back around
To continue loving is the greatest feat of perseverance.
Love is the one thing we always have to give.
Etho will finally reunite with Bdubs, alongside a long, internal struggle, after Bdubs gets back from Double Life. Until then, Etho lives alone, and finally comes to terms with, and accepts, the love he knows he deserves.
(6227 words)
There’s nothing pleasant about respawn.
Etho wakes up in the basement of the monolith and his eyes burn. Around him still lingers the smell of burning hair and charcoal. Joel’s voice rings in his periphery, hoarse and afraid for the very first time. Etho took his time leaving that world, feeling the shape of Joel tug on his sleeve. To remember him in another life. He’s a good guy, a better fighter, desperately loyal. He knows that, at least next time, he might have somebody to trust again. Etho opens his eyes. The world dips and sets him back into bed too fast.
His stomach rolls as he does, onto his hands and knees, coughing up and swallowing down. He sinks to the cool floor, and for a long moment, tries to keep his head from spinning. Wake with the spins, go to bed with the spins. His hands splay out. Wooden slats beneath him. Quiet around him.
When he finally collects himself enough to stand, the first thing he does is stand in the threshold of the bathroom holding the door frame tight with both hands. In the light he can just barely see his bare face, tired but unbruised. It’s a face he hasn’t seen in a while. He tracks his eyes in the mirror and his pupils are big to take in the light. These aren’t the clothes he died in. He washes his face in the sink. He rinses his hands. Twice. Three times. He doesn’t have the patience for a bath, but there’s a fine feeling on his skin—sticky and unclean. Not blood. Sweat.
Etho takes a long breath in, sighs, and stands up straight. Then, and only then, does he try to remember how to be himself again. He pads into the other room, scrubbing sleep from his eyes. He changes his clothes and leaves the old ones in a heap on the bedside. Something about the repetition of changing makes his skin crawl a little less. He changes his socks. He combs back his hair with his fingers.
Time passes differently here. When he makes it to the staircase that should lead up into the rest of the monolith, he checks the calendar, the remnant of one. A few nights will pass until everyone is collected and brought back. A few nights will pass before people realize they don’t have to stay to watch bloodshed. Or when they get bored. And Etho is here, now. No use watching bloodshed. No use watching someone die.
Etho trails up the stairs. He pulls his mask over his face only when he reaches the landing, right before the door. The air is still and cool. The inside of the monolith is still and cool too, but something lingers. The fragments of living—the smell of cooked food, coffee, still lit lanterns. It’s midday; Etho peeks out through one of the windows to see a bright blue sky and a stretch of birch as far as he can see.
He wanders up the stairs with his heart thumping in his chest. It isn’t possible for him to be back so soon. Is it?
He keeps going, tracing up the wall as he walks. There isn’t a noise.
The whole monolith is quiet, a settling sound he hasn’t heard in weeks. No shuffling or movement, no sound of anyone living besides him. He knows it’s not the truth, he knows Ren wanders upstairs–he has to be up there. It would only make sense, given the timing.
Etho pauses at the threshold.
When he stops at the doorway, the sun is pooling into the window, filtering through the dust. On the table is a coffee cup, a dish, a dishrag left abandoned. He pushes past a vine that climbs down the beam and into the entryway. The leaves of their potted plants trickle down the wall. There is silence, aside from the faint sounds of birds and cicadas and windchimes.
When he looks into the kitchen, there are only empty dishes.
Etho rinses out the metal kettle and fills it with water. He lights the burner. The kettle goes on top. He takes down one cup and a tin. The tin, in capital letters, reads: lavender lemon.
On the stove, the kettle begins to boil.
(read the rest on ao3!)
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ok ok of u wont talk abt them on ur official analysis post HERE 🎫 i am handing u a free pass to go OFF about passive/active class and also muse of life/lord of doom >:] ooooo infecting you with classpect brain worms....
*visibly trembling like a chihuahua out of excitement* WELLLLLLLL. I SUPPOSE. IF U INSIST
OK. OK. Tristamp Vash. guy who's got feminine characteristics in his story, narrative foil to his twin brother who's got a lot of masculine characteristics. We got that down we're all caught up!! classpect time :3 (putting this under a read more because this got LONG)
Obviously classpects vary wildly between different people's perspectives, and even within the text of Homestuck itself, but there are some heavily implied roles that each class/aspect has. Time is generally an aspect associated with masculinity, Witches are typically girls, etc. Ofc Vash and Knives can have different classpects than these, but making them a Muse of Life and Lord of Doom respectively just FITS. SO WELL.
Since there's only one Muse and one Lord in Homestuck, there's not much to draw from when analyzing these classes, but there are some insinuations to be made! Muses likely a class more common in women, and Lords are likely more often men. The Life aspect is one that in text, we have only seen in female players, and only male players have had the Doom aspect (not that those aspects are gender-exclusive, but it is a PATTERN).
Life is a nurturing, motherly aspect. Jane Crocker is often treated/seen as a mother (despite being 16, which is a whole other can of worms), and her older self, Nanna Egbert, is one of the few Homestuck characters to canonically be a mother!!! Feferi is the heiress to an entire planet, and her Beforan self is a coddling motherly figure to her empire. Vash is the silent guardian of No-Man's Land, protecting people and being kind and gentle to everyone ESPECIALLY KIDS! We've seen how he is with kids, in Tristamp and every other version! Also in Tristamp, Vash is. a fucking parent now. Knives used Vash to make all these Plants get pregnant. Very violating, but it fits with the maternal themes already associated with him.
Knives and Doom. The only two Doom players we have are the Captors (and I am by no means an expert on Mituna so we're mostly working with Sollux here). However, both are shown to have powers that have extremely destructive potential. Sollux is also a Dave parallel, which means he's also a Masculine Cool Kid, just to a lesser extent. Doom isn't an inherently masculine aspect but there are bits and pieces of it reflected in the people who hold that aspect.
It's also... an extremely lonely aspect. There are only two people who hold it, one of which is a joke character, and the other of which isn't even present for the kids' victory. It's not a needed aspect for a successful session. Neither is Life, but it's still a good one to have in many sessions! Doom is more so an extra, something more directly helpful when it's paired with a negative class (Bard, Prince, Rogue, Thief, etc.). It's not needed to balance anything out except for the Aspect Wheel itself in the coding of Sburb. Knives is a very lonely character. He's not needed. Not in the lives of Plants and humans, and not in the life of his brother.
Now for Classes! Muses are passive; things happen to them, they rarely make things happen. Calliope sat around and waited for someone to come rescue her with a ring of life, doing nothing but telling her story to the poor dead souls who crossed her path. Alt!Calliope finally took action in the end, but how long did that take? How long was she stuck in the bubbles, searching for very specific souls to guide them to the right paths? Aimless and wandering with no one and nothing to keep her grounded, HMMM DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE A HUMANOID TYPHOON WE KNOW??? HMMMMMMM
In contrast, Lords are very active. Caliborn takes charge, makes decisions, and works off of a myriad of terrible instincts and loose guidance. He's also an incredibly masculine character (or so he wants us to think). He takes control over his sister's life, he takes control over the lives of others when he's part of Doc Scratch and then Lord English. He is the puppeteer! Everyone else is just an object for his own gain, HMMMM DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE A GENOCIDAL PLANT THAT WE KNOW?? HMMMMM
Maybe if Knives chose a different path, he could have been a Prince, or a Thief, but he's a Lord of Doom. This is the path he's chosen, much like Caliborn and how he chose to kill his sister and enter a dead session. This is what Knives has chosen to do. Both are forcing the world and their siblings into whatever roles they see fit.
The Lord of Time shatters the universe- Space itself, the realm of his sister. The Lord of Doom shatters the Life of his brother. This is not the inherent role of a Lord, but these are the paths they have chosen. The narrative parallels are there. The Lord kills the Muse, he takes choice away from the universe, he breaks it for his own gain.
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