#not really a dave post but its not sbahj either

[crustydavestrider]

jade harley

[homestuckreplay]

its time......................... to GET my pour on

(page 980-983 & SBAHJ 8)

^ I’ve been a lot more attuned to parallels between John and Jade since getting an ask about it a while back, and their identical victory dances are a very cute one. Check out these absolute goofballs. <3

First and most importantly, the eighth instalment of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff (/sbahj/8 in the Collection) was posted on around November 29. I just read it today, and it features either Sweet Bro or Hella Jeff trying to pour a glass of milk and struggling to tilt the carton enough, while the other watches through the window and then laughs at a squirrel’s giant acorn. The milk carton features a jpeg of a guy in a helmet who I can’t place, but who looks like something out of GameBro or Grand Snack Fuckyeah.

The squirrel has appeared before in SBAHJ #4, which was also the other strip to incorporate edited photographs, with a picture of Barack Obama. In many ways, #8 is a direct sequel to #4, as both feature the blue character looking through a window, and both feature the squirrel with some kind of treasure. It’s cool to see Dave growing as an artist by establishing these consistent character traits, but out of universe, #8 doesn’t appear to relate to anything happening in Homestuck at this time.

Back in Homestuck itself is the real Jade strife animation, set to the great track ‘An Unbreakable Union’. Bec, we learn, is a dog crackling with lightning and radioactive green energy, who constantly warps in and out of space (?). So the radioactive nutrients in the irradiated steak are probably good for him, and Jade is just caring for his needs the same way he cares for her - she seems very comfortable with his weirdness, which must be a daily occurrence for her.

Bec’s drawn in the same stark, eyeless outline style as John’s dad, Rose’s mom, and Dave’s bro. Due to his design, his being alive, his strife with Jade and his care for her afterwards, Bec seems to have filled the guardian role since Grandpa Harley’s death. This makes him the only guardian with an actual name. This could indicate that Jade has a genuine understanding of Bec, seeing him as he actually is, not as the idea of an authority figure.

The strife itself (p.980) is interactive, but linear. Each round has only one option, always beginning with AR (a nod to Jade’s rifle). We can click that option, and then gain access to Jade’s gun. Clicking on or close to Bec shoots a bullet, while clicking elsewhere does nothing. This happens four times, and on the fifth and final winning round, Jade controls the gun herself after we click the command. Unlike the sylladex escapade (p.808-812), this is a case of Jade and the player working in harmony.

But some pretty weird stuff happens to Bec during the fight.

ARRAIGN. Bec vaporizes this bullet and is unaffected.

ARSENALIZE. Bec turns into a green radioactive energy field. Both Jade and Bec become really small, jump onto the bullet, and ride it to the other side of the island.

ARTILLERATE. Bec becomes a galaxy; he and Jade apparently travel through deep space back into the Milky Way, onto Earth, and land on the frog statue.

ARMAMENTIFY. The screen turns black while a Bec-shaped silhouette of Jade’s island remains. Scenes from John, Rose, Dave and Jade’s stories flash by on the black space while Bec’s silhouette remains.

ARF. Jade shoots away from Bec, playing fetch, and grabs the blue package while he chases the bullet. Bec catches it in his mouth, runs back to Jade and drops it on the ground. She tosses him the irradiated steak. They both hug and celebrate.

Bec is a good boy but he also has far more extensive powers than Jade’s, which makes me wonder if he’s ‘from’ Skaia the same way WV and PM are from the ominous and luminous planets. A regular creature living on this island probably wouldn’t get this powerful. In fact, Bec might be the source of Jade’s powers – if his body can turn into a portal and can cause visions of other characters, Jade could be prognosticating by looking through Bec. Jade definitely doesn’t have control over Bec’s powers, and I’m not sure Bec does either. However he came to it, he feels like a passive yet deadly nuclear power source that acts instinctively, with no intent beyond the dog desires of ‘play’ and ‘protect’. If Bec was an advanced intelligence he’d never fall for a ‘go fetch’.

Jade then falls asleep near the frog statue, and Bec picks her up and carries her to bed, tucking her in so gently. Good dog. Best friend. It is probably the most wholesome dynamic between any two characters in Homestuck, and it’s sweet to see Jade interact with her living pet so soon after Rose’s bittersweet reunion with her dead one. Andrew Hussie recently did a Q&A with MSPA community members which has some cool stuff in it. Here’s one excerpt:

The wild and unusual commands are the ones that really make it feel like a gaggle of whimsical readers is in charge, imbuing the narrative with a sense of freedom, a feeling that the hero could do truly anything. The essence of freedom in this sense is the uncompromising subjugation of restraint. It is possible that this is also the exact opposite of what a good story requires! [full interview here; emphasis mine]

Homestuck does have that whimsical, anything could happen feeling to it, but it does also have this really earnest core of themes that are common to a lot of stories – family relationships being one of the biggest. It’s unexpected that Jade’s pet is a dimension warping dog but beneath the outracing bullets and radioactive steaks is a relationship that’s no different to one in Marley & Me. So it’s interesting to know that there is a conscious effort to keep this story recognizable in some ways, even while it’s very experimental in others.

So now we’ve seen all four guardian strifes, and can lay out some quick comparisons! John (p.90), Rose (p.388) and Dave (p.836), all fighting humans, were overcoming an obstacle and facing hostility, while Jade (p.980), fighting a dog, was playing a game. John and Jade were trying to collect a package, John and Dave were trying to collect Sburb Beta discs, and Rose was trying to leave the house and reconnect to Sburb. John and Rose’s strifes contain the same music they played on their instruments – ‘Showtime’ and ‘Aggrieve’ – while Dave and Jade’s have brand new music tracks.

John, Rose and Jade all have interactive strifes, where A-command words can be selected in any order (John, Rose) or linearly (Jade) by the reader, before a non-interactive ending. Dave’s strife is not interactive, as his bro destroys the command menu. This suggests to me that while Jade is the most aware of the fourth wall out of the kids, Bro is most aware out of the guardians. But more generally, the differences keep the story fresh. It’s playing with patterns instead of working to formulas, being actively written instead of churned out like a sitcom episode. I think that contributes to it feeling like something to be a part of, not just something to passively read.

> Jade: Wake up and open your birthday present!

[homestucky]

i rlly like this post going around about what a bad liar dave is bcaus a) its very funny but b) it reminds me of the fact that a lot of the time hes not even TRYING to cover up the truth. like its an instance where he knows hes probably SUPPOSED to keep something to himself so he acts like hes trying to. but what he ends up saying literally always ends up clearly implying the truth, and whats more, the way he does it is very pointed and intentional. every single time he lies hes basically telling the truth as clearly as possible without being explicit. in fact i dont recall ever seeing him lie with the sincere motivation of covering up the truth. and while he may play a role as some emotionally constipated guy who cant talk about his feelings, he is actually pretty self aware about it, hangs a lampshade on it. in being like ‘haha puppets dont scare me ever not even a little nope never in fact i love them so much’ (as an example) its so clearly insincere and so obvious that hes telling a joke. the joke is that its obvious to the person hes talking to that hes lying, and its obvious to dave that its obvious to the person that hes talking to that hes lying. thats like.. the whole joke. in fact a lot of his humour ends up with him or his feelings being the butt of the joke, bcaus its like ‘watch me semi-on purposely stumble over all my words, admitting 17 embarrassing truths about myself and then pretending like i just didnt even though we both know i did’

the way this contributes to the general theme of sincerity with dave is so interesting to me bcaus its like... bro gave dave certain social tools and told him he must use them in order to be a Strider, to be a man, and to be cool. you have to employ ironic humour, and you have to belittle others or act like youre above them. thats a huge part of bro’s (and i hate to say it but sometimes dirk’s) sense of humour. its what irony MEANS to him, and such sentiments are what dave parrots at the beginning. if you use irony, then acting like something is cool instantly means you actually think its embarrassing, and people who sincerely like it are stupid. if someone claims they understand your irony, then you can claim that you were in fact PARODYING the level of irony they claim to ‘get’ and so youre STILL on a deeper, smarter level than them. its about being superior, untouchable, and belittling people. see how bro ‘ironically’ puts disturbing things like saw references around the house for dave to see, as if to say ‘this stuff is dumb so im making fun of it. if it scares you then youre taking it seriously, so you dont get the joke, and you arent good enough’. while this sort of behaviour is framed as humourous by young dave bcaus its irreverent, its actually very maliciously intentioned, and doesnt come from a place of wanting to amuse people at all. bro strider is using ironic humour to belittle others. this is the strider template he tries to pass on to dave.

dave uses ‘ironic humour’. and he has been known to talk arrogantly and belittle others. but we know dave is inherently very open, doesnt hold himself in high regard, and is actually pretty affectionate. he likes people, he likes his friends, he likes seeing them happy and safe. he doesnt think hes better than anyone, not really. so he takes this strider template and he warps it so that his arrogance and superiority IS the joke. its ironic that hes acting so cool and untouchable, bcaus hes actually not either of those things, like, at all. the boy just wants to be open and make people laugh, and the tools bro gave him were not gonna help him with that if he used them as intended. so he blurts out honest feelings under the guise of irony, but the REAL irony is that the things hes saying is true. its a game for two people, not just one, where every joke lets the other person know just a little more about daves true thoughts and feelings. he could never say a word of truth but still so clearly be reaching out and leaving himself vulnerable to others. 

i think ive mentioned this before but another point i find significant about how the striders use irony is that, as above stated, bro uses it to put others down bcaus they ‘dont get it’. dave however.... ok. daves magnum opus is sweet bro and hella jeff. and its ‘ironic’ (by daves definition of the term, i guess) bcaus its purposefully bad, and parodies stupid dudebros who are obsessed with weed, video games, and sex. sbahj as an .. entity, pretends like it thinks its cool and good (as its mentioned in canon that some sbahj fans believe it is sincere), but its just stupid trash. and dave knows this. and thats the point. so its ‘ironic’, i guess. but honestly... most of the humour is just derived from how dumb it is. there are poop jokes and dick jokes and typos and jokes where the punchline is someone falling on their comically large backside. humour like that doesnt exclude people for not ‘getting it’. its not complex. its not ingenious. its just. silly. and so his small group of friends, 3 12-13 year old nerds, who he probably should be dunking on for their sincerity if he followed by bro’s laws, love it. they reference it and laugh about it. and he doesnt tell them they dont get it, he just enjoys it. its fun, and its funny, and it brings them together. 

tldr: daves near constant insincerity is a loophole he found in bro’s authority where he can express his sincere feelings and act like a kid. its not hard to decode or see his vulnerabilities, but this is by design. its a survival instinct which allows him to obey bro, without completely stifling his true personality. 

[mmmmalo]

Jade & Bec

[This is an experimental post, exploring the threads between Jade & Bec, which will be updated regularly unto some semblance of completion.]

Are you familiar with the concept of trolls as manifestations? Cool, awesome, here’s a strange edge-case:

Tavros informs Jade that he prevented her death by commanding Bec to redirect a bullet into a villain’s heart. Jade informs Tavros that the “villain” was in fact her Grandpa, and Tavros attempts to defend his misguided heroics with the dignity of a wounded puppy dog. The strangeness: if Tavros is manifesting for Jade, why is he explaining Bec’s motivations for killing Grandpa? After all, Tavros directed Bec to do something Bec was already going to do – both of them are concerned with Jade’s safety. One might conclude that Bec (like Tavros) misjudged (not really) the danger presented by Grandpa (Harley). However, the manifestation of Tavros implies that these motivations also apply to Jade, despite her vocal insistence that Tavros is wrong.

What gives? Here’s a possibility broached in the second half of the conversation:

What if Bec is Jade’s imaginary friend? Tavros’s inexplicable manifestation for two parties would then be explained as voicing the thoughts of a mind divided. This would mean Jade shot Grandpa, albeit with several psychic buffers.

I realize that this would contradict the birth of Bec seen in Jade’s dreams, and that’s certainly not something to be ignored -- but then the trolls acting as psychological manifestations would likewise seem to contradict their existence as alien entities. The uncanny dissonance comes with the territory of dream logic, maybe.

Another reason to think Bec may have always already been a part of Jade: in the same way that cherubs seek to rekindle a primordial union, the kids in Homestuck universally aspire to a reunion. When John seeks to reunite with Dad, their separation analogous to the scratch on Dave’s record, an emblem of his fractured sense of self. John’s distance from (his image of) Dad is met with anxiety, and the urge to unite with that image drives much of his behavior throughout the story. Critically, a consequence of conceiving of this union as a re-union is that John fancies himself as having spawned directly from Dad’s image. (x)(x)(x)

As her riveting anthro treatise indicates, Jade similarly wishes to unite with Bec. The creation of Jadesprite corroborates this, as does the eventual realization of dogtier!Jade. But what could it mean for Jade to think of this as a RE-union? There’s certainly the sense in which Jade romanticizes shedding the trappings of civilization and embracing animal instinct, which can be conceived as having preceded humanity as we know it. In that sense, Jade could be said to be “returning” to a state from which humanity ostensibly divorced itself.

Put in familial terms, you might say humans are descended from beasts. Thus phrased, Jade being raised by a dog seems like a very apt metaphor.

Bec being Jade’s creation would admittedly invert this sense of who is parent and who is child, but there’s precedent for that sort of thing. The metaphor rich soils of Alternia has an upper class defined by the lower class trappings of Juggalo culture, after all. At this point I only want to establish a starting point for considering what it would mean for Bec to have already been Jade.

Main topics for future additions:

Why would Jade want to shoot Grandpa?

What are we to make of Bec’s powers if he is an extension of Jade?

(and of course, further justification for either of these questions being asked)

[5/3/2019] Topic: Jade & Lightning

First, a comment:

zenosanalytic

the parent stuff seems pretty easy, considering that it's de riguer in Homestuck for kids to be the parents of their parents

so like: Bec would both be a creation of Jade, and her primary parental figure. The different would be that, whereas with the B1s&2s it's a literal genetic link, with Jade and Bec it'd be more role-based.

...'difference' rather -__-

Thanks -- that’s further reason to regard that twist as a non-issue, except insofar as it may evince confusion on Jade’s part.

To get into the subject of why Jade would want to shoot Grandpa, it would be worth it to review and reevaluate stuff leading up to this. Namely, Jade’s fear of lightning.

When John entered the Medium, he had several near-falls: slipping on a staircase, launching into the air with his new Pogo-Hammer. Each encounter with the possibility of mortal descent was followed by the appearance of large ogres, who begin their assault after John looks down into the abyss. The ogres are physical manifestations of John’s abstract fear of heights, a fear which began with his fall from the slime pogo, and which Sburb stoked by placing his home on top of a huge spire. (Or perhaps it would be better to say that heights are the aspiration, and falling is the fear)

Subsequent encounters between kids and the monsters on their planets can be similarly understood as reactions to fears exemplified in some early trauma. Rose slams an ogre face-first into the oceans of LOLAR, which reminds her of the drowning of Jaspers. Dave gets his neck slit by an agent, which is an echo of the decapitated apartment building suspended over a bloodpool of lava, itself an echo of the fracturing of Dave’s identity from fraternal emasculation. In each case, the challenges posed by the game are directly sourced from some psychological fixation.

In Jade’s case, the appearance of her first imp is triggered by an aurora that bears a striking resemblance to lightning, giving a fairly direct indication of Jade’s fear. What’s more, the form of this manifestation is a callback to Bec’s first appearance! Naturally, this could be explained as simple callback reminding us the imp has inherited Bec’s powers via prototyping. But insofar as the imp is a manifestation induced by the image of a thunderbolt, the sequence suggests that Jade’s fear of lightning is closely associated with Bec.

There are precedents for this connection: one is rooted in the idea that the sylladex is itself a medium for the abstract expression of thought. When Jade attempts to draw her Eclectic Bass back into her Pictionary Modus, she instead captures the ghost image of Johnny 5, a sentient robot. This error is not a random occurrence, but rather a short circuit of mental association. Eclectic is two letters apart from electric, and Johnny 5 emerged as a consciousness due to a lightning strike, like a metallic Frankenstein monster. Immediately following this error, Bec appears and zaps Jade back to her room. – the dog is somehow both the interruption of this line of thought and its culmination.

The invocation of Frankenstein allows us to make some sense of the earliest iteration of this pattern: a pumpkin carved with the visage of Bec nearly awakens Jade when the reader tries to drop it on her head. 4 points:

John covered his walls with clowns and rude epithets; Rose scrawled frantic permutations of MEOW; and Dave drew SBAHJ. Each instance involves the kids expressing some kind of subconscious fixation or fear: John and his social anxiety, Rose and the echoes Jaspers’s swan song, Dave and the fever dreams within his art. There are no comparable drawings on the wall of Jade’s home, nor in her room on Prospit, but rather than concluding that Jade is an outlier to the trend, I would contend that Jade carved the face of Bec onto the pumpkin in her sleep instead. This again indicates a dread for Bec buried in Jade’s mind -- or rather, that Bec is an expression of some unspoken dread?

The pumpkin drop is echoed in drunk!Rose’s account of Newton’s mythic realization of the law of gravity. Rose says the proverbial strike of apple-to-noggin is symbolic of inspiration, the sudden intrusion of an idea. The same can be said of the pumpkin as a symbol: recall that the gift that inspired Jade to begin gardening in the first place was pumpkin seeds. So that which threatens to awaken Jade is the idea of Bec, again situating the scene

That the “reader” executes the drop is not arbitrary. It is crucial to the structure of the scene that the impetus for this attempted inspiration comes from beyond the fourth wall, for reasons I will elaborate upon in due time.

The inhabitants of dream bubbles are at times referred to as the dreaming dead, invoking the age old metaphor of death as a long sleep. The corollary is that awakening is akin to coming alive. As the allusion to Frankenstein via Johnny 5 might suggest, the flash of Bec-associated inspiration from beyond bears the possibility of no only awakening Jade, but of bringing her to life.

More lightning talk tomorrow.

[5/6/2019] Topic: Grandpa Harley

Let's skip to the end (and sort out the messy filler afterward): Jade's fear of lightning seems to be linked to a sexual assault at the hands of her grandfather.

An early hint comes by way of another reference to Johnny 5. Having alchemized the thunderstruck robot, Jade finds herself swarmed with notifications from the manifest Eridan. The Prince impresses upon her Ahab's Crosshairs, a weapon which had been previously established as a phallic lightning bolt (x). Knowing that the weapon will somehow make it to her grandson* Jake, Jade muses on the question of who she might have kids with. Eridan in turn balks at the thought of "pink wwigglers comin out a your owwn personal torso" -- a turn of phrase that obviously alienates us from childbirth, but also presents us with the image of worms or maggots wriggling in Jade's body. Rot blends with an image of fecundity, like the scarabs in the Mummy. We don't have the tools to make sense of this overlay of death and birth quite yet, but we will return to it. For now, consider this scene as a collage whose elements we cannot yet organize.

The more overt indication comes via Clubs Deuce. Recall when dream!Jade beat the snot out of CD for stealing the queen's ring, only to reveal that back in reality, Jade's dreambot was beating the stuffing out of dead!Grandpa? The juxtaposition suggests that Jade's violence towards CD in her dream is a displacement of some latent aggression towards Grandpa. Much later, just before Cascade, there is a payoff of sorts for this linkage: another lightning aurora hovers in the distance as Jade prepares for the scratch, and it triggers the return of CD. He drops in from the sky and kills Jade with an explosion of foam, knocking the Genesis Frog into the Forge in the process. The foam is ejaculatory, and the depositing the frog where it may gestate prior to its final descent/ascent to Skaia is an insemination. We infer that CD is playing the role of Grandpa in this display.

In response, Jack kills the shit out of CD, just as Bec killed Grandpa. The retaliation has echoes elsewhere. Recall the gag in which Hussie riffs on the end of the Neverending Story: he rides a white dog-dragon and avenges himself upon some bullies with a blast of stupid green dog barf. (Aside: it is out of the current scope, but worth noting that Hussie and Falkor respectively bear emblems of influence by Vriska and Lord English) The sequence is a silly mirror of Becsprite's annihilation of Jade's imminent meteor (the seed) with an immense blast of green fire. Entry sequences tend to involve some esoteric depiction of a character's trauma, and in this case, the meteor directly represents the "bully", Grandpa. (And perhaps to a lesser extent, bullies like Karkat, who in their own way posed a violent, intrusive threat to her (emotional) well being)

The entry meteor's threatened impact with the earth is but one example of the colliding celestial spheres that seem to haunt Jade. In Descend, Jade's reverie in the golden city is cut short as Jack severs the umbilical chain connecting the moon and planet (child and parent), sending the moon careening into the Battlefield below, crushing Jade. As with the meteors that swarm Skaia like sperm upon an egg, the child-status of the moon renders its crash akin to a seeding. A subsequent collision is more direct: Jake's Hope field versus Jade's green fireball. The entire grimbark scenario was triggered by Jade catching a glimpse of Jake's banana hammock (though of course, on a plot level the transformation was triggered by HIC's mind control). To drive the point home, Jade bemoans her inability to detach her focus from Jake's undies as they duel. As Jade is overpowered, the collision of Hope and Space comes to resemble the visage of Doc Scratch -- this unsettles due both to Scratch's pedophilia, and the way that the mind/body blocking of the scene reinforces the sense of domination from Jake to Jade. Adding insult to injury, the defeated Jade is crushed to death by a long white tower.

All this would seem to have been foreshadowed by Dave's comment on the earth being under assault by planet fucking Jupiter; the invocation of Zeus connects his comically absurd doomsday scenario to Jade's fear of lightning.

Next topic -- motifs connected to imbuing inert matter with the breath of life, and how they relate to Jade's sense of agency.

[cerulean8looded]

25!!!!!!!!

okay that one i literally made bc i look like john, love just dance, and want to be loved but here we fuckin go

25. John being a just dance twitch streamer and all the boys being gay for it i mean youtubers au

so im thinking that all of them make WILDLY different content. lets start with the beta kids.

so john has a gaming channel, clearly, and he decides he wants to lose some weight in a fun way that also helps his channel, so he starts the just dance thing. other than that, he mostly plays things like minecraft, five nights at freddys, all your basic bitch stuff, along with a fair few horror games. he really likes minecraft and sims 4 though.

rose has a witchcraft channel. she practices witchcraft and makes videos about spells and sigils and crystals and all the other cool stuff that goes along with that. i dont know much about witchy stuff anymore, its been a while since i was into that stuff, so id have to do a bunch of research for her.

dave has two channels: irony channel and music channel. the ironic one is where he posts anything to do with sbahj, and just generally fucks about, does weird trends and stuff. he never shows his face on his music channel, never shares his name, and it’s all remixes, so no one hears his voice either.

jade has the most chaotic but pure channel. she does anything she feels like doing, from kids show reviews to “Look at this cool pumpkin i grew” to “heres my favourite gun”. she has no theme, and never plans to change this.

Trolls

aradia is similar to jade in chaotic energy, but she tends to stick to stuff like creepy antiques she finds, weird animal bones from the fields she just wanders about in and that kind of odd stuff. she also talks about dark conspiracy theories a bit.

tavros mostly focuses on animals; animal care, animal facts, how to spot animal illnesses, how to deal with hostile but injured animals in the wild, what to do if you see an animal you think might have rabies, all that kinda shit. theres always at least one animal in every video, whether its a ferret in his lap, a cat walking over him, a snake around his neck, a guinea pig on his shoulder, and so on.

sollux does a gaming and tech help channel. he plays any game that people claim is difficult and tends to beat them so fast people think he’s hacking. he slaves over every fnaf game to try to beat the custom night first. as for tech help, hes basically that guy who runs the channel on how to fix discontinued apple products.

i lost my fucking karkat paragraph, im furious. basic recap of what i lost: he does general content like dan howell and phil lester kinda, with a couple staple series, such as his rant series, where his followers give him a topic and he rants about it for about twenty minutes (after editing). he also does livestream versions which can sometimes last for several hours per rant.

nepeta does cosplay videos with whoever she can rope into helping her (usually terezi, vriska, equius, or feferi) plus a lot of fandom videos in general. she usually comes off really lighthearted in her videos, but she also makes a lot of important comments about fandom culture and shipping wars etc. on her second channel she does vlogs, which exposes her absolute gremlin side. these vlogs often feature things such as her climbing up a tree, getting stuck, and screaming until equius saves her.

kanaya does makeup and fashion advice videos, mostly with a vampire theme to them. occasionally she’ll do cosplay makeup too. her favourite videos to do are when her subscribers send in pictures of themselves and their closets, along with some general information on what they wont wear and all that, and she gives them advice on how to spruce up their look a little and declutter their clothes, etc. she likes feeling like shes making a difference to people.

terezi focuses on true crime mostly; cold cases, current cases, sometimes she runs through the process of solved cases. she prefers to do unsolved stuff, since it gives her the ability to talk about her own theories on it, and she does often get it right, but for particularly interesting cases she will do a video anyway. she also does a little bit on mental health and the reasons behind crimes and shit.

vriska is another kinda general youtuber. she does whatever the hell she wants, plus anything anyone says she cant do. she also lets some of nepetas fandom stuff leak into her content. no one really knows how she got so many subscribers. she also has the most merch out of all of them.

equius makes videos on whatever happens to be his current hyperfixation at that moment. hes the most inconsistent. one week hes picking apart the homosexual subtext in certain scenes of jaws, the next hes teaching you how to put together a microwave. he does a lot of lgbtq+ videos too; his most popular video is of him and nepeta and some others at pride and most peoples favourite part is nepeta racing around a small clearing with equius on her back while vriska cackles behind the camera

no one is really sure what gamzee actually does. his videos are all filmed on a phone camera and are never edited. he doesnt have an intro or an outro. sometimes it seems like he forgot to start filming until halfway through whatever he was talking about, but he never repeats the bits the camera missed. theres no theme, no clear goal, no one knows whats happening and theyre pretty sure hes high in every video. one time he posted a video that was over 48 hours of the phone just pointing at a wall, which appeared to be covered in blood just out of sight of the screen (as in you could see the edge of it but not the actual blood) and there appeared to be a hand sitting at the corner of the screen. everyone was fucking terrified for a while, but the next video posted to his account was karkat explaining that hed had a bit of a mental break and thrown a jar of jar at the wall (the “blood”) and that the hand was just a doll. hed taken out his phone to film a vent video, but promptly forgot about it, dropped it, and went to do something else. he finally remembered over two days later, posted it without thinking and called karkat. a few weeks later he started posting again like the whole thing never happened.

eridan’s content mostly focuses on harry potter and magic (which he definitely doesnt believe in because that would be ridiculous), but he makes a lot of environmental PSA videos about littering and pollution and stuff. in his fandom videos he comes across as just really excitable and doesnt seem like he cares about much else, but he really shows off his intelligence in PSA type videos. he also posts a lot of videos of him just talking about whatevers going on in his life, usually whenever he gets a new crush. his most popular video is the one he made right after seeing johns just dance streams for the first time, because he looked like he was about to cry or scream the whole time.

and feferi! her content mostly focuses on social and political issues. she talks out against “canceled”/purity culture a lot and tends to end up involved in discourse for it. shes that person in the middle of the argument whos literally only stating facts and saying that we shouldnt jump to unnecessary conclusions, but somehow ends up being accused of being jack the ripper or some shit for it. she isnt afraid to share her honest opinions and makes sure to remain as polite and level-headed as is humanly possible when responding to others.

i was gonna do the alpha kids and dancestors too and like share some plot and that kinda stuff but this is long as fuck, so we’re gonna stop here for now! feel free to request again for even more info dumping. also i just wanna say that i planned none of that gamzee stuff i had no idea what i was doing when i started that

[kiyye]

how does one get into homestuck???

Short answer??? Just go to http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6 and start reading!!!!!!!!!!!!! You click the link that says “Enter name” to go to the next page and then keep clicking there.

Longer answer. Homestuck is a webcomic. Depending on what you’ve heard/seen around the internet, it often seems like some huge beast of a thing surrounded by years of fan culture, and that’s partially what it is, but at its core homestuck is also just a story. And a GOOD ASS story in my opinion (but thats coming from someone who’s read it 5 times through and thinks about it on the daily so uhhh im maybe not the most objective critic here??? but gOD I LOVE IT). Homestuck is long, but I know plenty of people who archive read it and love it just as much as I do, so I promise you will be able to get through the whole thing. (If you have not heard anything on the internet about it, either negative or positive -- dont worry about it and start reading!!!!!!!!!)

Another thing to remember is like. Homestuck is a story that in some ways you kind of need to take and make yours??? Personally I would advocate for reading every single bit of it and taking in as much as you can, plus reading bonus content like SBAHJ and the paradox space comics, but again thats coming from me, the most obsessive human being on the planet. I know people who didn’t make it through the troll acts, or skipped over the dancestors, and the story is still meaningful to them. So just read what speaks to you and don’t worry about being a bad and evil fan if you dont want to find every single dialogue option in the minigames. Some people can just sit down and read the whole thing, some people have to take it in small chunks. You can probably guess which kind of person you are based on how you usually read things.

So about the first few pages. I remember when I started reading it I was honestly confused because I thought I had missed some kind of background lore that would explain the things that were happening in the first act or so. But let me tell you: No, there is no required reading pre-homestuck (the author has done other webcomics and there are lots of callbacks to those as well as pop-cultural references and shit, but nothing plot important). If you start at page one, which I have linked above, and then keep reading, you may be like “what the fuck is happening right now, what is a sylladex?” You are supposed to be confused! Just persevere my dude.

Lots of people try to summarize it and do a shitty job because its not something you can easily summarize. But here’s me taking a crack at it? Homestuck is a webcomic about four kids who play a (fictional) game which turns out to not actually be just a game. Originally, it was a forum based text adventure, where fans (real people) would submit commands (for example, “Enter name”), and those would then inform the direction of the comic. The first act is largely comprised of quirky events occurring in a generally mundane setting. It’s just set on regular old earth, but for some reason people have video game-esque inventories, and john keeps fake arms in chests and does all kind of whacky shit. It’s charming but not particularly dramatic. From there, more colorful and complicated events unfold, eventually leading to ALIENS and huge epic flash animations and big bad villains. Shenanigans are had along the way.

This is probably a needlessly long post but I love homestuck on a deep, deep, unexplainable level and I very much want it to feel accessible to new readers!!!!! Here are some other helpful links to help you out if you really want to Get Into The Comic (and the fandom):

Before/during reading:

The homestuck wiki, an essential

This is the mspa “new reader” introduction page. It suggests starting off with problem sleuth but I personally dont think thats necessary. I jumped right into homestuck and was fine.

If you want to save this post, here is some post-reading or maybe during-reading material! I think half of these get linked in the comic but they’re some of my favorite homestuck supplements:

Dave’s blog. Know who dave is first, then this whole masterpiece is fair game

Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Same comment as above.

If you’re craving that good good homestuck content, paradox space is a bunch of standalone comics made by artists and fans. its dead now i think but it was a cool project that kept me alive for a summer or two

And uh just off the top of my head, here’s some relevant fandom reading dirk reading for when you’ve consumed all that and you’re sad and desperate for more. These are post-reading -- Come back to these after you finish the comic: Theatre of Coolty. Theatre of Coolty (The Movie). Detective Pony. (I’m so sorry that those are all dirk things). As for non dirk things, there’s Hiveswap, which you can find on steam, and loads and loads of fan videos on youtube that you can get lost in for hours.

I HOPE THIS POST IS HELPFUL TO YOU and i would highly, highly encourage you!!!!!! to read homestuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you’re just looking to start and this is all the information you need, GO FOR IT and pls message me any anecdotes you have because i crave the experience of getting to read it fresh all over again and i Will live vicariously through you. If you have been debating over reading it but you’re not sure if you want to, this is a wonderful post.

Happy reading from a big huge homestuck nerd!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

[ironic--dumbass]

FACTS ABOUT DAVE STRIDER

-loves make up

-dorky laugh

-snots a lot (when laughing)

-wheeze

-loveable???

-i n s e c u r e

-what even is gender identity???????

-r e d

-bless the memes

-ironic??? maybe???

- has one of those middle schooler “i love boobies” bracelets as a j o k e 

-bless

-quotes memes often

-is completely awkward

-WHAT???? IS??? FLIRTING???

-ARE THEY FLIRTING WITH ME O H G O D W H A T D O 

-s h i t t h e y r e c ut e

-gets crushed often but NEVER acts on em

-b l e s s 

-squishable face but nobody ever squishes

-someone squish the child

-bless, the cape is a blanket

-actually runs a tumblr blog not even ironically

-every other post is promo-ing SBAHJ

-this kid actually is really into graphic design

-can ACTUALLY DRAW (just doesnt want people to know because lo r d idk)

-bless- religiously cleans the shades every night before the sleeps

-is actually really gay

-says that but is actually bi???

-maybe the child is pan

-we may never know

-cause; just has s o m u c h l o v e i n s i d e that it cannot be confined to one singular gender

-bless the oversized sweaters

-kid owns over 40 sweaters and wears them a l l 

-has like 10 tee shirts

-2 long sleeves

-SO MUCH RATHER PREFERS SWEATERS

-actually owns dorky christmas sweaters “for the irony”

-plays the ukelele “for the aesthetic”

-also plays guitar

-this kid actually can sing and like well

-raps because irony

-is actually emotional and shows that shit

-p u n s 

-makes cover singing/rapping videos but under a different username and with a completely different email so nobody knows who it is and like lyric videos so nobody ever sees the face

-notice i am completely avoiding pronouns?

-that is for a reason

-this kid loves cats so much but never got one

-probably allergic

-also when kid was little, wanted birb- then was assaulted by birbs and gave that right the fuck up

-too many birbs

-DOODLER

-wears 80 dresses???

-jk just dresses in that style

-but like

-comfy sweaters too

-some days its 80s

-others its “im dead inside and yes i do spend all my time on tumblr bye”

-constant ink smudges on his hands

-LEFT. HANDED.

-or ambidextrous 

-either one tbh

-hasnt checked emails in 100 years

-but CONSTANTLY checks tumblr messages looking for mutuals

-starved for mutuals

-is actually sad all the time but is happy enough with friends/mutuals that it makes up for it

-legs. for. days.

-bless the red beanie

- that is how people find dave

-the red beanie

-earbuds are glued permanently to ears

-dont talk to the kid when there are earbuds

- this literally means dont talk to dave

-yes i am purposely avoiding davekat in this atm because i want people to all be able to appreciate dave strider and everything the kid is

-the same goes for davejohn

-like- feel free to add your own

-but i dont want to make anyone uncomfy

[millenianthemums]

if you like shipping headcanons, then may i dare ask for... Davekat?

Davekat is awesome because it’s the only ship that got a whole flash of them just doing fluffy couple things together, so using that as a baseline we already know that:

• They have movie nights where they cuddle up together and watch bad romcoms

• They make music together and probably have rap-offs all the time

• They do things like play hopscotch and run around holding hands and laughing

• Everyone else on the meteor could tell they were disgustingly in love

But I will try to expand on this. For example:

• In addition to romcoms they really like to watch cooking shows together. Karkat’s one of those people who screams at the TV as if he thinks the chefs can hear him. Dave thinks it’s hilarious. He takes videos of Karkat screaming at Chopped and posts them on Twitter. Karkat finds out and chases Dave all around the troll kingdom.

• Sometimes they watch sports together on mute and Dave commentates with what he thinks is going on. It always veers into complete absurdity. Karkat is even more lost than Dave and it absolutely cracks him up.

• They are both the Kings of executive dysfunction. Their house is a mess, they go weeks without doing laundry, they live on pizza rolls and ramen. Eventually Karkat takes it upon himself to help Dave get his life together and starts cleaning the house and nagging Dave into remembering to eat and shower and forcing him to take a cooking class with him. In the process he sort of accidentally starts getting his own life together too.

• They try to keep it under wraps that they’re dating for awhile, but Jade figures it out within days of them all living on Earth C. She accidentally lets it slip to Terezi and Terezi holds a worldwide press conference just to blab on them. They think about denying it but then they see how happy Terezi is to get the scoop on them and they decide to roll with it.

• They go on double dates with Rose and Kanaya but it always ends up with either a huge fight about whether Olive Garden counts as Italian cuisine or them all getting kicked out of a movie theater for yelling “FUCK YOU” at the screen. Doesn’t stop them from planning to go out again.

• Dave gets Karkat a tiny yappy dog named “son of Karkat” for their anniversary. Karkat becomes the most doting dog owner on the planet. He buys artisan dog food and takes him to the groomer once a month and unironically refers to S.O.K as “our son”.

• They form a little band where Dave and Karkat rap together and Jade plays bass in the background. One of their “albums” gets leaked by Jade as a joke, and it winds up going multiplatinum.

• They both cry at Rose and Kanaya’s wedding, but at the end Karkat offhandedly says to Dave “OK BUT *OUR* WEDDING’S GONNA BE SO MUCH BETTER”, and Dave kinda stops in his tracks and Karkat turns red and that’s how Karkat proposes to Dave

• They have a SBaHJ themed wedding. The wedding invitation is a piece of construction paper with “its…….MARAIGE” in comic sans and save the date info on the back in wingdings. The dress code is sweatpants and a t-shirt that are both the same color. The soundtrack is “All Star” playing over and over. They recite the most heartfelt vows anyone has ever heard. All their friends cry.

[crustydavestrider]

opinion on the song youre mine by dagames

i put a lot of effort into this one dont let it flop guys