character and, idk, i guess that's arguably true. but i had friends who were very vocal trans allies who’d been in queer relationships who still stopped talking to me after i came out. let me tell you i spent a lot of time fucked up in the head over how "out of character" that was for them, to the extent that i blamed myself for their reaction because surely they couldn't be so out of character. to which one might respond, well, why do this as a homestuck fic then? why not just do my own original thing instead?

and i guess the answer is that i didn't want to and i still don't, really. it's not just about the characters for me. i like the rules of the homestuck universe. i find it interesting how it mechanically reflects being a fictional narrative. and, you know, maybe it's easier for me to process violent intrusive thoughts through a character who is capable of acting on those thoughts and then immediately undoing them consequence-free. retcon is, in fact, sort of the perfect mechanism for exploring violent intrusive thoughts because it lets us play out the fantasy without lasting diegetic harm, such that we can just focus on the existential and moral questions of the phenomenon itself. and like, yeah, that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. but isn’t it still just as valid a topic to explore in fiction as anything else?

like em or not, people have intrusive thoughts. people have violent impulses. sometimes they even act on them. the unpleasantness of a phenomenon shouldn’t dictate whether it is acceptable to depict in fiction-- if anything, we ought to take our instinctive desire to look away as an urgent invitation to look closer instead. as i’ve been wont to say for years and years now, “problematic” implies a problem to be solved. that which is human is inherently complicated. to pretend it’s all good or bad excises humanity from the equation, or at least flattens the range of acceptable humanity. all of which is my extremely soapboxy way of saying (as i’ve said a million times by now), yes, godfeels june is problematic. that is in fact what godfeels is about.

there's an extent to which i think this can be blamed on how rooted we are IN june's perspective in gf1 and 2. i don't think people really appreciate the fact that godfeels 1 is john threatening to commit suicide and almost going through with it. that's the context in which her friends react poorly to her coming out; i mean, she's literally sleeping on rose's couch because everyone's so worried about her! i think that, by being completely within june's perspective for all of these events, we don't really get a good sense of the interpersonal dynamics at play (probably because i didn't even really understand them myself until later). instead we just see people who should know better acting like dicks.

i think whether or not june’s trickster arc is canonically palatable to you depends very much on whether or not you've had a dear friend disappoint you so much that you're no longer on speaking terms.

but if we want to reel this back from the abstract philosophical, maybe it’s enough to say that we just have different interpretations of these characters? they’re not monoliths, you know. different people see different things in different characters. some folks get a lot out of hairclips june and that’s okay. maybe i was a bitch about other people’s headcanons back in 2019 when redditors were calling me and my friends abusive pedophiles for liking vriska, but i gave up that fight when the redditors got what they wanted (to harass a group of queer creators offline and out of their jobs). if someone wants to woobify gamzee, whatever man, go right ahead. that ain’t my cup of tea and i personally don’t think that’s very in character either, but that’s why i don’t read it. it ain’t for me and that’s fine. i like homestuck BECAUSE these characters can mean so many things to so many people. is this variability not precisely the thing that makes the postcanon era so interesting?

i have my idea of who these characters are based on who they were in the comic and i work very hard to keep them in character, but i also don't want them to be trapped in amber. i want them to grow and change and become different people, because homestuck itself is obsessed with inescapable absolute archetypes (ie the ultimate self, or the captchalogue system) and i enjoy troubling that. i enjoy swimming in a sea of weird problematic dilemmas. that’s what’s fun about fiction for me, you can think about and write about all the most difficult and even fucked up things you like, and it definitionally cannot cause real material nonconsensual harm to another human being. and yet we get so tied up in the question of harm anyway! maybe that makes sense when talking about marvel movies, but this is fanfiction we’re talking about. this is HOMESTUCK fanfiction. if i were to go on twitter right now and post “homestuck is good” i’d end the day with at least five comments saying “lol no it’s not.” SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE WILL HAVE HOMESTUCK AVATARS. there are few things as cringe as liking homestuck even among people who like homestuck, so who cares? i like homestuck, i like the epilogues, i like hs2, and i think a pretty gargantuan majority of this fandom are subliterate babies. that’s why i don’t engage with them or make much of an attempt to bridge the gap. i think godfeels and its cool little fandom is all the better for how much work it requires of the reader to “get it” as it were. i wish more people would give it a chance, or at the very least not immediately throw me and a lot of my friends under the bus at every possible opportunity, but what can you do? i just write. people will react how they will react. what matters to me is that it stays true to itself as a work, and that it grows with me and my audience and my collaborators. trying to backpedal or soften the edges would just ruin the whole thing, likely alienate my current readers and inevitably invite even more bad faith readings. no thanks!

some folks stop reading godfeels after june's trickster arc, and i can respect that. if you get to that part of the story and don't like it, chances are you're not gonna like the rest of it! and in that sense, i guess you could say i “chose” to have june’s trickster arc happen so “early on” as a litmus test for the reader. as annoying as it can be feeling like i’m constantly having to address this exact issue, i vastly prefer it to a bunch of people hate-reading something that wasn’t made for them. but again, i didn’t know this was “early on” when i wrote it, because i didn’t plan it to happen. i didn’t intend for june to go on a killing spree, she just did it and i as writer decided, you know what? this is way more interesting than what i had planned. and then dirk became the antagonist because, oops, june coming out fucked up all the schemes he has that play out in the homestuck epilogues. and i guess in THAT sense, the palatability of godfeels depends on whether or not you liked and/or tolerated the homestuck epilogues and homestuck^2. these, too, are not for everyone. but godfeels is not a replacement for them, as some folks like to claim (god bless them). i’m not interested in rewriting homestuck or fixing its sequels. ok well that’s not entirely true, i think the epilogues did jake REAL dirty and that’s become a big focus of mine going forward. but even then, i don’t pretend the epilogues didn’t happen. in fact if you’ve read all of 3.1, you know just how cosmically important they end up being.

but this is, i guess, kind of the crux of the issue for me. june’s trickster arc happens very early on in the story, yes, and that’s deliberately challenging on a lot of levels. june spends a great deal of time being challenged by it herself! but folks who stop there (if they even make it that far) often act like the whole story is grimdark wish-fulfillment violence or me airing out my irrational hatred of Boys (????), and that's just not true. i don’t give a shit about that. we get to june's trickster arc at around the 25,000 word mark, out of the current grand total of over 400,000 words. her violence is functionally the prologue, and she spends the entire rest of this story suffering the consequences of those actions. so if i am frustrated with this line of questioning, a lot of it comes down to the fact that if you just read the rest of the story you’d see that i have in fact had all of the same thoughts you’ve likely had. i know people who think i did dirk dirty in gf2, and i actually kind of agree! which is why dirk comes back and has a difficult, complicated relationship with his past self. people complain about certain characters being ooc, which i can certainly understand because when i started godfeels i really did not have a great grasp on them! but also, if you kept reading godfeels you’d know that the tension of whether or not someone is cosmically “in character” is a huge running theme of this story. june’s friends react poorly to her coming out in part because it seems out of character for her! hell, phenomenologically how *could* june be in character after coming out when she barely even knows who she is yet? her whole thing in gf1 is that she doesn’t know who she is anymore! just realizing that you’re trans changes you, changes how you see the world, how you relate to other people. or it did for me, anyway. risk, dare, X, angel dirk, and silverbark are all sorts of caught up in this question. and if you’ve gotten to the end of 3.1 you’ll know about the concept of denexustic radiation:

and that’s just the tip of the metaphysical iceberg. all of which is to say that this is a feature, not a bug. so it’s always very funny to me when people drop out so early on only to complain about the very same problematics that i’ve spent three years and 400,000 words exploring.

BUT. but. yeah godfeels 1 and 2 are messy. the gf3 prologue is very messy. it’s a serial narrative that has changed shape multiple times over the years, and barring a bit of polish on gf1 around when i started writing gf3 i generally refuse to go back and rewrite things. there’s a lot i would do differently today, but if i had done it differently then the story as it is today would not exist. and i love this story! i might look back on gf2 and feel like it’s rushed and messy, but i know that it was the best i could do at the time. it’s a reflection of who i was as a writer then. i live with the ramifications of that for the same reason i don’t delete the old videos on my channel from before i came out/learned what communism was: because i don’t like to pretend that the present was always present. i’m a different person now, a different writer. i made mistakes, i learned, and i changed. i will continue this process for the rest of my natural life, as will you.

ultimately i guess my answer here is that godfeels is a flawed work written by a flawed person, and the extent to which readers relate to it seems to have a lot to do with how much their flaws overlap with mine. i get lots of people telling me my characters are in character. i get people telling me they’re more in character than some canon! and it’s not that i weigh those comments as more valuable, i just see it as an indication of who my audience is. i’m not writing for people who want more hiveswap, and i’m certainly not writing for people who dismissed hs^2 out of hand. i’m just writing for myself and my friends, and it just so happens that some people seem to get a lot out of it.

i’m gonna close out here by actually finally directly addressing your question with what i think you were ultimately hoping for: some writing advice.

the rules don’t exist. there are things that can make some art better or some art worse but they are not universal. the rules are fake and if you hold every story you touch to those rules, you’re gonna have a bad time. a story is not static and it is never truly yours. you discover it. sometimes you can expand it or alter it in ways but, at least in my experience, doing so more often than not just kills the whole thing-- or at least demands a complete reconceptualization. all of which takes time, and we live in a world where taking time to get in touch with and hone your craft is considered sort of a bad economic decision. but art is what it is and it does what it does and we can either play with it or we can put it in a cage.

what i like about making art is that i am not entirely in control. i have my plans, my schemes, my ideas, but the fun of writing is just putting a bunch of characters in a room together and seeing what they do. quite often they do things i would never expect, that are far truer to their character than i anticipated. my experience has always been that the more you outline a story before you write it, the harder it is to actually write that story. when i know everything that’s gonna happen on a moment to moment level, the whole thing falls dead on the page. but obviously you need to know SOME things! and i’ll say that from the inception of gf3 back in december 2019 to now, very very few of the broad strokes of my plans have changed. if you’ve read all of 3.1 you know there’s a very specific timeline at play in the backstory of a group of characters we’ll be spending a lot of time with in 3.2. there are no questions or mysteries or whatever else i’ve introduced to this story that i did not have at least the sense of an explanation for. but these are simply bullet points that dictate the endpoint of a path and suggest something of the moral/philosophical/emotional arc that needs to occur in order to get there. the real meat of it comes out in the act of writing itself, and that’s what i’m here for. it’s a gamble that doesn’t always pay off, and it does mean that i have almost 80,000 words of material i ended up rewriting or cutting sitting in a doc somewhere, but that’s worth it for me.

if art is to be relevant, it must have the capacity to make an audience uncomfortable. if art is to be essential, it must have the capacity to demand a strong reaction (positive or negative) from everyone who sees it. if art is to be true, it must have the capacity to reflect the disquiet contradictions of simple existence that we desperately wish to ignore in our daily lives. that doesn’t mean everyone has to or should read difficult art, or like it, or make it. but it has always existed and it will always exist, and i think it is essential for writers and critics alike to learn to stop themselves from mistaking a common storytelling method for THE storytelling method. and frankly, most of the art i love most in this world is art that i didn’t particularly like the first time we crossed paths.

and lastly, never forget the inarguable truth that the audience bears quite a lot of responsibility in this equation. you are never, as a writer, inflicting anything on your reader, because your reader can always opt out at any moment they wish. if something doesn’t work, yeah, that’s a problem you can fix. art is a conversation in that way, or at least ought to be. but at the same time, art has no obligation to be perfect, or smooth, or easy to consume. the rules are fake. they exist to be broken. the pursuit of perfection is a dead end. just make shit

okay this one has gone on QUITE long enough lmao i hope there’s something useful in there for you somewhere and uhhhh i hope you enjoy the rest of godfeels if you haven’t already read it!

[charmikarma]

charmikarma's homestuck fanwork rec list

will be updated as i work my way through more things i like :) check under da cut

notes: parentheses indicate the focus(es) of each work, and works with explicit content are marked [E]. gen means there's no specific ship or character focus.

Canon Compliant or Canon-Adjacent Works

Karkat Goes To A Convention, Act 1 by Cole (gen)

i have two pitches for kgtac. here they are:

if you ever find yourself missing homestuck in the old days before postcanon, or even just the old days of homestuck fandom, you should read karkat goes to a convention immediately.

this is the most homestuck thing i have read since homestuck.

act 1 of kgtac is completed, and is the main draw here. act 2 is currently ongoing and is pretty much completely unrelated to act 1. i think it's alright. but act 1 is absolutely a must-read.

Detective Pony by sonnetstuck (dirk)

do i even need to explain this one? it's detective pony. it's a great character study of dirk. i'm sure you've all heard of it. if you haven't read it, go do that now. please.

Jade Route by SPICYYETI (jade)

jade route is a post-epilogues comic following meat!jade who is trapped in a body controlled by calliope. it's a take on the "ending" that the epilogues don't offer. i think it's pretty clever - it does a great job of using the medium. also, it's about jade :) may or may not have had an impact of some size on how i personally read jade.

AU Fics

Crossfire by HappiKatt (gen; dave)

ok, this series only contains one fic (for now). it's called "the calm is terrifying when the storm is all you've known." ok i literally could not put this fic down. it has the best hook i've ever seen. a proper fucking novel. and some of the best character writing i have EVER seen for the whole strilonde family. augh it's so good. and the art is really good too (YES IT'S ILLUSTRATED).

The Eurydice Suite by callmearcturus [E] (gen; davekat)

inception au. some of the coolest action and plot stuff with an ensemble cast i've ever read followed by the best davekat fic i've ever read. really cool stuff.

Catacombs by oxfordRoulette [E] (jadekat; dirkjohn)

another series. it's a d&d-like au. very tongue in cheek about this fact at times. the real draw here is the third fic in the series, Vanitas Vanitatum, which has stellar dirk and john writing. you could read it on its own, but the first two fics are also QUITE good, are about jadekat, and the second one sets up vanitas beautifully, so... you should read all three??? :3c

Miscellaneous

Homestuck Made This World by Ranged Touch (analysis)

hsmtw is a readthrough/analysis podcast whose goal is not to analyze homestuck on its own terms, but to challenge it and put it back into its historical context. it's not the easiest to listen to as a homestuck fan - the hosts are very critical at times, and i don't always agree with their opinions on things that happen in homestuck - but i think the analysis about what homestuck does, tries to do, and is responding to is very important, especially for people who weren't there for homestuck's original run. which... includes me! i read homestuck in 2014. i missed most of the most important homestuck historical moments. in any case, hsmtw changed the way i look at homestuck and other media. highly recommend, at the very least for understanding homestuck's historical context

Sugoi Quest for Kokoro by death420 (gen)

well well well well well well. well. 🤔 well. if it isn't ratchet and fuckin CLANK

DORITOS & FRITOS by bb-panzu (davejade)

good video. has davejade. i'm not an artist or anything but i think there's some kind of artistic genius happening here. it scratches my brain just right.

[kusukixcrystal]

MM Classpecting: Saeran Part 2

Zen Classpect

Yoosung Classpect

Jaehee Classpect

Jumin Classpect

707 Classpect

V Classpect

Saeran Classpect Part 1

This is part 2 of my Saeran classpecting post. In the first part is the Page of Heart interpretation, which I don't believe is his actual classpect. Now, I will cover what I think suits his character considering the events of the main story (Deep Story, 707 route and Secret Endings)

Classpect Interpretation 2:

Classpect - Muse of Rage (+): One who commands Rage, or commands through Rage, for others.

How this applies Saeran: Holy. Shit. Where do I even start? The world is out for Saeran: his father is trying to kill him and his mother abused him. Rika then indoctrinated him into a fucking cult. Saeran blames his own weak constitution for why his brother left him. In Mint Eye he accepts that the world is a cruel place, and dwells in self-deprecation, hatred and negativity.

In Another Story we see what would happen if Saeran breaks out of this cycle of self-deprecation, gaining strength in order to protect MC and his brother. In order to mature, in both Another Story and the Secret Endings Saeran must learn to trust Saeyoung and the RFA in order to escape Mint Eye and lead a better life. At his worst as Unknown he is pessimistic, isolates himself and suppresses any emotions that would deem him ‘weak’. Saeran in his After Story works with Jumin and Jaehee to stop his father, using his hacker skills. He has the ability to exert force on his environment when provided backing from people he cares about. We see the world tug him in every which way; V trying to show Saeran positive sides to the world with gardening and photography. Rika with Mint Eye. Another Story makes this more explicit, with the divide between Ray and Saeran. At that point he was still not Unknown yet, still malleable with Rika and V trying to shape him.

Unknown Commands over many people in Mint Eye and is in a high position. He orchestrates getting MC into the RFA and yadda yadda. 

We have to talk about why I think he is a Muse in the context of the main story. In Homestuck, Muse/Lord are considered to be Master Classes. They are classes given to only 2 characters in the entire comic: Calliope and Caliborn respectively. We see that with these classes these two play the role of influencing the other characters to act. They are given to people who influence the events of the entire story to a great degree. As one of Mystic Messenger's main antagonists, Saeran's role can not be understated. His actions literally lead to all the stories/routes happening. He is the one to lead MC to Rika's apartment. He is the one to hack the RFA chatroom and put everyone on high alert. He is the one to break into Rika's apartment and threatens to blow it up with the bomb. He is a Conductor, Commanding the RFA to act through using his Aspect... Speaking of his Aspect, let's discuss that.

This is what the Extended Hiveswap Zodiac has to say about the Rage Aspect:

“Those bound to the aspect of Rage are bringers of chaos. They possess great contempt for lies or false ideas, including the stability that false ideas can impart. To them, the true is far more important than the good; they would tear down a system just to destabilize it if, by their reckoning, it is built on faulty premises. Often the Rage-bound prefer anarchy to any of the alternate forms of civilization, which they believe to be riddled with lies and foolishness and obedient masses. They are bringers of confusion and doubt, and they can be frustratingly difficult to convince otherwise when they have attached themselves to an idea. If they sound dangerous, they are. The Rage-bound tend to be most volatile and unpredictable of the aspects. At their best they are original, revolutionary, and fearless. At their worst they are cruel, uncompromising, and vicious.”

How this applies to Saeran:

As previously stated, as a Muse of Rage Saeran Commands with Rage, utilizing his Aspect, his Rage, against the RFA to sew chaos and disorder within the narrative. Destroying the RFA's once peaceful lives.

He does this because he believes in Mint Eye's ideology, that outside institutions are feeding everyone lies and that they are a paradise in this world. He believed Rika, thinking that Saeyoung lied about saving him. These 'lies' and 'false ideas' from both his brother and society makes Saeran very angry, using it to destabilize the RFA. This brings doubt to the members of the RFA, where once everyone (excluding Yoosung) believed in V wholeheartedly, began to doubt him when they learn that there is a bomb in Rika's apartment and his constant absence.

When a Muse Commands with their Aspect, they are shaped by it too. His Aspect of Rage shapes him into Unknown, blinded by betrayal and Rage against Saeyoung, turning him into a violent bundle of anger and sorrow. He embodies the forces of his Aspect through violence and utilizing the bomb in Rika’s apartment and the gun he uses to shoot V. He also presumably tortures Yoosung with stuff as well (Yoosung Bad Ending 3). Unknown’s presence haunts the RFA in the game, the hacker threat a prominent story thread hanging over them. This influences the RFA to be careful and take precautions. The martyrdom part applies more to After Story Saeran, who sacrifices himself by directly confronting his father for his brother.

In Saeyoung's route, when he confronts Saeran in Rika's apartment and even at Mint Eye, he has difficulty getting his brother to believe that he thought he was living a good life. Saeran's belief can not be swayed easily, a prominent trait seen in the Rage-bound.

Saeran is unpredictable and volatile, seen in all Casual and Deep Stories in this game. He can strike a hacker attack at any time. In bad endings he appears almost randomly, catching the characters off guard.

In the beginning of his route, he uses his Rage to hurt and Command the MC, having control over her. It is only after the route progresses and MC gets through to him, somehow managing to persuade him away from his false ideals, that Saeran redirects his Rage in a different direction: towards Rika and his father.

Just to clarify, the reason I bring up Another Story so much in this analysis when I said I’d only focus on the main story in previous posts is because we just never had the opportunity to see much of Saeran in the og game. These traits of his character do apply to who he is as a person, its just that we only get to see it in Another Story more. Its the same thing as looking at other character routes to build a characterization of the other RFA members. His main role in the narrative still takes precedent and it all still fits well with Unknown/Saeran.

Now that we discussed his Class and Aspect separately, let's summarize. A Muse of Rage would be one who Commands Rage for Others. A Muse could be subjected to anger and violence themselves (his abuse and neglect), he later goes on to have Command over Rage and violence himself as Unknown. He inspires Rage within others (The RFA), and Commands them through Rage and have them pit against each other. In Saeyoung’s route Yoosung voices his grievances about V after the bomb was revealved. Saeyoung begins to doubt too, and is frustrated that V is hiding information from him, losing all trust and incensed after seeing Saeran. Even Jumin begins to confront V about his absence and behavior. By doing all of this, the narrative progresses forward, Saeyoung and MC finally deciding to go to Mint Eye, where all truths are revealed.

[thereal-true-ogilvie]

Hello everyone welcome BACK to: I talk about Benrey for a minute here!

Today we will talk about everyone's favorite: Mischaracterization in Fanfiction!

[I want to preface this with a very important note. Anything I bring up here is NOT something I'm complaining about. I LOVE mischaracterizing my little guy sometimes, especially by making him more like me, heart emoji. I just also know what's wrong so I mischaracterize him in a better and more accurate way /ref]

Now, the most common little thing is him showing basically any emotion in a human/allistic way. Laughter is pretty much the only exception, followed only by whining. He would NOT apologize and he would NOT break down sobbing. In fact I don't believe he has tear ducts he forgor to make them.

[as user needsmoreexplosions has said in the replies, this is hyperbolic! he does show plenty of emotions, just more muted than you'd expect. The first act has more bursts of emotion than the later acts as well. They brought up the "dont FUCKING talk to me" and I mentioned him yelling to Tommy happily. However, there's still not MANY examples. I'm going to rb this with every example of strong emotion he conveys and itll probably be shorter than this post. again. i love people making him emotional anyways, even if its not quite in character]

If he were to learn that Regular People Can't Respawn, he wouldn't go crying and apologizing to Gordon. He would go "oops." He would complain that no one told him. He would make fun of Gordon for not being able to respawn.

See:

"Benrey's not on this team anymore, apparently."

"Yo what- why would you say that, that's so mean."

[Whining, not crying. Always]

SPEAKING OF WHICH. The arm thing. A LOT of people tend to go with "he was trying to get the trackers out/hev suit off," when Dr. Coomer literally says, "I think they're just spiteful." He was getting back at Gordon for all the times he like. Shot him or somethin idk. People are right that he didn't expect the soldiers to cut off his arm, but he also DID expect them (and hype them up) to kill him. Not so he'd respawn without the hev suit or with his passport, just because "hey everyone else has died. And you are so mean to me. Your turn."

He doesn't act like a cat or crave attention, I'm so sorry fic writers [again, it's so fun and I love it tho, so keep doing it please] In fact, he loves to fuck off and leave the team, he does not need their attention. And, when given attention, he tends to just be mildly confused or antagonistic.

And he's not obsessed with the passports, guys! Let me get my fuckin 26-page document up rq... He says Passport/ID 26 times in Act 1 [yo what the fuck what a cool coincidence..... That's actually fucking awesome], then literally once in Act 2 and it wasn't even directed at Gordon. He doesn't say it at all in Act 3, though he does say One (1) time how much he loves his. He says it 6 times in Act 4, ALL of which are during his Boss Fight.

People make him a gamer. Yes, he is 100% but they make him the wrong KIND of gamer. He's not a Minecraft Animal Crossing Mario Kart gamer, he talks about Heavenly Sword, God of War, Halo, MAG, Grand Theft Auto and TF2. 2 First Person Shooters, 3 very violent action/adventure games, and TF2.

[actually, speaking of this image, did anyone else catch Gordon referencing the stairs bit but with ropes? Gordon has canonically read Homestuck]

The only TV he references is All Dogs Go To Heaven 2 and Fighting Redemption which are WILDLY different. And also whatever Ms. Pebbles is.

Not necessarily a common mischaracterization, but an important tidbit is that Benrey tends to be pacifistic towards Xen creatures, and not towards scientists and later security guards. Lots of people headcanon Experimentation which, while there's not really any evidence for that, there's also no evidence against it and it's a good headcanon that I like a lot.

He likes taking pictures. (shakes fic writers) give him a photo album!!!! SCANS OF GORDON'S FEET WOULD NOT BE IN THE ALBUM HE DOESN'T ACTUALLY HAVE THOSE. IT WAS NOT A FOOTSCANNER HD HE LIED.

The things he does know vs doesn't know are. Difficult. He isn't clueless about "human Things" he understands that shaking = nervous and balled fists = angry. He doesn't know what pigeons are but he does know mayonnaise and Big Mac with Freesh Fries.

The final important bit of info. Canon is kinda... flimsy? Canonically, according to Gir, Bubby is a straight guy who FUCKS. Canonically, according to Holly, Bubby is agender and married to Dr. Coomer.

So like. Go fucking crazy! Go stupid! A a a a a!

Just be aware when you're wrong LOL

[hermitcyclop]

for the ask game…

fuck you. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25.

jk. 1, 2, 7, 13. bonus points if they are homestuck related

list 3 positive things about your current fandom(s)

Ok so for one, the sheer variety and uniqueness of fancontent produced by this fandom. The MSPFAs. The reanimated flashes. The dozens of fanmusic albums. The fangames, from VNs to fighting games to puzzle games to even multiplayer online sburb simulators. Fan merch like I've never seen before. Even more "classic" fancontent, like fanarts and fanfics, are distinct. Seriously, I didn't know it was possible to do all these things on ao3 before I started reading homestuck fanfics.

2, I don't know if this reflects the hs fandom at large (probably not) of the communities I dwelve in, but the fans are pretty queer, and it shows into their character depictions and comic analysis, so that's pretty cool.

3, I love all the little events and celebrations that rhythm the year, be it important dates such as 413 or 612 or the kids' birthday, or fan-led events such as the dirkjake big bang or rosemary month. These events persisting after years is pretty cool too.

a headcanon you weren't sure about at first but have come to like!

I'm not sure how to answer that bc I'm either pretty lenient about my HCs, or a die-hard about some of them and will have a hard time coming around an HC that contradicts them. Although when I was pretty new to the fandom I didn't really see Dirk as a trans guy, and look at me now.

your favorite tropes to read/write/draw

I *love* seeing two characters, who aren't into each other or related, who are ride or die for each other. BFFs who'll go to the end of the world if this means the other is happy. Bonus if one of them is a guy and the other a girl, for personal reasons. As for hs tropes, it's probably not really one but I like godtier garb and dream pajamas redesigns.

your favorite type of fandom event (gift exchange, ship week, secret santa, prompt meme, etc)

Fuck I already kind of answered that in the first question. Pretend you didn't read it. Anyway my fav fandom event is the djbb. Second place is SAHCon.

[lifeonvenuswriting]

Three things I'm gonna say right now and never repeat again.

1- my fics about a trans guy getting pregnant aren't written for kinky reasons. Trans families are important to me. I would like to have kids of my own one day as a trans guy. Don't EVER compare my non-sexual fic about pregnancy to literal fucking incest.

2- yall have lost your commenting privileges.

3- don't try and diagnose me with stuff? You don't know me. I don't know you.

I have an exam this afternoon. I'm tired. I'm shaking and I'm stressed out. Never in my life have I seen a fandom so goddamn disrespectful of boundaries. The danganronpa and homestuck fandoms treated me and my boundaries better than yall fucking did.

Grow the fuck up. Do better.

I'm probably gonna have someone I know ghost post for starseeds or any trigun fic from here on out.

And. By the way. If yall think that me saying "incest ships gross me out and it's very personal my reason why and I don't want to interact with people who ship that" is an attack on YOUR character maybe you should self reflect on that! I don't think anyone deserves harassment at all but oh my GOD I'm allowed to dislike people for something they willingly participate in.

[missingrache]

10 fandoms 10 blorbos, very belatedly responding to a tag from lovely @windsweptinred:

1. Bioshock: Mark Meltzer

This man is the subject of my very first post on tumblr, he must be included here, I adore this sad fuck.

2. Homestuck: Diamonds Droog

A toss up between him and Slick. I was and am a Homestuck Intermission girlie and this must be acknowledged.

3. Dragon Age: Justice

I have many many Dragon Age faves and DAO and also Awakening is so so important to me, but Jorstin here is the fellow I have the most distinct and personal opinions about and is, aside from OCs like my Brosca Warden, Avi, the only one I have a strong rp/fic voice for. He’s such a weird and cool dude!

4. DC Comics/Animated Universe: Martian Manhunter/ J’onn J’onzz

My BOY. I love him most in the VERY specific comic pictured above (1988 miniseries that establishes the Martian gods as being flaming horrorterrors, as we see in Sandman w/L’zoril Dream, it’s GOOD SHIT)—but also in general. Criminally under rated and under represented. A sad fuck, a shape shifting horror, a stranger in a strange land, a bereaved parent, Doing His Goddamn Best. AND sometimes a noir detective send up.

Anyway, speaking of comics.

5. Sandman: Dream of the Endless

I am thrilled to be here in the year of our lord 2024 enthusing about and making friends over this scrunkly wet cat that I first encountered and dearly loved in high school. (I am more than halfway through my 30’s now, so it has been A WHILE). I’m counting Sandman and DC as separate affairs, sorry not sorry.

6. Our Flag Means Death: Izzy Hands

Loved him even before S2, fascinated, I want to put him in a jar and shake him but also keep him safe forever. I am a little soured on the show after s2, but I have dressed up as Izzy and would gladly do so again so he belongs here.

7. Supergiant Hades: Achilles

This SPECIFIC version of Achilles, who has died and continued growing through his pain and regrets and who is a surrogate parent to my BOI Zagreus, is. Fascinating. To me. I was so angry at first to find myself liking him as much as I did! It’s masterful how much characterization Supergiant implies with relatively little. He’s coming after Izzy on the list bc I came to them both in similar ways, looking at myself falling in love and going oh my god HIM? Seriously? And being like yup that war criminal there is my son now!!! (And now of course I’m fond of him all across the mythological/classical board, oh my god Hadesgame what have you done.)

8. Star Wars: Alexsandr Kallus

The only space nazi redemption arc I will accept. (Although I am watching Andor with friends right now and three double agent gingers across the begins to suggest a pattern which is very entertaining to me.)

Anyway A+ arc, love this bastard man, love his giant cat husband, single-handedly keeping me invested in Star Wars, hope his gay happy ending never gets messed with.

9. Les Miserables: Inspector Javert

Another character that I went oh my god REALLY??? That Guy??? About. But he’s so /funny/ in the Brick and Stars is lovely enough that I learned how to play barre chords on my guitar Just For That and look. Look. He is a bastard but he is MY bastard and I will read every redeemed!Javert fic that crosses my path forever the end. (Also a side note: Kallus was originally sold to me by @lokivangelist as “space Javert”)

10. The Witcher: Dandelion/Jaskier (all versions, but repping Hexer below because that’s my favorite!!!)

Throwing a curveball for the last slot! I’ve got a sad dad/monochrome aesthetic/loyal right hand/shapeshifting nonhuman/rigid worldview kinda pattern happening above, and my boi here slip slides away from almost all of those. Except for the loyalty. This man is an absolute ride or die for Geralt and I love that about him. He is also an obnoxious fuckboi but I love that too, especially in a story as heavy as the Witcher frequently can be. (My runner up for this fandom was gonna be book!Lambert, who is similarly narratively savvy and good at puncturing the heaviness of a scene without being straight up comic relief.)

There they are! Ten blorbos, I climbed that whole mountain and now I’m heading to bed. (Will tag folks tomorrow perhaps? But also feel free to invite yourself in and do this and say I tagged you if you like, because I am curious what my mutuals and etc . might choose!)

[spiritelectric3]

My journey through Homestuck: Act 1

The gods have chosen me to experience the horrors of Homestuck. I have chosen to do so via comic dub (specifically the Void Over Nexus dub). Here are my takes:

-Okay, I'm still in the kid's bedroom and they are already introducing such complicated mechanics. -16 minutes in and he's finally left his room. I'm so glad I didn't read this or it would have taken forever -I'll admit, so far, this does make me feel kinda nostalgic for my childhood. It has an attitude that was common for comic books and cartoons of the 2000s, but has gone away. Reminds me a lot of picking up random comic books from the library as a kid and reading them over and over. -With some deeper thought, too, this is a pretty accurate description of what it's like to have free time as a kid, how you kind of just goof off doing whatever, but somehow it all feels important. Sort of like how the Lord of the Rings dedicates a lot of pages to walking so that the reader gets a similar feeling to the characters. -Plus, from what I know from the plot, this is kind of an actually good way to set up a story like this. John's home is important, so the work spends time on it. It's annoying that it takes awhile, but that's why we have comic book dubs. -okay, tbh, this is a pretty accurate depiction of what (neurodivergent?) childhood thinking is like, at least for my own childhood -okay, so more on the neurodivergent thinking thing: I love how well the comic integrates strange system but shifts the reader's mindset towards the world of the series well. It reminds me of how I end up seeing the world differently based on my current hyperfixation -also unrelated, but I thought Stacks were first in first out and Queues were first in last out -wait, how is this inventory system different!? -thought on the language: I think the descriptions thus far are kind of hit or miss. It's a hit when we get detailed poetic descriptions of childhood mentality. It's a miss when it becomes so long and pedantic that I can't make heads nor tails of it. -Is TT… psychic!?

-I love how no one in this series can handle simply having a human body so they need inventories and the ability to move things long distance. Honestly same (oh god I'm beginning to think like the writing style) -okay, this is just what it's like to play an overly complicated video game for the first time, just in semi-literary form -I'm kind of terrified of what's gonna happen to the second person narrator later on -Why are John's eyes shaped like glasses lenses if he doesn't wear them? -I love how ominous Sberb is quickly becoming -…OH. I think I'm beginning to realize how this became a massive influence on all media in the 2010s+ -This is the moment where I am wondering if I should turn back, already realizing that it is too late -Honestly, I can already see how someone could write a paper on how this series fundamentally redefines thought, in and of itself -why does this series make me want to play Run 2 on coolmathgames.com? -this is legitimately like non-cyperpunk cyberpunk -I'll admit that for all that's been happening the meteor is kind of a weird uptick in stakes -Ah, that's what happens to the second person voice -I love how the narrator's personality shifts to match Rose's -Seeing Rose get introduced this late feels like during a first dnd session when your the last character to be introduced at the end of the session -Rose's captchalogue is pretty based -okay, I'm gonna say it. Rose is a much more entertaining character than john. She's like if Susie Derkins had a wilder imagination -Wait… WHAT THE FUCK!?

Overrall I'd say, yeah this is pretty slow. In this format it's honestly worse when they're playing the game than when John is just doing stuff in his house. Those earlier sections almost made me tear up. They didn't, but they got close. I think there is a childlike joythat encapsulates this series thus far, and has been the majority of the charm

[electricabsolution]

is anyone still thinking about succession. is anyone also simultaneously thinking about homestuck. just me? ok. cool

logan is a lord of life… he is the cornerstone of the entire plot. the world (narrative) revolves around him but it’s shown time & again that parts of the real world actually do revolve around him. he built himself up from nothing and he has the money and power to prove it. but in dominating Life (wealth, power, success) in the world he extracts it from his own character. his fucked-up children revolve their lives around him, but they hate him. people worship him but no one actually enjoys being around him. the world stopped when he died but his family wasn’t even there.

it’s fucked. i think he’s unironically one of the best examples of a lord class in media.

anyway kendall is a prince of doom. by virtue of being the eldest (whos connor?) hes literally set up for failure and he absolutely knows it. i also enjoy him being a destructive class & trying to emulate logan by ghosting life but it’s just not gonna happen LOL. by being the “main” of the 4 kids the narrative follows him more often so we see wayyy more of his huge swings and misses. also i Fundamentally believe that an important part of being a prince is 1) suicidal ideation and 2) a weird relationship with water.

roman has gotta be a bard of blood for the patheticness of it all. or maybe heart…? i’m not sure. he’s as unconfident in his own identity as he is desperate for positive relationships. though as a bard (geez, another destructive class?) he would act like the opposite aspect; he definitely plays the breath/freedom trope more than the mind. so bard of blood is the working theory.

shiv… i really don’t know. i like thinking of her as a life player bc she is the most similar to logan but i’m not sure what class. thief, for the vriska similarities? like she had a perfectly fine job in politics (on the liberal side despite being born high-class and not needing any sort of change to come from within the government. it’s not the politics she wants to change, it’s her shitass family. sound familiar?). but she threw it away to literally try and steal the company from under the boys’ noses. no one can steal from a Lord, but it would have tasted so sweet.

wait, there’s a fourth roy kid? kidding #conhead but seriously he’s gotta be void right? his whole thing is being forgotten. maybe maid or heir. honestly heir of void, equius vibes? if willa is aradia in this scenario it kind of makes sense. like manipulating a woman of lower status to be with him. connor sort of was doomed from the start, wasn’t he? a mentally unwell mother who logan had moved past before connor even grew up he really got the short end of the stick. and years and years of begging dad for attention and even after he became self aware there really wasn’t anything to fill that hole.

wow this is entirely too long. thanks for coming to my tedtalk.

[nerdsinc]

so uh. i drew mark and nguyen with homestuck godtier outfits. because i cant escape that fucking webcomic.

anyways explanation of their classpects under the readmore

Mark: Mage of Heart

i originally almost made mark a prince of space since that would fit him in act 1 a lot, and the outfit being mainly black with a white star symbol would have been awesome foreshadowing for him turning into star but it just didnt end up fitting.

instead i made him a mage of heart! with how many different versions of mark exist, i thought it would be fitting to give him the aspect of "self". that, paired with the mage class, basically means that while mark gains knowledge on his aspect, that of souls and the concept of "self", he looses his own aspect. and by loosing his own aspect, hes basically shattering into different versions of himself which genuinely does happen in the series.

honestly with how mark has been continuously stuck in a loop of being star and back to being mark, aswell as everything with michael (his original self) and then EVERYTHING in act 2 it just made sense to have him be a heart player that somehow destroys/looses his aspect. the concept of "self" is just so important to mark as a character and him shattering into several versions of himself is such an important point, so it just fit too well.

Nguyen: Rouge of Breath

nguyen could have easily been a mind/light player, with the ultimate knowledge thing and both of those being tied to knowledge (ESPECIALLY mind, since that fits how he acts in act 2 a lot) but i felt like that was just too easy.

instead i focused on the fact that hes one of few characters with free will, so i gave him the aspect of breath, which is speculated to be about freedom and independence, which i think fits the whole free will thing a lot.

as a rogue of breath, nguyen would be taking free will and redistributing it for the better of others, which honestly makes a lot of sense in terms of the actual series, with him basically waking up a bunch of characters from authors control; doing so unintentionally to mark early on in the series, and then intentionally shaking x out of authors control as well, and then planning to go to other servers and do the same to whoever they came across.

plus the blue fits the blue diamonds on his mc skin lol

[davestriderascend]

the homestuck reread pt 2

this is a continuation of this post, where i recap my reread of acts 1-4. in this post, ill be focusing on just act 5, bc its literally like the length of 1-4 all on its own. act 5 started in 2010 and finished in 2011- it took about a year to make! act 1 started in 2009, meaning that this one act took the same amount of time to finish as the previous 4 acts!

act five is split into two acts, or "bifurcated." the curtains are red and blue, the act is neatly split into two plots, and we are introduced to the best and most important troll- sollux (jk). anyway bc of this i will also be splitting my recap into subacts, and then talking about the act as a whole!

Act 5 Act 1 - AKA, Hivebent

a5a1 is the act where we are finally, officially, introduced to the trolls. a5a1 is fast-paced, text-heavy, and made with the intention to summarize the trolls session as quickly as possible. its hussies way of catching us up on the trolls backstory, the plot relevant info from their session, and the midnight crew + felts role in sgrub (w implications for how that impacts the kids sburb session). were introduced to doc scratch, and we learn a lot more about the paradoxical nature of sburb/sgrub. thats pretty much the whole subact! while this act was coming out, toby fox released his solo album alternia, and a bunch of ppl collabed on a squiddles album!

The Plot

im going to mix it up a little and start w the plot this time. the plot of hivebent was fastpaced and crammed a lot of things into one subact. if you recall anything from hs that happened before the trolls were on the meteor, chances are it all happened in this act! the purpose of this subact was very obviously just to set up for the following subact, and i noticed a lot of people complained about the pacing on the formspring (were still on the first one, btw). personally, i understood immediately what hussie was doing, so it didnt really bother me at all.

the trolls session was brief, largely bc unlike the kids, they were all already familiar w violence and weapons and frankly overprepared for their session. they breezed through the quests and bosses, and without even godtiering (except vriska) they all managed to beat an extremely overpowered black king that had been prototyped 12 times, one of which was w feferis monster horrorterror lusus. aradia largely played jades roll in setting up the whole session, following nudges from mysterious sources to discover the ruins, get sollux to create the game, and push all of her friends into playing it. hivebent ends with the end of their session and their new fate on the meteor.

The Characters

karkat, obviously, is one of the main characters in hivebent. hes ornery and obsessed with leadership, and he fights with everyone all the time. however, we still see a lot of moments where he genuinely connects with even the most insufferable people, regularly giving all of his friends the benefit of the doubt and offering compassion every time the need arises. in a5a2, vriska credits him for being the reason why the trolls didnt devolve into competitive murder. while he might not have been the best leader, he was genuinely really good at keeping the team together, even when the thing uniting them was just bitching about his obnoxious memos. like dave, karkat was one of my favorites on my first readthrough, and like dave, hes been a lot less compelling for me this time around, but theres still a lot to enjoy about his dynamics with others.

in a lot of ways, vriska also holds the limelight. sometimes it kind of feels like act 5 is her act to me, but maybe thats just bc she was my favorite and therefore all i cared about. vriska and john are both like, just as compelling to me as they were my first read, and my feelings on them really havent changed at all. its incredible. vriska is just such a complex character, and its like. man to this fucking day i will see tumblr posts like man i wish we had female characters who x and im like vriska already did. she already did and she killed it and fandom hated her so bad for it. shes genuinely so refreshing as a character bc i feel like we really never do get to see women who are just loud and brash and cringe and messy and she is just. ugh. she is the moment she is everything fr.

kanaya is my GIRL. shes one of the most genuinely hysterical characters in all of hs and one of my favorite trolls. even before she meets rose and starts playing up the sarcasm thing she has a very dry, deadpan sense of humor, and very little tolerance for stupid people, as much as she is patient with them. shes a little goofy, a little silly, and her crush on rose oh my god its literally so cute. i completely forgot she had a crush on rose way back before she even met her. listen, i love her, shes so great

tavros gets a fair bit of focus as well, as an early troll in hs, and ill be honest. i paid like no attention to tavros whatsoever my first read, bc i just didnt find him very interesting. however, im finding him a lot more compelling on my reread! the parallels he has with vriska are really interesting, and its unbelievable how much fandom has watered him down. he really is kind of a dick? and i dont understand why youd get rid of that! it makes him a much more nuanced and complex character than the woobie shy boy i see in so much fancontent

terezi gets less attention than you would think before a5a2, but she certainly has her own role in this act. shes never really been my favorite, because i just dont really relate to her at all? so i dont have much to say other than like. man. she sure is there. her relationship with nepeta is cute i love when people rp along w her and i think its really cool how she manages to outmanipulate doc scratch (tho that might be a5a2?), and early karez! is actually pretty cute.

aradia and sollux occupy a much smaller role, which mostly starts and ends with their responsibility for getting the ball rolling. they made sgrub, they got everyone playing it. however, despite the incredibly small role they play, i love them both so much. sollux in particular was one of my favorite trolls when i first read hs, and whoa! shocker! he still is. hes so fucking funny. his relationship w karkat is hysterical and hes just a lot of fun as a character

nepeta and equius have an even smaller role. personally tho, i fukcing love equius, i think hes so fucking funny. he feels very much like a thirteen yo boy who spent too much time in video game lobbies and started saying racist shit as a result. hes weird and uncomfortable, but mostly harmless, when he isnt being a huge fucking bigot. nepeta on the other hand is one of the most iconic girls ever in fiction, which i must acknowledge even when she isnt one of my personal faves. shes vicious and tough and still super cute and girly and like, not in a femme fatale way, but just in a middle school girl playing warrior cats way. which is SO REAL? she is THE weirdgirl, man. its her. little girls everywhere are being so represented right now.

gamzee is uh. well ill be honest. he basically doesnt matter at all. he has almost no lines and no relevance and is just kind of there, really? hes such a nothing character in this act. even that infamous tavros and gamzee conversation? thats really late in a5a2. so he literally doesnt do anything worth noting. rip.

eridan and feferi are the very last characters introduced, and so they just have very little fucking page time. every time i read hs pesterlogs im always so struck by the imaginary version of feferi that exists in the collective fandom mind. people were never normal about either of them, and ive always found myself at odds with popular opinion when it came to those two. but idk that i should really get into that, just bc it seems like my life would be easier if i didnt.

im going to hold off saying anything about the midnight crew until a5a2, but i did want to comment very quickly on doc scratch. it is insane how much he influences in a5a1. like, vriska talks about how she had no intentions of killing aradia, or maiming tavros or terezi, and how she feels like its just going way too far, but she only did it bc of scratchs pushing and manipulation! he was grooming her, for ages. he also manipulated terezi, and kanaya, and aradia! none of them even realize the extent to which he manipulated them, he was so fucking slick about it. im also going to take this moment to mention that while it might not be clear in the comic, hussies talked a lot in the formsprings about how scratch literally only talks to girls, except for that one time he said one sentence to screw w karkat. he is like. so creepy. :')

The Albums

i think alternia was the very first solo album made for hs, and its not surprising it was made by none other than mr radiation. the albums pretty good, but honestly listening to it i just wanted to be listening to alterniabound. a lot of the alternia songs are remixed for alterniabound, and i like the remixed versions a lot better tbh.

and then theres.... squiddles. this album is a trip man. so many of these songs i was listening to and was just like. what the actual fuck. highly recommend sending to your non hs friends to mess w them, 10/10 way to spend your time. the unicorn song was particularly upsetting.

Act 5 Act 2

this one is significantly longer than a5a1. a5a2 basically synthesizes hivebent with the kids story and builds towards the scratch- or, cascade, which is the biggest flash project to date. this is where terezi kills that doomed john, where jade enters the medium, where most of daves medium journey takes place, where rose goes grimdark, where all the kids godtier, where gamzee goes shithive, the one with alterniabound, the bit with doc scratch and the green background, all that shit. a lot happens! during this act, hussie also quits using the first formspring and starts a new one, in hopes of streamlining it and answering less nonsense questions, which she abandons by the end of the act, instead starting up a tumblr. there are also a lot of new albums released during this period, including the felt, vol 6: heir transparent, strife, alterniabound, medium, mobius trip and hadron kaleido, vol 7: at the price of oblivion, sburb, the wanderers, prospit and derse, the vol 1-4 compilation, and vol 8. so lets get into it.

The Plot

theres so much. so much happens. but what you need to know is that everything from right before jade enters the medium to when they scratch the session, blow up the green sun, and are about to meet up w the trolls, happens in this act. for the trolls, this pretty much means everything from the end of their session to when they meet up w the kids, including the gamzee shithive incident.

The Characters

lets get the easy shit out of the way first. most of the trolls, with the exception of the patron trolls (terezi, karkat, vriska, and kanaya), have very small roles in this act. their only real moments to shine are during alterniabound and the murderspree. i will say, alterniabound and the other meteor walkarounds do a lot of work in terms of like, fleshing out the trolls relationships to each other. all of it, really. pretty much all of the touching, cute relationship moments between trolls happen in these logs, including karkat and eridans weird bromance thing, karkats love for kanaya, like, all of feferi and solluxs relationship, sollux and terezis honestly really touching friendship, and like all of the good equius and nepeta moments (where previously their relationship had just come off as creepy and controlling). i could probably write a post just about alterniabound, so im not going to get into it here.

dave also actually doesnt have a lot going on in this act. dave spends most of the act timetraveling around, collaborating with terezi to get a bunch of very necessary but completely unseen shit going on. it isnt until much later that we really get any moments with him, but notable moments include: john valuing their friendship so much that he listens to dave instead of terezi, daves horror at roses suicide plan and determination to intervene, dave and roses way of cutting straight through each others bullshit and being real with each other in a way that they arent with anyone else, and daves extremely weird and avoidant reaction to his bros death (foreshadowing!)

rose, similarly, is offscreen for most of the beginning, doing grimdark bullshit. it isnt until right before she literally goes grimdark that we start to focus on her again. compelling moments for me: her reaction to her mothers death, and pretty much everything she says about her mom (their relationship is so complicated, but it is obvious that rose does actually really care about her and mourns her, in contrast to daves relationship with bro), the way everyone tells rose that the horrorterrors are lyign to her and tricking her but nothing... really bad seems to come of her going grimdark, and she doesnt lose control or anything? and, again, everything with her and dave leading up to cascade

vriska probably plays the biggest and most interesting role of all of the trolls in this act, serving as johns patron and leading him through to godtier. her relationship with john is really cute, actually, and its kinda fun how john simultaneously sees right through her and teases her, but also will go along with her shit and is actually very kind to her most of the time. most compelling to me is her conversations with john about guilt, weakness, and death

john and jade easily have the biggest roles in this act, though, with jade finally getting into the medium, prototyping jadesprite (and THAT whole mess), befriending the trolls, coming up with the password system, and putting a lot of the plans into place, and john being heavily featured as he goes through his game and is the first kid to make it to godtier. i kinda feel like id just be repeating what i said w act 4 tho, so lets keep going

the midnight crew! i said id come back to them. there is a lot of filling in the exiles backstory in this act, so that its pretty much full circle by the time it ends. the midnight crew in particular i found interesting bc we see enough of them (post introduction of the quadrant system) that hussie actually starts leaning into their card suits as quadrant roles! cd excels at settling disputes between parties, jack is super destructive, hb is obsessed w romance, and dd regularly pacifies jack and talks him out of impulsive plans that they both know would just make their lives harder. which is really cool!! it was a neat little touch that i really enjoyed

The Formsprings and the Tumblr

finally, finally, the first formspring came to an end. hussie claimed that there were just too many asks and people were starting to ask things that had already been answered, so they wanted to make a new one devoted to only the comic relevant stuff. and, well. it didnt work. it was better! but the formspring was still full of stupid, pointless bullshit and dumb nothing questions. there were a couple of running jokes that made their way into canon (shooshpap, fedorafreaks session) and some running jokes that just sucked (fat vriska. ugh.), plenty of the usual bigotry, and a few answers that were genuinely really interesting. still dont recommend reading it. obviously, hussie wound up torching this one too, as it wasnt really any better, and instead started up a tumblr! as of the end of a5a2, there were almost no posts and so i have nothing interesting to say about it other than it existed.

The Albums

ok so there are so many that were released like, right at the end, i am not actually caught up yet. so ill just talk about the ones i have listened to so far.

first up, we have the felt album. the idea for this one was similar to the mc album, where music helps set the stage and develop the environment and characters. the concept was an orchestral album that played with chronology, and the results are so cool. songs reverse and slow down and fast forward, and listening to it is just such a cool experience! i thought docs song especially really fit him.

vol 6: heir transparent. its a pretty middling album. its good, but i dont have anything particularly interesting to say about it. i hate the nic cage songs on here, but it has megalovania, which we all know is an irrefutable banger. i honestly kinda prefer the hs megalovania to the ut one.

strife! this was actually one of the first hs albums i ever listened to all the way through. time on my side is one of my all-time favorite hs songs, and heir conditioning STILL goes hard as hell. its a good album!! its fun.

i said earlier that listening to alternia just made me want to listen to alterniabound. this album is fantastic, and i think its also like, the first one w track commentary? which was really cool to read through! i think my favorite track is killed by 8r8k spider, but all of the themes just fit the characters so well and theyre really well done.

medium. this was another environmental album meant to sort of set a mood for the universe, and a solo album! i liked this one, but i dont have much to say about it. it was very pretty.

mobius fucking kaleido whatever. i hate this one. its a solo album and most of the tracks have lyrics and i just did not enjoy that one bit. the lyrics feel really corny, the like... art book thing?? is illegible, and it is just not for me.

vol 7: at the price of oblivion. this is the first album to have individual track art!! which, ofc, is all gorgeous. a lot of the songs on this album are so fucking good (except warhammer of zillyhoo. ugh. UGH.), and my favorite is terezi owns. it goes HARD. black rose/green sun is also really striking and perfectly haunting.

sburb is another solo, environmental album. the whole thing is a series of piano compositions, and its beautiful. really, really stunning work.

i listened to the wanderers while i was typing up this bigass post, and its really good! i think it perfectly fits the vibe of the desolate wasteland planet and the exiles silly little shenanigans, and i think of all of the like, themed environmental albums so far, this one does the best job at representing the energy for me personally (except probably squiddles, but ugh. squiddles). my favorite track is riches to ruins movements i & ii, i can tell it was remixed for heir of grief and i actually really love the og.

im still working through my relisten of prospit & derse, but like strife, this was an album i listened to over and over again long before i started this reread and i know i fucking love it. derse dreamers was always my favorite (theyre ALL good tho, NO misses), but who knows! maybe ill have a new one when im finished. i always really liked that the prospit tracks had really distinct piano, bass, and wind instruments (in parallel to john and jade playing bass, piano, and flute), and the derse tracks have really distinct synth and violin (in parallel to rose and daves instruments). its such a nice touch.

idk if vol 1-4 has any new stuff in the collection, and i havent listened to vol 8 yet, so ill just update about those whenever i write another recap.

Final Thoughts

uhhhh... im tired? lmao. ive been typing so long i cant remember if theres anything else. there was a lot more to say about this act than i thought thered be.

i guess, in summary, im really enjoying my reread so far. i think im reading with a much more critical eye than i did way back when (i started in 2014, for those of u just getting here), and im really paying more attention to certain characters i glanced over before or the actual mechanics of like, alternia and sburb and etc. ive retained more memory of the characters than i thought, but less about the plot than i thought, and my favorite characters have shuffled around a bit.

prior to my reread, i probably would have told you my favorite characters were dave, john, karkat, and then vriska and the rest of the strilondes. during my original read (almost a decade ago), my favorites were dave, vriska, sollux, dirk, and rose. now, id say my favorites are rose, kanaya, vriska, john, and sollux.

but yeah! i think thats about all i have to say, for now. stay tuned for. sighs. act 6.

update: wow, here it is! act 6, sub acts 1-3. also, heres a recap on the formspring and blogspot. youre welcome.