#it's kinda makes sense to me though

[arceviste]

if this doesn't paint a perfect family picture then idk what is

the father and mother

and their child

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[mossy-aro]

ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.

when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!

that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.

but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!

joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.

and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.

tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.

[hoofpeet]

Cleanup <3

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Why The Ending Sucks

Ok I figured it out. Hear me out:

The entire comic has a running theme best summed up as "who is controlling the narrative, and why are we listening to them?"

Hussie plays a caricaturized version of himself that he describes as "buffoonish" and "oafish". Caricature!Hussie is well-meaning, but a dumb idiot who's incredibly biased in favor of certain characters and in disfavor of others (the most obvious example being his "love" of Vriska, but there's also the way he constantly disparages Eridan). As a result, you have to be VERY SKEPTICAL and VERY CAREFUL when approaching Homestuck's narration, because even when the "best" narrator is at the helm, he's not 100% trustworthy and incapable of giving the readers an unbiased view of the story.

I say "best" because, importantly, Hussie isn't the story's only narrator. He and Doc Scratch explicitly fight over control of the story - Doc Scratch, the child abusing predator who engineered Alternia's fascist murder society, whose shaping of its history is explicitly described by character!Hussie as "fanfic". He is then killed by Lord English, who is described by Hussie as embodying the "toxically masculine" and by extension, the patriarchy, and Caliborn explicitly takes control of the story. John even grapples with Caliborn's version of events, calling out how sexist and misogynistic and shitty it is.

So if we're keeping score: control over the narrative is LITERALLY wrested away from Hussie (who was already struggling to be unbiased) by fascists, abusers, and the patriarchy. It's stressed multiple times that Caliborn/LE are responsible for literally everything that ever happens; the reason the Game Over timeline ends the way that it does is because the alpha timeline is, in essence, the narrative LE is telling: the forces of fascism get to claim the new universe, thereby propogating itself, while friendship dies and all hope is lost.

Who's in control of the narrative, and why are we listening to them?

There are other minor examples of this, too: Aranea is an exposition fairy, and she's biased as fuck and wrong ALL THE TIME about her own teammates. Karkat's explanations and rationalizations are constantly tinged with his own self-loathing and self-blame. Sollux and Meulin are both prophets as per their Mage class, but are both so bogged down by their own emotional issues that the futures they pick out are actively harmful. So on and so on. At nearly every turn, you have to interrogate who's telling the story, what their motivations are, and what they're overlooking or deliberately obfuscating.

So given that this theme is so prevalent, and so thoroughly weighted toward "well, actually, maybe you shouldn't take narration at face value and should interrogate it and come to your own conclusions," it would be Really Weird for the story to go "actually, you can totally trust the narrative now because everyone gets a happy ending".

So, I know that it makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but here's my genuine take on Homestuck's ending:

The ending is shitty on purpose because the viewer is intended to take it as a dare to refute the narration and make something better.

Why are we letting character!Hussie tell the story? He's a biased idiot. Why are we letting the various avatars of LE and Caliborn tell the story? They're fascist, misogynistic, predatory assholes.

And - because Homestuck is a story about life - why are we letting idiots, assholes, abusers, and creeps dictate the story of real life? The world is full of forces that would try to take control of the story and make everyone else play along, represented in microcosm within the text of Homestuck. We cannot let those forces win.

So please go out and do something kind and hopeful and loving in the world today. Thanks for reading.

[somnimagus]

My page for @destinytriofanzine! I drew something about kids always dreaming of far off places

[id in alt!]

[agentc0rn]

Oh? Looks like Ogerpon wants to give you a flower! Will you accept?

>Yes

>No (you'd better not click this)

[skrunksthatwunk]

thinking about how eiji's a pole vaulter and how ash talks about eiji "flying" and how eiji's associated with bird imagery and how eiji's free (unlike ash) and how eiji comes in on a plane and leaves on a plane and how ash cannot fly, ash cannot be free, how nyc is ash's prison, and how ash is the leopard who dies climbing the mountain, unable to live at such elevation, how he was trying to reach the sky and be free but was always stuck to the earth, how he chose to die instead of climbing back down, how he chose to die where he could see the sky and hope and freedom almost like a bird with eiji's letter right in front of him rather than letting everything go wrong and ruin it once again, how eiji's a failed pole vaulter anyway, how a bad fall ruined his career and grounded him (physically and emotionally), how it took flying to america and meeting ash and needing to save him and skip for him to try flying again, how he landed hard and harsh and still the thought of that escape compelled ash to protect eiji at all costs because if he could fly that means something to him, even if he doesn't think he can fly, how eiji is the manifestation of his hope and how when he breaks and asks eiji to stay with him a while he folds himself over his legs and weighs him down and traps him and grounds him, how ash fights like hell to keep eiji alive not because he thinks he can be like him (hopeful, flying, innocent), but because he makes him forget the gravity of his situation, and so he can see eiji fly again. how he wants to see him escape. how eiji is a bird and ash is a wildcat and how ash never once saw eiji as prey. how eiji never saw ash as a predator. how it is eiji's naivete that first endears ash to him, how it is his freedom and flight and removal from darkness and his ability to leave that darkness that really roots eiji in ash's blood as something essential to him keeping on living in this hell of nyc. how it is that distance from the violence and that hope for the future that ash chooses to surround himself in as he dies. how ash dies in a dream because he feels more than anything that he can't fly like eiji, that he can never leave. how his violence is a part of him and will be forever, how it weighs him down. how he wants to enjoy the view from the mountainside rather than looking up from the ground below. as if they can both fly. as if he is with him up there and not grounded. eye-to-eye with what he can't have, seeing eiji's homeland: the sky. how he dies trying to reach the top because he couldn't take retreating and trying again. how ash, tired and tired and tired and convinced it will go on forever if he crawls back down the mountain, chooses to close his life deluged in eiji, in eiji's insistence that they can fly together, in eiji's hope for him and for them, in eiji's beautiful dream. how ash dies without trying to realize that dream. how ash, in dying, destroys it.

[dharmafox]

Having thoughts about the Sellers and their swords.

So we know that there are 64 swords and 64 Medicine Sellers, and that eight of the 64 swords are the most powerful, the Eight Trigram swords. We know that series Medicine Seller carries the Ri Trigram ☲ sword and movie Medicine Seller carries the Kon Trigram ☷ sword.

We also know that each of the 64 Medicine Sellers is one of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, each of which is made up of two paired Trigrams.

The most common assumption, I think, is that the eight Medicine Sellers who wield the eight Trigram swords are the ones whose hexagrams are made up of just those Trigrams—so series Medicine Seller would be Ri/Ri ䷝, and movie Medicine Seller would be Kon/Kon ䷁.

There are some reasons why this doesn't make sense to me:

(1) Both series and movie Medicine Seller display elements that contrast those of Ri and Kon, in terms of both appearance and personality. If the Medicine Sellers are hexagrams, and they display those elements, it makes sense to assume that they're hexagrams containing those elements and not just those of the Ri and Kon Trigrams.

(2) Every hexagram of the I Ching is made up of two of the Eight Trigrams. Every one of them should have access to the power of at least one of the Trigrams. We know that these most powerful swords are Trigrams and not hexagrams, so there doesn't seem to be any reason for a Trigram's power to be exclusive to those hexagrams that contain two copies of it. Surely they only need one Trigram to wield the sword of that Trigram?

(3) The hexagrams of the I Ching function as processes of change in the human world, with each hexagram carrying out a different process. We can assume that the Medicine Sellers function the same way. Therefore, which Medicine Seller appears where in the human world depends not on the strength of the mononoke there, but on what kind of change needs to occur. In theory, then, any one of the hexagrams could encounter a particularly powerful mononoke that could only be slain by a Trigram sword.

(4) In a clip from the movie that was shown in the infamous YouTube video, Kon Kusu describes the Eight Trigram swords as being wielded by the 64 hexagrams. He doesn't (at least, according to the one [1] translation I've seen) say that there are 64 Sellers and 64 swords, eight of which are the Trigram swords, but that all eight Swords are wielded by all 64 hexagrams.

(5) As far as I recall, we were never told that there are eight most powerful and 56 weaker Medicine Sellers—only that there are eight most powerful and 56 weaker swords. And there does seem to be a clear distinction between the swords and their wielders.

My working conclusion is that the Eight Trigram swords are in fact not exclusive to eight specific Medicine Sellers. Instead, I think that these swords pass from Seller to Seller depending on who needs to be carrying one at a given time. For example, if a hexagram that includes the Kan Trigram appears where a particularly powerful mononoke exists, that Seller inherits the sword of Kan to deal with the mononoke. Whichever Seller held the sword before that then takes up one of the less powerful swords. With this system, each hexagram has potential access to the power of at least one of their component Trigrams, as needed, and all eight Swords belong to all 64 Medicine Sellers.

[moeblob]

Impulsively shoving a guy's hand in your mouth after having the thought "oh just like when my little sister used to prick herself on a rose thorn" and then immediately being treated like a pet who ate something they shouldn't have? Wonderful. Thank you, Thane.

(also not pictured is Thane apparently trying to scrape your tongue with his hand BEFORE pouring the holy water down your throat because NO. BAD.)

[ganondoodle]

the closer we get to arcanes finale the more worried i am bc so often .. if not always .. things i like end in a way that i dislike so much it ruins everything else for me

and im so worried they pull a 'this is a multiverse' thing bc then they can say every skin is somehow canon bc its all different universes you seeeeee and jayce went mad bc he lived through all of them or something, or force it to end in a way that makes the champions end up like they are in game- Vi is a shitty cop, Jinx is just heehoo craycray bc xyz etc

[seilon]

my only complaint about 2005 dw is that we didn’t get more episodes with gung-ho mortal baby jack harkness. absolutely smitten by that fucker

[tokyo-daaaamn-ji-gang]

New game event teaser, more sanrio character match ups!!!

[skitskatdacat63]

I kinda popped off with these ngl

+ Explanations

I think I've talked about Fernando's before on here but. I really miss when he had the black fireproofs bcs it just made hom feel so much more intimidating/larger-than-life to me. The way he prowled around the paddock, just very big cat to me! Though I once told my mom this and she said, "more like a bobcat, he's so small." 😭

Seb is a fennec fox because...idk why it just suits him. He is both kitty and puppy, so I think foxes in general suit him bcs they're described as, "just cat software running on dog hardware." And fennec foxes are blondies too! The way they make little laughing noises, and also the way their ears/tails are way too big for their body also remind me of him.

Jense has always and will always be a wolf to me bcs his wolfish smile. He's just got that big, bad wolf vibe. He wants to snap you up! On the whole dog-cat scale, to me he just feels like neither really suits him. Wolves are so noble to me!!

Mark is dog boy, what else needs to be said!? Though there is something to be said about how the rest of them are wdcs and are wild animals, and he's.... domesticated. Something something wild animals seen as more noble and impressive- He really is just whatever dog breed he has irl, they are his comrades.

[bearimba]

Silver doesn't need another father. He's already got one of those, technically, but the man turned out to be a weak, cowardly bastard who couldn't face his own problems let alone raise a child. The way he sees it, there's no need to set himself for more disappointment. He's got a roof over his head and food to eat, and that's far more than he could ever depend on in the last... however many years he'd been living on the streets. Lance and Clair are annoying as hell, but while he's training in the Dragon Den, he doesn't exactly have much room to complain. Not out loud, anyways.

Lance doesn't particularly want to be a dad either. He's already got too much responsibility on his plate as Champion, and this kid clearly needs so much more emotional support than he feels like he can provide. Simply convincing him to move into his guest room was enough of a struggle, and it only really worked because Lance had promised Silver he could "earn" his keep. What the hell is up with that, anyways? He's not sure what Silver's past looks like, and he's not about to go prying, but the bare minimum he can do is make sure he doesn't have to rough it out in the woods anymore. At least Clair seems to be having fun training him...

Clair is more than ready to be an aunt. The other two refuse to admit to caring for each other, but unlike them, she's not afraid of something as stupid as her emotions. The brat's slowly but surely been mellowing out during his training, and her idiot cousin has actually been taking care of himself for once in order to be a "good example." Silver has even caught on to calling Lance "old man" like she does, on account of those ugly-ass reading glasses the all-mighty Champion has to wear, and she couldn't be prouder. Best part is, she doesn't have to spend a dime except to treat the kid every so often! That's a win in her book if ever there was one.

[hplonesomeart]

I can’t think of any funny quips to put as description for this one so uh- suppose this time around I’ll just let the art speak for itself lol

Enjoy the daily dose of fanart while it lasts because I can’t quite guarantee I’ll be able to keep up this speed throughout the upcoming month. But I’ll sure try to! Thank you all for the support <3