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pochapal · 3 years

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You don't gotta answer this publicly, but what on earth happened/is happening RE: Dogpiling?

this is long but there’s a lot to cover and i don’t know how much information is pre-known going into this.

basically breadtuber sarah z made a 2 hour fandom postmortem video on homestuck. instead of being a genuine look into what made the comic and the fandom so massive and so relevant for so long, she kind of glosses over all that in the first thirty minutes, then spends the rest of the video discussing homestuck’s two major controversies in the least tactful way imaginable.

the first one she talks about is the hiveswap development hell fiasco, which on paper is an interesting thing to bring up in relation to a lack of content contributing to fandom decline, but sarah’s primary source for all this is a pseudo-anonymous blog run by giovan_h, someone who is notorious for treating dangerous and baseless accusation as fact and for obsessively stalking current and former whatpumpkin staff members to obtain information for said blog. she supposedly tries to bring a balanced argument on what exactly happened in the three year dark period between hiveswap’s supposed release date and when act 1 actually came out by pitting ipgd’s tumblr post (the one that made the odd gentlemen embezzlement claims vis a vis king’s quest) against giovan’s blog (claiming through anonymous and unverified sources that hussie deliberately dicked around and failed to meet a single deadline, then broke contract terms by using the kickstarter money to commission the odd gentlemen to animate act 7 instead of working on hiveswap. there are a lot of other unsavoury claims about hussie and certain other wp members among these blog posts, but that’s the primary relevant gist).

neither account can actually be verified (ipgd’s post claims their information is spotty because they’re talking around a pretty strict settlement nda and giovan’s sources and accounts are deliberately vague and unverifiable to “protect various parties from retaliation from hussie/wp”) but sarah ultimately comes down and says that she’s inclined to take giovan’s blog as more truthful for. reasons. this is obviously bad because within minutes of the video dropping several wp team members reveal sarah never once tried to get in contact with them, which has led to attacks on the team members because a lot of zealous people looking for an excuse to keep being mad at homestuck in the wake of hs^2′s semi-permanent hiatus were emboldened by a video essayist treating the ugliest speculation as hard fact. as of right now, the hiveswap kickstarter has released a statement clarifying the development situation as best they can (from what i’ve read it does point to them legally being unable to point to/discuss certain things) which has had all the impact of dropping a match onto an oil spill. the anti homestuck zealots firmly believe every word of that post to be bullshit and are accusing the wp team of covering for hussie and his super heinous evil crimes (keep in mind we are still not privy to the internal workings of wp because why the fuck would we be) so the wp team in turn are putting these people on blast for this dangerous harassment (it doesn’t need to be said that as a professional being publicly accused of covering up fraud is a very bad thing) and then as a counter counter response the angry fans are now accusing the wp staff of abusing their power to direct mass harassment towards specific individuals (this amounting to people getting into wp members’ private discord servers and publicly posting mean things they have said about giovan et al which imo only serves to bolster the stalking claims) and the whole thing went very ugly very fast.

the second controversy that sarah brings up is everything involved in post canon homestuck (epilogues, pesterquest, hs^2). here she reverts to more of a passively pro-fandom stance, asserting time and time again how horrible and evil the epilogues and everything else were because of how they took the characters and stories everyone knows and loves and warped them into something unrecognisably terrible, that post-canon homestuck was universally reviled. in a very bad and awkward placement of information she then segues into a kind of hand-wavey discussion of the intense backlash towards certain post-canon trans interpretations (of vriska, june, and roxy) in a very I Am A Cis Woman So I’m Not Qualified To Make Any Statements Here Other Than Transphobes Fuck Off <3 But Also This Is Indicative Of A Growing Fandom Resentment way, which honestly begs the question of why she needed to include this at all. another bad thing here is how she super glosses over the “controversies” surrounding “the advocates for june egbert” and “the writer for vriska’s pesterquest route” - she is obviously referring to former creative director kate here (she kind of confirms this on twitter by saying she didn’t want to mention kate by name in order to not stir up further drama which uh... yeah) and the inexcusably terrible chain of events which led to every single out trans woman working on homestuck to resign to protect themselves from further mass harassment and dogpiling from the fandom.

she instead, for some reason decides to focus on how post-canon homestuck has been a total commercial and creative failure, that homestuck^2 basically shouldn’t have even happened after the fandom’s distaste for the epilogues and that it was not only controversial but also was a low quality mess everyone agreed sucked. she then goes on to compare the hs^2 team to the wp hiveswap dev team, and passively applies the same giovan-esque assertions to the internal workings of hs^2, kind of but not really implying the reasons given for the shutting down of hs^2 were bullshit. this is super bad for the fact that the post canon homestuck team is the most openly marginalised group of people working for hs is in an official capacity, and we have seen time and time again what drawing undue, speculative negative attention towards these people has done. again, reminder sarah did not reach out to a single person who worked/is working on homestuck for what is essentially a drama video disguised as a fandom postmortem. the upshot here is that her post-canon section served to embolden yet another wp-hostile section of the fanbase - those who adamantly believe that only the fandom itself can create worthwhile homestuck projects, and that all writers are evil people who want their queer fans dead (only a partial exaggeration) and produce spite projects which are driven by the steadfast belief that their work is inherently superior to official content by virtue of their fan status. among this group were a lot of people who latched onto any accusation against a team member as fuel to push them out of “ruining” such a beloved franchise so sarah’s video serves as proof that all the hs^2 writers were morally corrupt monsters ruining a fandom space that was meant for minors and queer people (this is all very anti/anti-anti carousel of bullshit nonsense that i have no time for) and thus they’re confident to once again tear down the remaining public facing staff members, ignoring how all this crusade has done so far is drive a handful of trans women and people of colour off of official homestuck projects for their own safety.

then she ends the video with a “oh btw this video is proudly sponsored by audible <3″ bit and it’s just. beyond unbelievably awfully stupid that she deliberately reignited this aggression which has caused untold material harm on marginalised people (that happened less than a year ago!!!) just for the sake of quick clicks and ad revenue. she consolidated the most dogshit takes as fact within the general fandom consensus, sided with some of the worst people to engage with homestuck, potentially detonated the last shreds of stability of this independent marginalised media project, and wrapped it all up with a sponsorship from an amazon subsidiary company of all fucking things. this is obviously a case of an incredibly short sighted decision to cash in on a very complicated and unwieldy fandom history but still the potential consequences here are unfathomable.

#extrarabbitsauce #didn't intend on this being public but i saved as draft and now my only choice is to publicly post this. whatever #got called a terf for liking homestuck^2 whatever pigshit this post potentially attracts will be nothing

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autumnblogs · 4 years

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Day 44: Preoccupied about the same things as Trolls, revisited

Welcome back y’all! Before we get into this, I want to talk about the Condesce/Meenah as a parallel character to Mom Lalonde/Roxy. You can read a bit about @mmmmalo‘s takes on Openbound, and why they think that Meenah is symbolically Roxy’s Doppelganger here.

I want to call attention to some specific similarities between them, and while I think it’s a bit of a stretch, Homestuck draws parallels between characters all the time.

Both the Condesce and Mom Lalonde are matriarch figures estranged from their potential offspring by dire circumstances and servitude to a patriarchal authority and his time-spanning plan - for the Condesce, that’s English obviously, but for Mom Lalonde, that’s Grandpa Harley - servitude to his design renders her a wreck of an alcoholic forced to endure the end of days with no means to stop them from happening, living with a daughter who wants nothing to do her.

Both Meenah and Roxy are rebels against a repressive order, inclined to shirk their assigned Role in service to someone else’s master plan, but ultimately, through some roundabout means or another, give service to it anyway (for Meenah, scratching the game, and ultimately ending up English’s glorified slave for eons in the end; for Roxy, at first refusing to play Sburb in hopes of spiting the Batterwitch, but ultimately ending up playing into her schemes anyway).

They are both rebellious spirits who are repeatedly forced to participate in Paradox Space’s Alpha Timeline all but against their will by hegemonic forces, slaves to a system that they exist in perpetual rebellion against, and by the end of the comic, they both get to help strike a decisive blow against the ultimate foe. Unfortunately, unlike Roxy, Meenah is ultimately the kind of person who chooses at practically every occasion to continue cycles of abuse instead of breaking them. There is ultimately no possibility of reconciliation between these estranged sisters.

So, I see a lot of the Alpha Kids in the four Alpha Trolls who appear in this flash. As the Faux Heroic Himbo, the parallel between Rufioh and Jake is obvious. I don’t think that it’s fair to characterize Jake’s relationship with Dirk as being “cheating on Jane,” though that’s probably how Jane feels about the whole situation; I’ve always gotten the impression she feels entitled to him.

More after the break.

The imagery here is an obvious parallel between Jake and Dirk’s big damn kiss, and Rufioh and Horuss’s - but between Rufioh’s bravado and general obliviousness, and Horuss’s clear triangular parallel with Dirk and Equius, we should expect that the situation is switched here - Dirk = Horuss, Rufioh = Jake.

While it could easily just be a bit of extraneous characterization, I’m inclined to regard Rufioh’s characterization of the women in his life as “Dolls” especially because of his symbolic proximity to Lord English. (He is at best one degree of separation from him, as Jake English’s Alpha Troll Doppelganger) - and the fact that Puppets and Dolls are pretty much synonymous with each other in terms of the way that English interacts with them.

More extremely obvious parallels.

Both of the Zahhaks have hangups about dating down the Hemospectrum, and as long as we’re examining Dirk through the lens of the Zahhaks, allow me to speculate; I think that part of the reason Dirk chooses not to directly identify with the label of gay is less aloofly progressive futurism, and more that he is uncomfortable with his own sexuality.

As a guy who repeatedly appeals to reactionary ideals and rhetorical devices like “Western Civilization,” “Reason,” “Logic,” maybe there is a degree to which we can read Horuss and Equius’ self-repression through the haemospectrum into Dirk suffering from internalized Homophobia.

This is a real long shot, but I’ve always gotten the impression that Dirk is a bit of a bottom. Maybe his desire in building up Jake into a powerful counterpart, like English’s desire to transform Jake into a powerful rival, is built out of a desire to be Oedipally usurped by a former pupil - to have his Eromenos turn the tables, and become the Erastes in turn, in power-dynamic terms.

In Classical Civilization, homosexual relations weren’t unheard of, and were pretty reasonably common, but it was seen as shameful to bottom, especially for someone of a lower social standing than you were (Julius Caesar was mocked as the Queen of Bithynia when it was rumored that he bottomed for Nicomedes IV, which was a serious attack on his political career).

Wild speculative tangent over.

Now this is interesting; Meenah is unwittingly drawing a parralel between Damara and Vriska. The main commonality between them is that, like Vriska (and also like Rose, and also like Jane - who is the fourth and final character in this particular set) her spite and resentment is used as the vector for English’s manipulation of their setting.

Like Vriska, Damara deliberately sabotages the ability of her session members to win, helping to create a powerful foe who forces a session to be scratched.

Like Rose, Damara descends into nihilistic substance abuse to cope with feelings of emptiness.

Like Jane, Damara’s actual feelings of emptiness come about as a result of feelings of rejection in relation to betrayal from within her close friendship circle.

Ironically, while Damara’s reaction is far worse than Jane’s, her anger is actually probably far more understandable - Jane is not entitled to Jake.

The situation between Horuss and Rufioh is also similar to what will resolve between Jake and Dirk shortly - they are just basically incompatible, or at least they will be until both parties do some work on themselves, but a combination of an oblivious party who can’t stop talking about himself, and social timidity on the part of the other prevents the situation from resolving amicably.

“As Long As I Know That I Am Free”

Sometimes, encountering our ancestors doesn’t have to be a source of tension, anxiety, expectation, and fear. Porrim models parental love for Kanaya in a way that, unusually for ancestors in Homestuck, is purely beneficial for her younger counterpart.

It’s okay to identify with roles and identities that have been corrupted or hegemonized by our culture. There’s nothing intrinsically bad about being a man, or about being a woman, as long as our embodiment of those roles is emancipatory to us.

Kanaya can still be a Mom, if that’s what she wants to be. Violence and money aren’t the only form that power can take.

Sometimes, learning the right lessons is just a matter of pausing for a second and being critical of all narratives; deciding for ourselves what we want to be. It’s the lesson that Porrim has to teach Kanaya.

This is just objectively true.

Aranea positions Rufioh as both a foil to Cronus, and to herself, further strengthening the Jake as Rufioh parallels.

What I think is really interesting about all this, is if we want to read the other three trolls as Jake, Dirk, and Jane, that makes Meenah the Roxy of this group! And while Roxy has never been vicious or deliberately cruel, there’s a certain resonance between her persistent hassling of Jane, her meddling in the Jake English Sweepstakes, and the disaster that it provokes, and Meenah’s bullying - I even early on in my first readthrough took a disliking to Roxy because of what I viewed as exactly that - bullying her counterparts, assertively trying to get them to behave the way she wanted.

https://homestuck.com/story/5401

Oh man, where to even begin with Karkat riding off into the Penis Sunset. Like, the Sun in relation to Dave is persistently an icon of Bro’s surveillance of him, and then there’s his burgeoning affection for Karkat (he mentions story time with Karkat in the third Openbound suggesting that he actually took Karkat up on his offer to read through trashy Troll Romance).

Like, there’s probably something in Dave’s troubled psyche that’s on display here but damn if I know what it is. Maybe he’s ruminating on the fact that Bro would probably not be too accepting of his relationship with Karkat, hence the juxtaposition of the symbol of Bro’s hostility with the imagery of Karkat riding a dick?

https://homestuck.com/story/5404

I don’t really need to explicate much on what Rose is trying to say, I think but just in case, here’s a little rundown of what she’s trying to explain.

The apple is a symbol of an irreducible idea. Many ideas are reducible - as molecules are reducible to atoms, and atoms are reducible to quarks and stuff, so are ideas reducible to increasingly more abstracted and basic units.

The closer to notionally irreducible a thing becomes, the more difficult it becomes to express an idea, until at last, that which is truly irreducible resolves, and reveals to us the true, intrinsic nature of reality. For every complex idea, we can refer to more fundamental ideas, until at last, we arrive at an idea, which when probed, responds back simply, “It just does that.”

This, I think, is that to which we ought to give the name of God; that force so fundamental that it truly does just do that.

In the world of Homestuck, Symbols, and with them, Rituals - stories! Are manifestations of the primeval and irreducible ideas. Everything else is a universe in orbit around the Divine - the Aspects themselves, perhaps, or something more fundamental than the Aspects even.

What makes reducing these stories to the irreducible principles that they allude to so difficult is that you’re effectively trying to explain the electromagnetic force by comparing it to rubber bands, when in fact, the electromagnetic force is what makes the rubber bands behave that way in the first place.

As a Ritual, Rose’s drinking is pretty similar to John’s Dad roleplaying - an attempt at unity with Her Mom. Another empty signifier.

https://homestuck.com/story/5405

Dave is already really embracing his new role as the actually most sincere and straightforward member of the party. Lovin’ it.

It’s kind of nice that Aradia and Vriska are getting along now. That’s gratifying for personal reasons.

Ah yeah, I forgot that was ever addressed officially.

https://homestuck.com/story/5435

The man

HASS the ring.

https://homestuck.com/story/5440

And with the depressingly empty Void session established via a single flash, we shall conclude for the evening.

Tomorrow, we’ll get to know our little villain.

For now, it’s Cam signing off, Alive, and a little Annoyed that I wasted a couple hours playing the Outriders Demo this afternoon. Seriously, what an aesthetically bleak and kind of mediocre-looking class-based cover shooter.

#liveblogging #commentary #pederasty mention #richard feynman

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hms-no-fun · 3 years

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what exactly do you mean when you say "june took over the direction of the story" and things like that?

oh! ok, i get what you were asking. the answer here might be kinda complicated.

the way i tend to think about writing dialog is that i'm taking pieces of myself, dressing them up in the clothes of a character, and dropping them into a scene to see how they react to one another. this isn't something i do consciously, writing is just sorta automatic for me? but this is basically how it works. anyway, sometimes it's stiff and awkward, which is how i know that my understanding of these characters isn't quite right. but other times, they practically wrest the keyboard straight out of my hands! vriska did this in gf2.1, as i didn't originally intend for that to literally be vriska in the void and for june to be a sort of cognitive fusion of two people's lives and memories, but when it happened i thought it was too interesting and had too many weird potential implications to not go with it. same with june taking jade to the battlefield and inadvertently creating harbinger silverbark.

but really, those are superlative examples of how my writing process manifests. it's the same phenomenon as when my version of dave makes a dumb joke that i decide to run with, or when karkat invents impenetrably innovative slurs. it's not that "i" as the author have given up control of the ship, or that somehow the characters in the story are literally writing themselves (though i do often describe that state as being like they're writing themselves). in the sense that all of this is happening inside my head, "i" am still totally in control of the act of writing. i just follow where the energy is and go with what feels right!

i used to really strictly outline my stories. there was a 12 book werewolf mythology cycle that i planned back in high school, i would spend hours taking notes and planning things out so that i knew the shape of the story i wanted to tell... and, invariably, all those projects stalled out. because when it came to writing the thing, i already knew what was gonna happen. there were no surprises left anymore, and i thrive on spontaneity. my favorite moments as a writer are when my characters surprise me. writing in general is just a really impulsive act, it's like a magic trick that falls apart if you think about it too much.

so, with godfeels, i have been extremely careful to outline the story only in very broad terms, and to make sure that even the spine of the thing is at least a little bit flexible. in gf3.2 for instance, i know where june will be at the start, i know where she'll be at the end, and i know pretty much all the major beats she will need to hit to get from A to B. but there are a lot of things i deliberately don't want to know until i write them, because i want to FEEL as surprised as june IS when something shocking happens.

this facet of my process is partly why gf3 has taken so long to continue, because the transition from slice-of-life to epic space opera requires that i be way more aware of the... let's call it lore of this universe. there are a lot of balls in the air all at once and it's not easy for one person to keep track of them all! which is partially why going forward i'm bringing other people on to help me finish this thing.

this is why it's important to develop an editor's instinct (or to just have an editor). homestuck fic is obviously very indulgent by nature, but i still try to polish each chapter up to 3rd or 4th draft. you want your first draft to be flexible and impulsive, and then work overtime to fix it into something that feels like it fits into a logical whole afterwards!

so no, the characters are not co-authors.

#godfeels #homestuck #writing process #june eg8ert #sarahposts

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transformationstuck · 4 years

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Amalagam Story

Jane was practically sick of trolls at this point. Ever since the entire fiasco had went down, her father gone, and the rise of complaints against her campaign by the majority of the troll population, she wanted them gone from this Earth. It had been a single month since she had deported most of the trolls using small legal constraints to other planets, where they’d continue with their meaningless banter of trying to disobey her. Why, she had been trying her hardest to conform the trolls to her ways, and look where that got her! Nowhere. Frankly, the next time she was going to see a candy corn horn, there was going to be a reckoning.

And yet there was no avoiding it. The twelve initial trolls who had assisted in the beta session remained within the galaxy. Some were taken care of, however discretely. She had devised Nepeta’s ship to crash into one of the deadliest planet to ever live in, and while she expectantly made herself the apex predators against all the face-sucking, marrow-gnawing monstrosities that lived on the planet, she had no way out. Kanaya was permanently disposed off with Rose after an indefinite honeymoon, with a small gift. Perhaps calling it small was the wrong thing, but she sure hoped Rose enjoyed pounding onto her wife like an animal in heat, because that’s practically what those two would be. Both Aradia and Vriska were off the books, considering the former was always missing and off doing something and the latter was currently the leader of the rebellion against her. Terezi and Feferi were far too important people in her campaign to even consider removing their existence, so she would have to simply tolerate them. After all, any legal issues regarding trolls would be pushed by the Pyrope and the former Heiress gave her such political power with her blood color. That left, coincidentally, all the male trolls.

And wasn’t it John’s birthday soon anyways? Might as well prepare him a gift.

——–

The first one was easy. All it took was two drones, a burlap sack, and there was a rather large lump of troll in front of her desk, with two ridiculously large horns protruding out of it.

“I didn’t ask for him to literally bring him to me. Look at the mess he’s making on the carpet! That’s just vacuumed! Get him out of here!”

The drones obeyed, though finding themselves difficulty immediately upon a certain conundrum.

“Tilt him sideways. SIDEWAYS! Why are you rotating him vertically? I meant horizontally! I know the horn is stuck. Just back off, don’t use brute force and…”

CRACK!

As Jane felt a pressure build on her neck, she decided that whenever trolls were involved, so were her migraines.

———

“… What did I tell you about bringing him to me LITERALLY? Again with the carpet? Do you know how difficult honey is to wipe off a carpet? Have you even baked before? Obviously you haven’t baked before, but I’ll do it myself this time. Just… dump him! In the vat! Now shoo!”

———–

“… Just put a sock in his mouth and get it over with.”

———-

“Yoo hoo, handsome. I got a surprise for you~.” The hallway was empty save for a lumbering figure, who seemed rather confused and tilting his head quizically, to the point where his head was rotating in a perpendicular manner. That was most certainly not the way a head should rotate, and the fact that she was wearing nothing but a single sheet of apron was already making her feel more vulnerable.

“Come on, handsome. I know you want it.” She held up a pie, which was green and what she would consider the complete disregard for basic culinary needs. A single whiff was more than enough to make her feel disgusted, and she wondered how anyone could even take a bite off of it.

Still no response, which meant that she had to bring out the big guns. Taking a deep breath, Jane winked, twice, and each wink followed by a short honk.

That did it, as the juggalo basically launched himself, erect cock showing through his stupid codpiece, and Jane found herself wanting to fall for the same mistake of letting the clown in her bedsheet again.

Click.

As Gamzee fell down the trapdoor she had long since set up in case something like this would ever happen, Jane sighed with relief, rubbing her head, and massaging her boob. “God, I actually should get a dick some time soon… And preferably not a clown’s…”

———

“… Excuse me, correct me if I’m hearing this right.”

A rather muscular troll, sweating profusely and smelling like a hung horse and a broken engine sat in front of her desk. The poor furniture was now drenched, and already a dark circle was forming underneath the carpet.

“You want in on this project. After I kidnapped you friends? Condemn them to a horrible experiment that’ll leave their body gone, potentially the mind, and you want in on this?”

A nod. And a sigh from her direction, before she tugged lightly on the rope that was currently binding Equius’s neck.

“You know I was going to disregard you since you were somewhat helpful, right?”

Another nod. Another tug. The troll’s face began to glow bluer by the second, but that deranged smile of him absolutely wanting this behind the leather restraints made her think of all trolls were like this.

Especially when he had been like this for the past three hours.

“I swear, trolls…” She waved to her drones to take him away, but it seemed like the ingredients were complete.

Though she felt like she was forgetting something, she was sure it wasn’t that important if she could remember it.

———

In front of her stood approximately 1000 lb of troll flesh, complete with 5 pairs of horns, 5 pairs of misplaced arms and legs, the most obvious bulges ever, some obviously aroused, and few facial features which she proceeded to shut up. The process was going to be painstakingly simple, as she started to channel the Life into the body.

It hadn’t taken much for her to channel the five into a single blob majorly for safekeeping. She couldn’t risk any of them breaking out and spoiling her plan, so she had made them into what was a large meatball, feeding them all the surplus baked goods until they grew fat and complacent, and practically no traces of bone structure remained from the excessive flesh gained from consumption.

Push, knead. Push, knead. Minute by minute, the flesh began to sink underneath her hands, folding and mixing until gray became pink, round shape forming into more humanoid, a thousand pounds now beginning to dwindle into approximately one tenth of its original weight.

It was then that she called John.

“John.” She said with a quick, snappy tone that immediately informed her ecto-grandson that she meant business. “If you were looking for a relationship, what would you look for in a woman?”

“… What?” A click of her tongue immediately made John regret questioning Jane. There was something about her that intimidated him ever since her campaign began, but still, the question remained. “I mean… Nice, I guess? If you are asking about her personality o-”

“I meant a sexual relationship. Jesus Christ, get on with it!”

“Right, right. So uh… huge boobs.” Silence from her end was interpreted as a signal to continue as she proceeded to knead whatever was left over into a round shape, over the currently very flat chest with little to no definition. “I mean, some serious honkers. A real set of badonkers, packing some dobonhonkeros. Massive dohoonkabankl-”

“John!”

“Right… Uh… Big ol’ tonhongerekoogers.” With that, John paused, and added, “And some thighs please. I like them thick.”

———–

It wasn’t long before Jane was done, staring at her masterpiece she had taken three hours of pure Life to create. An hourglass figure, melon-sized titties, and the very definition of thunder thighs. It wasn’t long before they started moving, which, at that point, she wasn’t exactly sure what happened. One moment they had been lying down unconscious, the next thing, they were, and each limbs proceeded to move completely independent of each other. It wasn’t until she stuffed the horse-dildo in their seemingly very aroused entrance with rough force did they proceed to break out of her lab through sheer willpower.

It wasn’t long before she found her, though not directly. She had left her be for now, and it seemed that, as intended, John had found her first.

The various names mixed together had mistakenly led John to believe she was named “Etiquette.” Though a strange name, she had come a long way from being five different trolls to one hot little body. Sure, disjointed complaints and moans of pleasure occasionally seemed to confuse John, as well as her habit of talking to herself, but once she got in bed, he had no complaints. Sometimes she demanded a larger dildo stuffed down her ass. Sometimes she wanted to do nothing but videogames. Sometimes she started honking like a clown as she rode John cowgirl style, which obviously terrified John as much as it aroused him. It did leave Jane to wonder if they all shared an internal voice, or argued over what to do next, seizing control or each other? Or perhaps they got adapted to controlling their body in a uniform style? Or perhaps all of their personality got melded into one. Jane could potentially find out, but decided against it. As she closed the feed of John pounding Etiquette to the next pleasure-town, the way her fingers and toes twitched, her arms and legs occasionally moving as opposed to how she was acting, she knew that at the very least she got rid of an eyesore.

#discord submission #submission

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the-hs-etaverse · 4 years

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Neprezi

Gonna ignore some of the PQ-confirmed canon here. Long rant, be warned. It also gets a bit depressing.

I feel like Equius and Nepeta have been moirails, or have at least known each other, for quite some time. My guess is two sweeps by the time of Sgrub, maybe more. And it’s evident from [S] Remem8er that Vriska and Terezi have known each other for a similar length of time. Since Vriska and Equius are neighbours, it would only make sense that Terezi and Nepeta would, at some point, meet each other irl. I assume they hit it off really well. They’re both enthusiastic feral gremlins, it only makes sense.

So, like, despite Vriska’s and Equius’s protestations, they all hang out fairly frequently. Vriska and Equius do Not Like each other, and I doubt Vriska and Nepeta get along well, but Equius has a begrudging sort of respect for Terezi. “D--> She has sufficient b100d, though her mannerisms are not %eptable for her status” So it’s really the fault of Terezi and Nepeta that they all keep hanging out. Vriska and Equius are just like “siiiiiiiigh, fine”

I’ll get into the “Annoyed vs Annoying” dynamic some other time, cuz that’s the funnest part of their group dynamic for me. (Most fun. grammar jane.)

But Terezi’s Very touch-starved, cuz she technically doesn’t have a lusus yet, and she lives in a tree house in the middle of the woods pretty much alone. She’s not gonna admit to it, of course. She is a Strong Independent Troll and she don’t need no hugs! Okay actually she really wants them but she denies it vehemently. But, like, there are two people that she gets hugs from, and that’s Vriska and Nepeta. Vriska’s not really a hugger, but Nepeta? She’s like the textbook case of the Personal Space Invader. She’s VERY huggy. And since Vriska has to like fend her off with a stick and Equius can only accept so much cuddles in public, Nepeta just cuddles with Terezi constantly. ^w^

Yes, it’s a wonderfully cute headcanon, but, like, it’s part of the reason why Terezi ends up developing a flushed crush on Nepeta. Another part of it is probably Terezi projecting some repressed or unrecognized feelings about Vriska onto Nepeta, cuz, like, Nepeta’s her other best friend? She’s gotta have feelings for someone she’s close to, and since it’s obviously not Vriska (spoiler alert: it totally is but she doesn’t realize for like 6 sweeps), it’s gotta be her! Right? >:]

Anyhow, so yeah, they’re like 5 sweeps old now (I think that’s a reasonable age for it) and Terezi’s having her first Crush Ordeal. But she’s not gonna tell Nepeta about it, no, of course not. Only idiots tell people about their crushes! And it’s not like Nepeta would return the feelings! Yeah, and this goes on for like half a sweep, and Nepeta has no friggin’ idea. She’s, uh, how did I put it earlier, she’s more interested in ships to be than the ones that are right under her cute little nose. But, like, Terezi crushing on Nepeta gets fairly obvious. Vriska knows, and Karkat knows. (Equius is, wrt relationships, as dense as a sack of cement.)

But then Nepeta tells her about her crush on Karkat, and Terezi does not handle that well. Because, obviously, this means Nepeta isn’t flushed for her in return. This is what she’s been fretting about for half a sweep. So she has a crisis, and she bottles it all up completely because she hates dealing with her emotions. (Cold hard facts, that’s where it’s at!) And Terezi, on the surface, stays mostly the same, but she gets rather more frigid towards Nepeta. Like, their friendly chat roleplays become, on her end, more and more facetious. Nepeta doesn’t really notice; she’s better with social interactions in theory than in practice.

And Terezi also unconsciously decides to sabotage the possible Karnep relationship. So she starts talking with him more, turning her annoyance and deep-seated resentment into a way to sort of flirtatiously bug the heck out of him. You know, as preteen boys are wont to do? And she ends up tricking herself into thinking she has feelings for him. She doesn’t. It’s just her projecting. She definitely likes him, she eventually overcomes her resentment and genuinely improves her friendship with him, but Karkat’s sort-of feelings for her (yeah, he is sort of flushed for Terezi, though it might be more vacillating than anything) aren’t truly returned.

(how can I write with such nuance about relationships and not be good at it at all irl? like nepeta, i’m better in theory than practice, I guess)

So, then, a few 'gees later (I will make a proper Alternian calendar at some point!), there’s the Scourge/Charge Debacle. Aradia is got gud, Tavros gets broke, Vriska gets bombed, and Terezi gets blinded. So yeah. Friendships = broken. The Equius, Nepeta, Terezi, and Vriska gang stop hanging out entirely. Vriska shuns Terezi and vice versa, the former turning to Eridan for... well not exactly friendship, and Kanaya for, uh, sort-of friendship. And Terezi has now voluntarily isolated herself from virtually everyone she was really friends with. Her relationship with Nepeta is tense and insincere, at least on her end. Her relationship with Karkat isn’t genuine yet. Her relationship with Vriska has been smashed into itty-bitty pieces. Her relationship with Equius has kind of vanished. Aradia is gone, and Tavros is too afraid to talk to her. Sollux is still around, but he’s not quite the same guy he used to be. Terezi never talked with Kanaya overmuch (except when she learned sewing from her), but once Vriska kickstarted the moirallegiance with her, out of a deep-rooted sense of jealousy, communications there virtually froze. She was never close with Gamzee or Eridan or Feferi.

As Sgrub begins, Terezi has become a rather isolated individual. She always was one, but now she’s even more so. The few connections she still has are laced with insincerity. She has retreated into her mind, because it’s where she feels safest. Once the session is over and the trolls are all stuck on the meteor, she wants to start trolling the humans because, well, it absolutely is fun for her. But also, because it’s the only way she really knows how to interact with anyone anymore.

Nepeta’s death struck a chord in Terezi, I believe, if perhaps not quite as strong of one as Vriska’s death did or almost did. She tamped it down, of course. Nepeta’s dead now. She can let the feelings leave. That’s one less weight off her chest. But she also is grieving, wholeheartedly, though she refuses to let herself know. She takes a picture of the Nepeta ghost falling into the black hole instead of trying to save her, because she’s still trying to convince herself that it doesn’t matter anymore.

But it does, and it did.

The first love bites the deepest.

#homestuck #headcanons #etaccurate #long post #neprezi #karnep #karezi #vrisrezi #meowrails #terezi pyrope #nepeta leijon #vriska serket #equius zahhak #karkat vantas #I honestly believe that if not for the Vriskan moirallegiance #Terezi would have maintained communications with Kanaya #and would be a much mentally-healthier person today #I wanna write that AU #queue

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dahniwitchoflight · 5 years

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Homesquared Chapter 3

So i have seen smidgens of this on tumblr but just havent had time to do anything about it

and jesus christ Callie Jade is so horrifyingly creepy, and you know the things she’s narrating the characters can also hear which is also hilarious, it just reminds me of that comic about how “yeah sure there’s a giant ominous red floating eyeball in your kitchen, constantly staring, constantly judging, but can you be sure that’s a bad thing?”

and then someone tries to talk to it, but it doesn’t answer and the person goes “fine be an asshole i dont give a fuck”

thats exactly the dynamic happening with Callie Jade right now

Grumpy DaveKat is hilarious

and Hey! we finally get to see how people look, I really dig Roxy’s look

“ROXY: dude doesnt "believe" in "substances"”

This line from Roxy makes sense, as a person wholly ensconced in the idea of their own self and always being in control of themselves and their own mind and faculties they would hate anything at all that causes that iron mental grip to slip

That’s probably why Dirk avoided sleep even when his dreamself was awake, even sleeping and dreaming was considered a form of himself losing control over himself that he couldn’t integrate the idea himself and his dreamself were the same person rather than two identical people and also I remember that the Jujupop didn’t affect him either

Later on Dirk in the narrative will say something about his own trauma, but not really go into what it is, but if I had to hazard a guess (and really it’s not much of a guess at this point)

Dirk probably has memories of a version of himself being under the mental influence of another, Lil Cal, LE, Doc Scratch etc what have you, So Narrative Dirk may actually be a version of Dirk who’s not quite yet poisoned into being a version of those 3, but his words also hinted that just because he’s aware of a certain way that he’s acting doesn’t make him more likely to stop it

Like he’s equating that you can be aware of the influence something else is having on you and in the exact ways it is influencing you without being able to stop, the exact thing he is traumatized and afraid of being most likely

So his one driving fear, is he does not want to lose control of his own soul, his own being, his own way of life and existing, to something else, something other. Even though he most likely is fully aware of the things and mannerisms of the other that have slipped into himself? Like he’s probably fully aware of the similarities between himself and those mentioned above, but maybe the thing that he’s hinging on is that instead of those guys poisoning him into being like them, instead perhaps he can convince himself that it’s his own self influencing others to act like himself instead. His influence reaching out and expanding instead of shrinking as he fears it

Anyway, Dave and Kanaya have a cute moment, I really like that

We get a nice shot of them in shadows against a backdrop of stars and Kanaya starts talking about a story Rose would once tell so that’s story is already gonna be dripping in metaphorical potential

“ A Wriggler Story About A Young Prince And The Beloved Flower He Loved And Lost”

Though that’s a story I’m actually familiar with

KANAYA: A Singular Wild Rose He Failed To Cherish When He Had Her

KANAYA: And His Journey Of Discovering What She Meant To Him All Along

KANAYA: Culminating In A New Quest To Find Her And Win Her Back

KANAYA: The Story Comments On The Nature Of Friendship

KANAYA: And Of Course In Turn Love

KANAYA: How Once They Connect There Is No Distance Or Circumstance That Can Seperate Them

KANAYA: How The Worlds In Each Ones Mind Take On Contours Shaped By Their Memories Of The Other

KANAYA: Places And Moments And Orbiting Passersby Becoming More and More Entangled In The Context Of Their Mutual Affections

KANAYA: Such As With A Garden Calling To Mind An Engagement Once Declared There

KANAYA: Or Something To That Fucking Effect

So obviously Dirk and Rose

Dirk has Rose with him, discovers an actual genuine connection with her, likely because he already viewed her as an equal, despite his manipulations of her, and chapter 4 spoilers but he genuinely wants to play a game with her when there really isn’t any reason for it, so he is actually curious to see who comes out on top of it, Him or Her, so Dirk is probably in some way desperate to have an actual equal partner in some way instead of drowning in himself all the time, not surprising. But Rose, obviously, will leave and reject him, likely when the manipulation comes around and is revealed/Kanaya and all them reach her/that part of the story

But then the story tinges onto a romantic nature and is framing Dirk trying to get her back as a romantic quest to save his partner/friend something something love and friendship, “no distance can separate them” yeah that doesn’t sound like obsession with the first person you’ve ever truly seen as an equal/a real person,

yeah “A Garden calling to Mind an engagement once declared there” definitely sounds like the garden of eden/adam and eve paradise fantasy that Dirk has been trying for some reason, to setup on the new planet

Really begs the question for why Dirk cares at all to do all of this? Except we now the answer is already its not the thing itself he cares about, its the value hes putting into the story as something that generates interest in the audience

He doesn’t care about actually making a society or being gods or whatever, he just knows thats what the audience wants to see and cares about so therefore he does it

and the reason he does all of THAT is because is ties into his trauma of his sense of self eroding away becoming a person he’s unfamiliar with

I wonder how he’s going to handle how much he’s going to change in order to fit the role of the story he’s writing when all is said and done

the Dirk at the end of this is going to be very different than the Dirk that started in Homestuck, despite all of his fears and intentions, and that he could not say all of it wasnt his own doing because of the iron control he made sure to have from the very beginning, I honestly think that will be kind of a shock for him if a meeting like that ever one day happened

Specifically for the fact that he seems to be aware of the romantic in nature tropes hes writing himself and Rose into and for now still seems to be avoiding them, not having gone that far, but, well

Maybe this is where we’ll start to see where Doc Scratch’s odd tendencies starting coming from

You know he was always really weird with Rose and Vriska (Maybe because he sees Light players all as extensions of Rose herself?)

Anyway yeah this is def the story metaphor I think we’re going to see in this, but Kanaya doesn’t fully get it, she thinks the story refers to herself and Rose

DAVE: that seems kind of wack for a kids story

KANAYA: Its Possible I Am Projecting Slightly In This Specific Circumstances

KANAYA: It Was Just A Metaphor

KANAYA: But In A Way I Feel As If It Is the Greater Universe Trying To Tell Me Something

KANAYA: It May Simply Stem From My Longing To See Her Again And How Much Is Indicative Of Something More Sinister

Which is cool because it makes this opposing connection between Dirk and Kanaya as opposites, which I like because it solidifies a tiny bit more the idea of Sylph being Passive Create to A Prince’s Active destroy.

Oh yeah, there was a tiny hint of Mind metaphor as well, can’t forget Terezi is with them

KANAYA: How The Worlds In Each Ones Mind Take On Contours Shaped By Their Memories Of The Other

KANAYA: Places And Moments And Orbiting Passersby Becoming More and More Entangled In The Context Of Their Mutual Affections

KANAYA: Such As With A Garden Calling To Mind An Engagement Once Declared There

Basically the idea that your experiences of a person and your memories of them shape who they become as well, the boundary between you and I is controlled by both of us, so each has an effect of the personality Heart of the other through our own decisions and Mind

like the way people tend to mimic those they like and want to be close to, or the way they actively try to distance themselves and what they are like from those they hate

But that at all seems to be more about Mind in general than referring to anything specifically Terezi

though it is exactly that understanding of Mind versus Heart and how one affects the other that could make Dirk realize that in the question of the self he’s only had half the picture the whole time, he’s only had the understanding of Heart and has thus far not been able to understand how Mind plays a role in the sustaining of the self, how what other people do to help you to be you, which is his entire philosophical conundrum

“DAVE: the dude youve spent the last 7 years convincing yourself isnt an egomaniacal anime villain

DAVE: and who isnt actually lying in wait to completely decimate your life and your emotions and shit“

oh, that makes me sad, this is def bringing up some bad trains of thought for Dave ):

“ KARKAT: KANAYA BARELY EVEN TALKS, CALLIOPE WON’T LEAVE THEIR CABIN, JADE JUST FLOATS AROUND LIKE A CREEPY BALLOON THAT’S MOSTLY MADE OF HAIR.

OH RIGHT, I forgot Calliope is actually WITH them on their journey, despite seeming to want absolutely fuck all with Jade Callie, I totally thought she was gonna stay back on Earth C but I guess not!

It’s so odd to see them so terrified of their alternate self like this when they’ve interacted mildly before. I still don’t know what to think of that much, other than they seem to be doing that weird thing that the other kids went through, like how John scribbled clowns on the walls unknown to himself for the longest time due to Gamzee’s unseen mental influence

that’s exactly the type of shit Dirk would be afraid of, so I wonder if that’s what Callie was afraid of as well? Maybe its Jade Callie that’s influencing them this way not Gamzee, to scribble strange things on the walls and not come out, but it’s the same fear of the other regardless manifesting and changing the self.

It is a very oddly non social thing for Our Calliope to do, when the point of different between the two Callie’s was how social Calliope was versus how antisocial Jade Callie is. Worries me ): but at least they’re here I guess

KARKAT: SOMETIMES IT ALMOST FEELS LIKE WHATEVER SLATHERING MONSTROSITY OF A COSMIC HELLBEAST THAT PUT ALL THIS SHIT INTO MOTION...ACTUALLY LIKES ME?

ROXY: fucked up if tru

Karkat is really popular as a character in the fandom lol

and that’s that one, time to get to Chapter 4, which has a lot more juicy exposition

With all the Garden of Eden metaphors though I can’t help but think of the Apple of the Garden of Eden when I think of “story exposition” now

The juicy tantalizing forbidden red fruit that when you bit into it you suddenly understand and know things you did not before and you’re eyes are opened, I wonder if that’s enough to just make Apples a solid Symbol of Light in Homestuck’s context? Most of it’s association with knowledge is external to Homestuck, just referenced symbolically, it’s not actually used in any cirumstances pertaining to knowledge, but more as the metaphor of it being the gate to leave the garden of eden, more like a teleporter, Rapture and Revelation in general rather than just Knowledge itself

aka my new headcanon is that one thing needed to Alchemize a Transportalizer is inexplicably going to be an Apple, if that ever comes up at all

#Homesquared #Homestuck^2 #Dirk Strider #Rose Lalonde #Terezi Pyrope #Apples are the essence of Portal Technology #long post

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blaperile · 4 years

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Homestuck^2 - Chapter 13: The Funeral - Reactions

"CHAPTER 13. The Funeral"

Oh boy. Gamzee's funeral, I assume?

I mean, let's hope this is not a time-skip to Karkat who died of old age as a reference to the conversation in the previous chapter. 0_0

It's interesting how since the original Homestuck ended, this is already the 3rd funeral in the Candy timeline. First Dirk, then the alternate Jade, and now (presumably) Gamzee.

I wonder if it's going to take place in the exact same place where the other funerals took place?

I assume Jane and Jake will appear in this chapter, and possibly Brain Ghost Dirk, I wonder who else. Is it going to be broadcast on television and be seen by some other characters?

Page 303:

Ooooh, nice! I love the references to Prospit and Derse in the window colors. Sadly the church is just white, not half-white and half-black. :P

I love the design of it though. And it wouldn't surprise me if this really is the place where the other funerals took place.

Page 304:

Huh, I'm actually almost surprised that both humans AND trolls are attending this funeral. And not even in separate aisles but actually mixed!

Might be a publicity stunt by Jane though. :/

Also, this reminds me of Catnapped where Jane was holding her speech in front of a crowd.

I like how the flower wreaths have purple flowers, like Gamzee's colour.

...Wouldn't it be amazing if it suddenly turns out Gamzee isn't dead after all and jumps out of the coffin at the end of this chapter? To be honest, I wouldn't be that shocked. xD

Page 305:

Wait a second... Yiffy's in plain sight here, isn't she? Right in front of the entire crowd? Doesn't that... raise so many questions for the attendants?

I mean, it would be fucked up if it DOESN'T raise any questions from them.

I love how her facial expression absolutely looks like a mixture between Rose and Jade.

"Purple Prince" No, that'd be Kurloz. :P

Page 306:

Ahahaha, these people's expressions. ACCURATE. SO ACCURATE. I FEEL YOUR PAIN.

Page 307:

OH YES!!!! GO JAKE!

He's trying to let Yiffy escape. The question is, will it work? Or does Jane have other agents at the ready to immediately catch her again?

...Let's hope we're not getting a reprise of The Handmaid finally tasting freedom before being caught by Lord English.

Interesting to see how apparently Jake also knew of Yiffy's existence beforehand. So it wasn't just Jane (and obviously Rose and Jade). I wonder if Jade told him herself, or if Jane told him?

Page 308:

Oh fuck, is Yiffy going to try to attack Jane?

That's... not going to end well, isn't it? I mean, Jane's a GOD TIER. We don't know what exactly Yiffy's capable of as the child of two God Tiers and a former First Guardian, but I doubt she can handle Jane.

Page 309 - 310:

Wait, what is Yiffy doing? Is she... opening Gamzee's coffin? 0_0

What does she want to accomplish with that? ...Don't tell me it turns out the funeral coffin is empty.

Page 311:

LOL, Yiffy's just fucking with Jane and Gamzee by jumping on the coffin. Jane's remaining uh, surprisingly calm for now and... just letting Yiffy do what she's doing?

Page 312:

Oh fuck, the collar! How could I forget about the collar?!

Yeah, the leash almost doesn't matter, Jane's got Yiffy under her thumb with that necklace.

Page 314:

Wow, even with the zaps, Yiffy's persisting.

But just... what's going through the minds of the people watching this in that church?

Page 315 - 316:

Aha, so that's how Yiffy's still managing to stay up! Good job, Jake!

But yeah, what IS he going to do? Is Jake going to stand up to Jane and save Yiffy in front of the crowd and show his true colours?

Page 317:

Oh snap, the coffin is open! :O

Okay, so Gamzee was indeed actually in there.

Page 318:

Pffff, and there he goes. I doubt we're going to see his face what with the, uh, number Vriska did on it.

Page 319:

OH MY GOD, YIFFY. XD

She's having a field day with this.

Page 320:

Let's fuck some shit up Yiffy, ahahahaha.

Page 321:

God, Jane... You've become so messed up. :/

Jane does raise a good point though, where are Rose, Jade and the others? Are they on their way here? It's been a while since we saw them when they got together.

Are they about to burst into this church any moment, or what are they up to?

Page 322:

You and me both, Jake. I also thought she was just going to run away Handmaid-style, haha.

...Now I want to see an image manipulation of Jake wrangling Jane as he tells Yiffy to run away, like how Andrew was wrangling Doc Scratch as he told Handmaid to run away, ahahahaha.

Page 323:

Woohoo, go Yiffy!

I love the metaness in referring to Gamzee's corpse appearing so often.

"He vanishes into the seething crowd, and we are confident that we will never have to deal with this asshole ever again." ...Yeah, I'm not buying it at all. You can't keep down the clown, not even when he's dead apparently. xD

Page 324:

N'awww. Jake is so proud of her. :3

Page 325:

Oh boy, what are Jane's agents going to look like? Like police officers? Secret service? Military? Drones??? Something else entirely?

Page 326:

OH SNAP!!!! Does that mean John and the others are here? Or just Karkat and the Troll rebellion? Or both?

I'm EXCITED. :D

Shit's about to get real in here. Well, in the next chapter that focuses on this storyline at least. xD

#Homestuck #Homestuck^2 #update #upd8 #reaction #Yiffy Lalonde-Harley #Jane Crocker #Jake English #Brain Ghost Dirk

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snowtimeisbesttime · 5 years

Text

Thoughts and questions on Pesterquest Volume 5, routes 1 and 2!

also: sollux for volume 6 (route 2) you (might have) heard it here first

-The trolls' Prospit is still perfectly fine when we see it, as we still haven't done away with SGRUB. In Kanaya's route we see Alternia's Reckoning, the Land of Little Cubes and Tea, and our favorite rainbow drinker fan hunting for frogs in the clouds; meanwhile in Karkat's we straight up see his dreamself- who winks out of existence when he wakes up. John's did that too when he woke up after Prospit fell on the Battlefield, but I had thought dreamselves just teleported to their dream room's bed when the waking self woke up.

-Actually, I'm pretty sure we've seen dreamselves just existing on the moons when their counterpart is awake: John's before Descend, Vriska's in Make Her Pay, Dave's being on the computer and of course Dirk switching between dream and real selves, Roxy's flying out of Derse, Jane's when she dream revived (??), and maybe more I'm not remembering. Of course, dead dreamselves such as Aradia's or Jake's can't go anywhere.

-Possible candidates for Volume 6 basically trolls who were namedropped or had a cameo: Sollux (VERY likely imo, he had a good bunch of screentime in Karkat's route), Terezi (very likely too, as she's also a Peak Protagonist troll), Gamzee (less likely than the other two imo, though MC's been to his hive already), Vriska (could or could not........ it's a gam8le.)

-Worldbuilding: *happens* Me: *burning through my good note-taking pens*

~ROUTE 2~

-Now to Kanaya's route proper: she's got sunproof dresses just lying around. Very nice sunproof dresses, in fact. (the clothes collecting tradition goes on...)

-Rose immediately comes up on MC's mind when they look at Kanaya's room, though she's dealing with another Light player herself. Whose cameo here was practically expected, in hindsight. ::::)

-We find out that Vriska had been planning the whole Pupa Pan thing for Tavros for a good while. (Probably since she started planning Aradia's gift at least, though that was both a bigger project and also an... easier-to-see fix to what she'd done to her).

-And now that we've seen Kanaya's side of this, the panel where she finds out what the dress was for hurts a lot more.

(-actually kanaya spends a good bunch of her entire volume being sad??? and so does karkat??? and ofc jade did too????? That’s Fucking Illegal Let My Children Be Happy At Once)

-mc still remembers their movie date with polypa...... the feelings at least

-MC encourages Kanaya to finally tell Vriska how she feels, and it turns out she wants to be matesprits too... and it ends horribly. (Rose's bad route also seemed to be going perfectly well until it didn't).

-We don't know how much of the week she was out was spent travelling between their respective hives, though. (did she fucking run there and back???)

(-Kanaya's heart eyes, motherfucker sprite has jade eyes while Karkat's terrified sprite has grey eyes. Further fancy-eyed friends will probably have their associated color as well.)

-And by the time Vriska might have felt what Kanaya felt (the 3-way showdown) instead of just using her for her own benefit, it was too late.

-Bright colors seem to be a rainbow drinker thing, specifically? As opposed to being Alternian goth... (daraya's route explicitly states that she looks goth because she's wearing a lot of black, when she's actually one of the Troll Call trolls that wears the least black. What is the truth? We just don't know....). Meanwhile, chainsaws seem to be the go-to weapon of rainbow drinker hunters, like stakes are for us...

-Kanaya doesn't want a vampire gf, she wants to be the vampire gf! And before MC realizes that, they come way too close to a bunch of murderzombies. Now we know they can choose who they zap with them, with potentially disarming side effects!

-Undead blood is black like His Honorable Tyranny's, and probably something you should NOT put in your mouth.

-Sadly, Kanaya doesn't get to actually talk to the Tentacle Therapist herself, though she is assured that she'd like her. Mayhaps some other time, they will finally meet... hopefully in person.

~ROUTE 1~

-Weird knowledge of alien stuff absolutely takes a backseat to Friendship. Good to know retcon powers have an aim assist of sorts too.

-Karkat's theme gets a remix like John's Pesterquest one!!!!

-Karkat himself is as fucking zen as ever. And while he's got a wonderful good end (as in what happens -wise), his bad ends -all his routes even- are VERY much sadstuck to compensate.

(-Especially his short one... he finds out he's not the only being in the world besides his lusus with crimson blood, because he just murdered the other one... and then you think about how he immediately warms up to MC in his good route, and how he did the same with -past- Spades Slick, and then how his dreamself died in canon...)

-He can project his voice very well, just like a certain other someone who wore a cloak... Actually no shit he thinks ancestors are bullshit (besides vriska & eridan being 2 out of 3 trolls he knows that are into that stuff, and all that), his own's the most illegal one so neither him nor the aforementioned trolls he knows that are into that stuff would have found much stuff... (even Mindfang stuck to sneaking just the sym69ls in her journal).

-Did he paint his nails? If not, who did?

-Of course he'd notice this random alien was very warm. What he didn't know is that we're less cullable than we look like- case in point, Folykl. (actually, do we still have Plot Armor?)

-...Who was Gamzee talking to when we zapped into his broom closet? And why did Karkat freak out so much when he came close? He did know Gamzee was a clown, iirc... was he just leaking psychic spoops or what??

-The second Karkat finds out MC and him have the same blood color, they became friends in his eyes.

-Sollux (is here!!) kinda calls back to Dave in Volume 1, after Karkat and him finish their regular greetings and get to the point of the conversation. Hacking into the caste records is incredibly illegal, though Sollux's more than willing to risk being culled for Karkat*.

-We know there was an Adalov way before Hivebent time, but we don't know if that's our Adalov- and sadly MC doesn't get the chance to even hear that name. (it's too soon still.)

-How do we get rid of SGRUB? We take Karkat “The Fucking Leader” Vantas to Earth, obviously! Where he'll be able to play various skate games, bond with the kids over games left unplayed, and escape a certain death. Wonder how everyone’ll react to him disappearing...

-Narratively Unimportant Traits 1: dave loves olive garden's breadsticks!! Narratively Unimportant Traits 2: ...because he can eat a lot of them when otherwise he might not get to eat much of anything Narratively Unimportant Traits 3: karkat's been years perfecting hiding from drones that will kill him if they so much as detect his body temperature, and it's implied he may have been moving (will keep moving) from hive to hive as needed all this time because of the early warning systems, which warn him of his hive being about to go up in flames and killing everything inside it- including his lusus. We're in Hivebent's timeframe, but considering his good route's what takes SGRUB out, he might not even have turned 13 yet.

-Karkat's bad route ends with him just leaving, shrouded in Signless callbacks, after being put on a cull list not even retcon powers can escape from. ...That's also a way to get rid of SGRUB, I guess.

*Back to Sollux being a likely choice for volume 6- in Karkat's bad route, he repeatedly tells Karkat to come to his hive, after seeing him on the cull list and knowing there's drones after him. He knows and explicitly doesn't give a fuck about him being a mutant (though he doesn't seem to know how exactly is he a mutant). The last thing he tells him is “don't make me tell you how much i hate you.”

After that, he doesn't hear anything more from Karkat because he throws his palmhusk away, and then he just leaves into the wilderness. And even if we get the typical Friendsim timeline smoothie shenanigans, Karkat's on Earth in his good route and we don't know if he can still contact his friends. (Sollux can hear the imminently deceased. There's the chance that he might hear from Karkat one last time.)

If we do get the timeline smoothie, that's a hell of a motivation to seek out MC. (And even if we only follow the good route, Karkat still dropped off the face of Alternia after asking Sollux to hack the caste records and telling him MC was in his hive.)

#pesterquest #homestuck #kanaya maryam #karkat vantas #sollux captor #pesterquest spoilers #thoughts and questions #long post #just in case

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weaselandfriends · 5 years

Text

Hymnstoke XV

GC: TH3Y 4LL THOUGHT 1 W4S CR4ZY GC: BUT H4H4H4 1T TURN3D OUT W3 4LL W3R3 1N OUR OWN W4YS GC: TH4T H3LP3D US R34LIZ3 TH3 P4RTICUL4R D3ST1N13S THE G4M3 PUT TOG3TH3R FOR US GC: 1N TH3 VOC4BUL4RY OF L1K3 GC: TH3 HYP3R FL3XIBL3 MYTHOLOGY 1T T41LORS TO 34CH PL4Y3R GROUP

Bildungsroman.

I think the term "bildungsroman" (or its less-pedantic equivalent "coming of age story") is over-employed in contemporary critical analysis. It's a lot like the term "deconstruction," which can be draped atop a wide variety of stories to ostensibly make a critical statement without saying anything.

Hussie himself, in one of his old Formspring posts, described Homestuck as a "coming of age story." But who exactly is the one coming of age? Obvious answer is John. The story opens with him on the cusp of adolescence (thirteenth birthday) and ends, at least in one Epilogue, with him reconciling with his estranged wife and child. Obviously some coming-of-age has occurred, even if only literally. But in what way has John developed as a person? Is that development stymied by the existence of a parallel Epilogue in which he unceremoniously dies, or does even that branch of John's existence feed into who John becomes as a person?

I've only read the Epilogues once, so my thoughts on that part of the story probably won't be fully realized until I reread them at the end of this blog. Rooting myself purely in the current moment of Act 4, however, I can still discuss certain aspects of John as a character. I mentioned in previous Hymnstokes his beginning as a naïve, blank slate reader-surrogate who blindly fumbles his way through uncertain situations. His trajectory has been away from this initial naivete toward cynicism—or "irony" if you will—a more cautious, guarded approach to his understanding of the world around him. The main moment of development so far has been his foray into his Dad's room, which revealed to him that his Dad "isn't all that into clowns you guess." But I don't think it's until John's interactions with Vriska in Act 5 Act 2 that he's going to reach the done-with-this-shit, rolling-my-eyes attitude he possesses throughout Act 6. (And it's funny, because even when he takes on that attitude, he still serves as reader surrogate—as if the reader, too, sees what was once novel and wonderful as obnoxious and stupid—but that's for a discussion of Act 6 as a whole.) So that's John's coming-of-age "arc."

Which feeds into a larger discussion about duality, because as I mentioned previously Dave is moving in the opposite trajectory, away from irony and toward sincerity. Rose is moving away from scientific analysis and toward occult spiritualism, while Jade—well, Jade never really gets a "character arc" because she's more of a plot device than a real character. But Jade, functionally, begins as a spiritual prognosticator whose seemingly supernatural facets all eventually become explained by rudimentary technical features of the SBURB game.

The reason why I think describing Homestuck as a "coming of age story" is reductive is because while these young characters do develop (or at least change), these developments crisscross one another, lead to innumerable dead ends, and fail to satisfy the characters themselves. I would argue that almost all of the characters are more insecure, or even more immature, at the end of Homestuck than at its beginning. The thirteen-year-old versions of these characters speak with the vocabulary and understanding of a reasonably well-read 30-something dude, employing witty barbs and clever sentence constructions left and right as they empirically sort out the unfamiliar game world of SBURB to satisfactory results. They have "problems" with their parental figures, they don't "understand" themselves, but they are competent people capable of progressing despite immense challenges hurled their direction. The major failures of the B1 SBURB session are caused by the meddling of the trolls, not imperfections in John, Dave, Rose, or Jade. In fact, the kids' concerted, Herculean efforts to create a clockwork Cascade of perfectly-placed mechanisms are what salvage an otherwise hopeless situation.

Yet in B2 it all goes to shit, and John and pals wind up being totally useless despite having far more advantages than they did in the B1 session: three years to prepare, foreknowledge of the game's mechanics and even the specific situation of the B2 SBURB they are entering, being literal gods, retcon powers, et cetera. It's almost as if, rather than "coming of age" and "developing into adults," the kids undevelop, unmature, regress, fall apart, decay...

Kind of like entropy.

So if the characters themselves are progressing in these crisscrossing dualisms, irony versus sincerity, science versus faith, then the development of the characters as a whole is crisscrossing the development of the plot: Degeneration versus regeneration, destruction versus creation. In a way, these characters are relics of the world they left behind: that saturated, useless Earth. They are products of its cultural detritus, and while their aim is to create a world from its fragments, they themselves are among those fragments. In the Epilogues, their intrusion into the world they created hurls that world into chaos, and the Meat epilogue ends with them extracting themselves from a place in which they do not belong.

GC: 4CT1ONS TH4T COMPL3T3 LOOPS 1N TH3 T1M3L1NE GC: COGS 1N P4R4DOX SP4C3 TT: Paradox space? GC: OH H3LL GC: L1ST3N TH3 UN1V3RS3 W1LL 34T P4R4DOX3S FOR BR34KF4ST GC: 4ND SO W1LL TH1S G4M3 GC: G3T US3D TO 1T GC: BY NOW YOU SHOULD R34L1Z3 TH1S WHOL3 M3SS W4S 4 B1G S3LF FULLF1LL1NG CLUST3RFUCK GC: A HUG3 ORG14ST1C MOB1US DOUBL3 R34CH4ROUND

Or are the linear tracks of character development I described actually part of Homestuck's favorite structure, the mobius loop? Is the duality between irony and sincerity, science and magic not actually a duality, but two sides of the same one-sided shape?

Because the path of Homestuck might also be read not as a linear rise and fall, but a series of loops. John and pals degenerate in early Act 6, only to renew again after GAME OVER when Vriska sorts everything out and they have a huge pow-wow before the final fight. Yet they degenerate again in Epilogues, falling apart at times even more pathetically than they did on the three-year plane ride to the B2 session, only to finally reach a semblance of resolution at the end of either one Epilogue or the other. But even the ends of those Epilogues suggest a lack of finality, a way for the story to continue, more development upward or downward to be had.

A series of Ascents and Descents. It fits the naming structure employed for many key moments in Homestuck. But what does it mean? Why does it matter that Homestuck is structured this way?

Thomas Pynchon, that nefarious postmodernist, was a writer overtly concerned with entropy, given his background in science and engineering. He once wrote a short story about another one of his favorite interests: parties, bro. In this story, a group of young people are partying in a house. Having fun, drinking, all that young kid stuff. But as the night draws to an end, the energy disperses, everyone becomes tired and lazes about. The closed system of the party has succumbed to entropy. At the end of the story, someone opens a window and a breath of fresh air revives everyone so that the party can continue.

On a universal level, entropy is irrevocable. Eventually, millions or billions of years in the future, heat will disperse throughout the universe; no more stars, no more solar systems, only a cold expanse of space. But in a closed system, entropy can be easily overcome by opening the system and letting in energy from outside, the way it worked in Pynchon's party story.

In an earlier Hymnstoke, I exuberantly declared that Homestuck overcomes entropy. My argument was that, by making meaning out of meaningless cultural detritus, Homestuck resolves the problem of societal decay famously put forward by T.S. Eliot in the poem The Waste Land. That conclusion may have been overeager, especially in light of how Homestuck ends both in Act 7 and the Epilogues. But I think viewing Homestuck through this post- or post-postmodern lens of entropic decay sheds some insight on what exactly those tricky Epilogues mean.

Paradox Space appears to be a closed system that overcomes entropy. It can go both up and down despite being closed. It continually chews up and recycles its own parts to continue its progression, similar to how Hussie brings back seemingly irrelevant details to create meaning later. As characters state innumerably throughout the story, everything in Paradox Space is a "S3LF FULLF1LL1NG CLUST3RFUCK," designed with the sole intention of continuing the existence of Paradox Space.

But Paradox Space cares nothing for the existence of its constituent parts beyond what they can do to further itself. And because of this, the characters, while trapped within Paradox Space, cannot truly progress. They go up every time they go down, down every time they go up. Every state of maturity breaks apart into a state of immaturity, every revelation or self-understanding is later reframed as a shortsighted false epiphany. Eventually, like John at the end of the Meat epilogue, they are unceremoniously mulched so that Paradox Space can continue.

Where's the escape? In a world where the worth of an individual is only how much use can be drained out of them until they break, how does the individual "come of age"?

I think, moving forward, I'll keep a closer eye on how each character interacts with Paradox Space, that unseen clockwork machinist putting all its cute pieces together for the sake of continuing itself. If Homestuck is a "coming of age story," I do not believe it has an altogether positive view on the ability of children to mature and develop. Hussie may have intended it to at an earlier stage of Homestuck's creation, but that was PAH, Past Andrew Hussie. It has been, what, seven or eight years since that Formspring post?

TT: I'm starting to see that. TT: So the exiles are on Earth? Does that mean our goal is to get back there too? To resurrect it somehow? GC: NO NO NO GC: S33 1RON1C4LLY TH3Y G3T TO DO TH4T GC: 4FT3R TH3YR3 DON3 H3LP1NG YOU TH4T 1S GC: YOUR JOB 1S OF GR34T3R CONS3QU3NC3 TO S4Y TH3 L34ST GC: BUT P4RT OF TH31R JOB 1S TO R3BU1LD L1F3 4ND C1V1L1Z4T1ON TH3R3 GC: 4ND 1F TH3YR3 SUCC3SSFUL 1N THOUS4NDS OR M1LL1ONS OF Y34RS TH3 T3CHNOLOGY 1S UN34RTH3D 4ND TH3 PL4N3T 1S R1P3 FOR S33D1NG 4LL OV3R 4G41N

Oh hey, rebuilding and reseeding. Even the dead planet gets recycled so that another session of SBURB can begin.

(End of Meat epilogue, 2010 colorized.)

GC: 1M MOT1V4T3D BY S3LF 1NT3R3ST GC: TO H3LP YOU 4DV4NC3 MOR3 QU1CKLY GC: B3C4US3 1V3 GOT YOUR WHOL3 ADV3NTUR3 R1GHT H3R3 1N FRONT OF M3 EB: do you have a braille screen or something? GC: SHHHHHHHH! GC: 4NYW4Y TH3 PO1NT 1S GC: 1TS LONG AND BOR1NG GC: 4ND YOU COULD ST4ND TO SK1P SOM3 ST3PS

Vriska will eventually take on the role Terezi is performing here, but this exchange hearkens back to what I was talking about in the previous Hymnstoke about "skipping to the end." Doing it here gets John killed, because of course this skip is meant to "FUCK UP TH3 T1M3L1N3." At other times, screwing with the timeline is exactly what the timeline requires, so it is allowed in that instance (and it's even allowed in this instance because the doomed timeline created here allows the main timeline to progress in a necessary way). The concept of temporal causality, introduced in the Intermission, becomes more explicit in this episode with Terezi and John and the jetpack. Where Spades Slick and the Felt played by temporal rules, John will not, and the consequences for those actions will be revealed, as well as the harsh truth: the individuals within the system have no choice; the system commands their actions.

GA: I Just Would Like To Gather GA: Some Means Of Gauging Her Sincerity TG: ok well its easy TG: for everything she says take her to mean just the opposite TG: see not everybody always means literally what they say the way john and jade always do GA: Maddening GA: How Do Humans Forge Meaningful Relationships Using Such Communication Patterns GA: Perhaps It Is The Human Riddle That Is Truly The Ultimate Riddle

While this quote touches on the irony versus sincerity angle as it pertains to the kids, the reason I bring this passage up is: What the hell was the Ultimate Riddle? I completely forget if it was ever meaningful whatsoever. Did it get answered? Does it even show up after Act 5? Act 5 (and Act 4, its prelude) is so divorced from everything that comes before and especially after it. Act 6 gleefully forgets anything that happened in Act 5, and the Ultimate Riddle is only one of its many casualties.

I guess if you slap something into a story called "the Ultimate Riddle" you're going to provoke people to try and answer it, even if the riddle lacks any substance whatsoever.

GC: TH3 HO4RD CONT41NS SO MUCH MOR3 GR1ST TH4N YOU COULD 3V3R US3 1N 4N 4LCH3M1T3R GC: 1 M34N YOU COULD 1 GU3SS GC: BUT TH4TS NOT TH3 PO1NT GC: 1TS FOR TH3 ULT1M4T3 4LCH3MY EB: what's the ultimate alchemy? GC: 1TS NOTH1NG FOR YOU TO WORRY 4BOUT NOW

I think the Ultimate Alchemy also doesn't matter? I don't remember it, at least, although maybe it had more of an answer than the Ultimate Riddle. I think SBURB as a game doesn't matter all that much, that a lot of it is, eventually, skipped Vriska-style. (Maybe the Ultimate Alchemy created Caledfwlch? I seriously forget.)

JASPERSPRITE: Rose im just a cat and i dont know much but i know that youre important and also you are what some people around here call the Seer of Light. JASPERSPRITE: And you dont know what that means but you will see its all tied together! JASPERSPRITE: All the life in the ocean and all the shiny rain and the songs in your head and the letters they make. JASPERSPRITE: A beam of light i think is like a drop of rain or a long piece of yarn that dances around when you play with it and make it look enticing! JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song! JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters. JASPERSPRITE: So if you play the right song and it makes all the right letters then those letters could be all the letters that make life possible. JASPERSPRITE: So all you have to do is wake up and learn to play the rain!

God damn, we are just going on a tear of "shit that is introduced like it's important but turns out to be not important at all." I recall in particular several people were annoyed that Rose never "played the rain," that it was a point foreshadowed but never acted upon. But rereading this story from the viewpoint of knowing what is and isn't resolved, I think it's no accident that all these game concepts (Ultimate Riddle, Ultimate Alchemy, play the rain) are introduced in such rapid succession and all wind up not being that relevant. The quantity of these esoteric terms undermines their ostensible quality; when faced with Ultimate This, Ultimate That, the reader fails to affix narrative importance to all of it. And because all these things do, in fact, wind up being barely relevant (if relevant at all), this stylistic presentation turns out to be entirely appropriate. Of course, these pointless Ultimate Whatevers are framed against the backdrop of John "skipping to end," so the concept that certain things might not be important should already be implanted in the reader's mind.

Does that make Paradox Space not as efficient as it seems to be? That's one interpretation, but here's another, based on a point I made previously: What is important for Paradox Space is not important for the characters. Paradox Space can put forth an Ultimate Riddle, and to Paradox Space that riddle may, in fact, be important. But it's only more jumbled detritus to the protagonists, a collection of obscure terms that are ultimately less important on their personal paths than, say, Con Air. And this fact might suggest that creating your own path ("skipping to the end") might be more important than following the preset path laid out for you, the path created by the system (society, biology, your parents, the government, whatever you consider the "system" to be). John's jetpack excursion fails. But it wasn't his idea to skip ahead anyway, it was Terezi's. He wasn't following his own path. Hence, his failure.

However, in this Jaspersprite instance, "irrelevant" is not a completely fair assessment. A song that can be written down as letters? The letters can make life possible? Jaspersprite also says this:

ROSE: Jaspers, the message you gave me years ago before you disappeared... ROSE: What did you mean? JASPERSPRITE: Meow. ROSE: Sigh... JASPERSPRITE: :3 ROSE: I don't understand.

M, E, O, and W are the four letters that represent GCAT and become essential later in Act 5 for creating Becquerel (if I'm remembering correctly). I think it's those letters that Jaspersprite refers to when he tells Rose to "learn to play the rain," meaning this mystery, at least, is not only relevant but was resolved long before things in Homestuck stopped being resolved.

#homestuck #hymnstoke

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abundantchewtoys · 5 years

Text

HS Epi: Meat p15 reaction

I wonder what Dirk turns out to have in store for Rose. My idea was a soulbot of some kind, but I don't think she'd want to trade in her body for one. Perhaps there's a way to temporarily transfer her consciousness, like in a dreambubble dream, while Dirk prepares her body for the transition. Or maybe I'm just looking for ways to have a post-victory adult join John in the Furthest Ring. :p

Dirk claimed to have completed the process already but that seems like a presumptuous state of mind. I wonder if an ultimate self, a true one, not a sprite squared, might even be tangible? If it isn't, though, then who are even going to feature in Homestuck 2.0, if not the humans of Earth C...

What's also of interest, is whether the post-victory selves will in any way be able to access the memories of the selves that John is currently leading, since their timeline is far from being finished, unlike all those doomed timelines that were discarded!

I also thought of something regarding Dirk's scheming: he seems to be juggling both the solution to Rose's problems with Jane's run for president, as if they're at least of equal importance to him.

Anyway, we're probably going to be seeing the story from John's POV again.

---

I do wonder if when he finds about Vriska, what he'll do. He didn't consider her a friend anymore I think, after how he saw (Vriska) acting towards her friends. But still, for Terezi he might be inclined to go save her.

As it is now, though, things can be summarized à la Craigslist: Missed connection: you, exiting from captivity in the midst of a battlefield. Me: being sucked into a black hole, screaming.

---

"> John: Fight Lord English." OH BOY. He's actually doing it. I do wonder how this boss battle will even go, with how in parallel, on Earth C things only seem to get started. But with the monster's end form being on the same battlefield as a black hole, I'm reminded of Problem Sleuth and its glacier-paced endgame boss battle. :p Things might happen in stages, or perhaps they'll have to escape oblivion first and return with ACTUAL things that can hurt LE, not red herrings.

"Meenah’s ghost army claws at the borders of Paradox Space. Wait, that is her army, right?" No, John, obviously it's that other ghost army. :P I take it to mean he's talking about who's leading the army, more than anything.

"you’re pretty sure this is the army you, Meenah, Vriska, and the other Serket were trying to raise." Ah yes, Aranea was there at the inception of the ghost army idea. Funny how the (Vriska) he's thinking about is also an "other Serket" than the Vriska that is (was) leading the army now.

"Every screaming body pitches down and goes white the closer it gets to the black hole above you." That's presumably due to the distortion of the particles that make up the ghosts as they're sucked in. But it reminds me of how the dreambubble hologram selves (aka the representation of alive people that are sleeping) also glowed as they woke up! Also, how dream selves went white as the dreamer awoke.

"They’re locked in place, an eight ball in each socket. You briefly wonder what that means" Yeah, I wonder if they'll do something pool-related in their efforts to kill the monster.

"The laser show tears its way through a squadron of ghosts led by... is that... Tavros?" Yup! The very same dead Tavros he last saw in the bubbles, in his spunky Pupa Pan outfit! Guess he might reminiscence about them both fighting over Vriska, before he got turned off on the whole idea.

"Seems like an awful choice to lead an army, but what do you know." This is Tavros' ultimate Fiduspawn battle.

"Wasn’t Vriska supposed to be leading the charge? Where is she, anyway?" Yoooouuuu just missed her on her way out. :|

"> Listen." Is he... going to hear the echo of Vriska's scream? ... I just got a Legend of Zelda thing to reference. "Hey, listen!" ... That was an annoying firefly fairy guide, much like Vriska profiles herself.

"She’s probably somewhere around here, biding her time, waiting to execute her masterstroke and finish English off at just the right moment" No, John, not this time, you won't be able to rely on her tricks or her powers, I'm afraid. Plus, she's already made a sort of killsteal before in the story: this won't turn into a repeat of the Black King battle.

"You’re becoming enraptured by the sound surrounding you. Not a sound... a sensation. A subharmonic symphony that you can only hear in your bones." I wonder if that's part of his Breath powers, because I remember him feeling the wind skimming his home too, in the reunion scene a few pages back.

"This is it: the end of Paradox Space." If you mean, the end of the part of the Furthest Ring that the Green Sun's lifespan encompassed, then yes, I do think so.

"Behind you the juju disappears, sucked out of reality with a POP." And that's the last thing anyone saw of that? Maybe? Hopefully? (I wonder if he still has his retcon powers.)

"You move your arms in a dumb little motion, sort of like jazz hands, and summon up a wisp of wind to keep your cracked glasses in place." Oooh, cool, yeah, that would have been awkward fighting for him without being able to see right. Good thinking John! It shows his Breath powers have still grown! For practical purposes, they eclipse the retcon powers.

"You then pull one of your sickest hammers out of your strife deck." AWESOME! He a) still has his hammers, and b) still has his strife deck! That wasn't really a given, since they were supposed to be living in a paradise on Earth C! (Maybe spring cleaning isn't just something for John. Plus, his Dad wouldn't have approved of him discarding such a well-earned strife modus. :P)

"You cast a glance back over your shoulder at them. They all look pretty cool. Rose knitting light around her with the Quills of Echidna, Dave with his sword Caledfwlch at the ready, trailing time distortions behind him that look, if you don’t squint, a lot like JPEG artifacts. Jade’s got her favorite gun cocked and ready, with her ears perked up." Everyone, pose as a team! Wow, I'd really like to see this moment as a drawing. Could it be that John's weapon is the Warhammer of Zillyhoo? In spite of it being overclassed by the Vrillyhoo hammer, if Jade took out Ahab's Crosshairs, the kids are wielding the same weapons the bunny had. ... Okay granted, the bunny had the Royal Deringer, not Caledfwlch, so in fact Vrillyhoo as an upgraded version would not be far out. Also, so time distortions resemble JPEG artifacts as long as you DON'T squint? So, what does squinting do, sharpen them for the eye of the beholder? :p

"ROSE: Don’t get overconfident. ROSE: We have to do it exactly like we discussed. First..." I don't think their plans will be that easily executed. Plus, they were planning on taking on Caliborn, not his adult self! ... Okay yeah, they will have had time to make new plans while inside the juju.

"But Rose doesn’t get to finish what she was trying to say. Lord English’s mouth roars open and a wave of energy blasts through your group. Rose is the only one caught in it. She dissolves in slow motion." WHATTHEFFFFFFFFFF--- Rose! Is the group going to fall apart this soon??? ... Unless LE can't overwrite the just/heroic judgment, Rose just died permanently! ... Maybe Dave can rollback time? Or John, retcon this?? I. Don't know what to think.

"You can see the outline of her body in shadow." :((( Just like how Kanaya died in Game Over. Fucking Hell. And I hope that doesn't incite rage in someone, provoking them into getting closer to get run through...

"One arm thrown up over her eyes, shoulders pulled up defensively, cape billowing out behind her." Her pose reminds me of another scene... Like how she looked when peering up into LOFAF when she was drunk, maybe?

"She leaves an afterimage of shimmering light in her wake and then dissipates, drifting apart like a handful of salt tossed out to sea." :( almost anti-climactic.

"You can almost hear the cosmic clock counting down, tick tock, and a chime to accompany her fate: Heroic." Dear god. Well, at LEAST she still gets a judgment, not an insta-double death. ... Actually, come to think of it. She'll reappear right there as a ghost, won't she? :( Still in risk of a double death.

"JADE: rose!!!! no!!!!!!!!" Oh boy, Jade... Don't get drawn in, he'll want that and you won't be able to escape. John has ONE ring of life to give away, not two or even three!

But I think the chances are low that Jade and Dave will survive the rest of the battle, if this was any indication. (Blaperile has a theory Davepeta might come and take Dave's place, taking up Caledfwlch in his stead.) Unless they outright planned for this eventuality, things might continue falling apart. ... John is not going to have to pull an Aradia, is he? Continuing to retcon this moment until there's an army of him swarming LE, ensuring the others have enough time to actually DO things?

"Space splinters open around her so loudly it drowns out the fire from her rifle. Lord English raises one of his giant, fuck-off hands to deflect her anomaly-powered bullets" I don't know which rifle it is, but it seems she can now shoot bullets that run on space distortion, which reminds me of Becquerel teleporting her bullets (and themselves) during their Strife.

"It’s a wonder how such a big man can move so fast." And there he goes. the big man... HAS the speed. That's the first time we know he can move so fast right. Well, aside from being already here. Oh, right, and his moves during Collide, I forgot.

"Jade inspects her rifle, and tosses it aside. What is she doing? With all the powers of a Witch of Space at her command, combined with the infinite abilities of a First Guardian, she’s still messing around with basic firearms?" Well, yeah, it's what she was trained to do. She didn't any tutoring in First Guardian powers, so it might be risky to start using them here? I mean, I'm fairly sure her powers won't be a dud? Well, okay, the end of the Green Sun should have removed Doc Scratch' immortality granted to LE, and hopefully his First Guardian powers too, but... Well, it would suck if Jade were to try them out now and come up empty.

"Nothing. No crackle of electricity. No licks of chartreuse flame. She searches within, realizes her power source is completely unavailable to her. Then she looks up, and it dawns on her." Wwwelp. Hey, but the Black Hole was a Space-instigated object, can't she do something with that, though?

"Jade opens her mouth to scream for help, but she’s cut off." Oh shit.

"A razor-sharp fragment of reality slams into her back. It skewers her, exiting right through the center of the space symbol on her hoodie." ... Seems to me that John might have taken the people out of the doomed timeline, but he couldn't take the doom out of the people's timeline.

What is it with Homestuck and stabbing people through the back and torso?

"> Get in there!" ... This must be paralyzing to John, it's all happening so fast, faster than he can react, if he's seen what happened to Jade at all.

"Lord English struggles to emerge from the wind-prison you just whipped up." Wow, John's powers are actually capable of (at least) stalling LE, that's good news. Too bad of all the horrible news we've already had.

"Tavros has pulled himself to his feet and, recognizing English’s temporary state of vulnerability, directs the ghosts on his side to attack. No one is paying attention to him." I take that to mean, neither Lord English nor Dave nor John. Hopefully the ghosts still listen. But still, I'm afraid this battle is doomed.

"Jade is floating away from you." The clock is going to sound any second now...

Wait a minute. If my theory about John retconning this battle (if he can) to form an army is realized... Will there be ghosts of his friends that just died as well?

Hmm, Blaperile has a point, maybe Jade is also getting sucked into the Black Hole right now, I took it to meaning gravity was just a personal illusion in the Furthest Ring, and now that Jade's dead her body started hovering.

"You stare directly down the dark barrel of his throat, which readies another terrible laser shot. There’s not much time to react." ... Dave is not about to jump in front of the blast to save him, is he?? :(

"> Make a decision." Zapping out of there? Or, yeah, deciding what of the four things to keep a grip on. ... He might let go of Jade and the hammer, if he chooses the battle. But will it even be enough? But I don't think he'd bring her body with him if he zaps away, that'd be gory.

"But releasing her has created enough separation, just as you hoped. The laser breath passes between you, narrowly missing you both." Wow, he actually did it? But, like, she won't last long with her torso skewered, right? What is even his plan?

"You reel back like you’ve just been punched. Your control over the storm goes haywire for a second, long enough for Lord English to free his gaudy gold peg leg from it and, more catastrophically, for you to drop your already broken glasses." Well, that's three steps back for one step forward, now, ain't it.

"You whirl around and swing your hammer to bop his horrible, deadly skull back into your storm. You can’t really see what’s going on, but you hear a gigantic CRUNCH. And then another. And another. It sounds like a cereal commercial is playing outside the periphery of your vision." ... Either John accidentally hit Dave, or LE was able to get Dave while John is incapacitated. :( ... I don't think it's Terezi watching the battle from the sideline, eating Dorito chips.

"JOHN: dave!

DAVE: what

JOHN: is lord english... eating my hammer?

DAVE: yeah dude he totally is" Oh dear god. How totally OP can a bloke even be? Kind of a mood whiplash in the middle of this otherwise heartclenching scene.

"This isn’t going to work, waging battle without your glasses. Lord English has just eaten one of your sickest hammers due to your blind folly." ... Is he going to retcon back somewhere and steal his own glasses?

"You take a deep breath and dive down, right into the sea of ghosts. You land clumsily, palms first, and do an accidental handspring right into a bunch of alternate timeline trolls you don’t recognize." Or, yeah, maybe steal a troll's glasses? Though I guess only Eridan's might work, and does he even have the same prescription? :p ... Or maybe there's still a doomed John somewhere in there. Alternative, he might steal glasses from a Beforus troll, since he doesn't recognizes the trolls he's jumped in the middle of. ... Though that can still apply to Eridan. Or maybe Kronus wears lenses?

"JOHN: uh, hey guys. anyone see a pair of glasses down here? it’s pretty important." Ah, okay, they're still in one piece then. His windy spell wasn't broken. Welp, good luck finding your pair in a sea of trolls. The longer John's away, the riskier it gets for Dave...

"Ghosts scatter like bowling pins, many flying into the cracks in space." Eesh, yeah, that must be as doubledeathly as his lasers or the Black Hole.

"Before the leg hits you, a troll leaps into action and blocks the blow. Her trident makes a satisfying ring off the round of the peg and sends it skidding backward." Ah, I was wondering where Meenah got to! Waiting for a moment to shine, of course. Good to see her fighting efforts are definitely not in vain!

"JOHN: have you seen a pair of glasses down here? TAVROS: uH, aRE THESE WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR?" Oh cool, he's joined them! I do hope Tavros isn't going to try and hog the glasses in a fit of spite for John hogging the ring. :p There are higher stakes in play!

"Also, Tavros suddenly is leading an admirable charge of about six ghosts to attack Lord English’s flesh foot. You wince, because you can see what’s coming before it happens." Noble undertaking, but a small party to try and handle even the foot of this monster. I just hope (Tavros) makes it out!

"English raises his knee and stomps three ghosts into oblivion. The other four, Tavros included, get vaporized in a beam." Aw... NO! Tavros!!

Gee...

He's made it this far, and now... Just like that...

I...

I mean, this hit harder than Rose and Jade's deaths, actually. I guess I still thought of (Tavros) as the main Tavros, after all this time. I mean, I GUESS John could still retcon this moment, but it's getting increasingly unlikely.

Actually, I'm starting to wonder, given the size of the page, that this is it. This is where LE gets offed, at one of the steepest prices.

"The ghost army seems to be thinning out pretty badly by now. Most of the ones remaining are either fleeing or getting sucked into the hole." The window to kill him is closing though, and if LE gets out of here, who knows what he'll do next?

"You whip out another hammer. A classic this time, the Wrinklefucker. Its boinging pair of irons are hot, hissing, and ready for action." ... That IS a classic, wow! Long time no see. But uh, it's severely underpowered versus the rest of his hammers, though given his high god tier, it might not matter all that much.

Guess we know what pose John struck here as he took out the hammer.

"Dave is slicing papercuts into English’s torso with glancing nicks from his blade, but the monster is spry as ever, making him a difficult target." Dave is lasting surprisingly long, though! It might all be a red herring, of course.

"He chomps down hard and shatters the hammer’s head, gobbling down the broken pieces." ... Isn't there anything Lord English can break his teeth on???

... Quick, John! Alchemize SPIDERHAMMER OF VRILLYHOO && CALIBORN'S LEG!!

"You look at the handle of your tragically masticated Wrinklefucker, shrug, and toss it into the hole." Well, he SHOULD be able to alchemize more of them, if he still has the code.

"Glancing back down toward your foe, you notice Meenah still appears to be hanging on, clinging to his left suspender." Pfff, so epic.

MEENAH: yo hold on

MEENAH: goin in for the krill" Fuck, Meenah's going to bite the dust now, too???

"She raises her trident and jams it into the back of Lord English’s neck. English reacts as if he’s been stung by a bee." Not the effectiveness she was hoping for, I imagine.

"He howls and rears up, throwing Meenah off his back with a force that sends her hurtling out into space. You can’t track her into the void with your eyes, she’s flung so far and so fast. You can only assume the worst." Sure, say 'they could not have survived that', that will ensure we'll see her again, hopefully.

"He has Dave pinned under his big green foot and is applying pressure." Shit, he's got him in mortal danger.

"English quickly whips his head in the direction of the sailing hammer, and swallows it whole." Must've been one of his smaller ones. (We can only hope.)

"DAVE: john i need a little...

Dave ducks a wide blow from English’s swinging fist. He backs up nervously, holding his sword out in front of him with two shaking hands." Jegus. Dave's holding up admirably! Guess Bro's lessons have at least served to save his life her, at least a few times.

"DAVE: anything

DAVE: i need a little anything right now

DAVE: literally any stupid fucking thing you can do

JOHN: i’m on it!"

... What will John even do now? Take out a cake from his sylladex and throw it in LE's face?

"With another flick of your wrist you spin them around you so fast they form a perfectly impenetrable barrier of pure Shitty Hammer." As far as endgame moves go, I like John's style.

"In your hands is a weapon you haven’t thought about in a long time: the Pop-a-matic Vrillyhoo." Oooh! There it is!!!! Will it's Luck-based powers be relevant here? Will John hit a 8^8 roll????

"However, you’re interrupted by a voice screaming out from behind you. It’s half familiar," ... Vriska??? Don't tell me she's interrupting to shout 'that's mine'?

"half... cat?" PFFFFFF. NO. HELL. NO. ... Well, at least Reload Rose's memories might be living on in there somewhere, maybe.

"DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < waaaaaaaaaaaait" NEVER MIND I WAS THINKING ABOUT JASPROSESPRITE FOR WHATEVER REASON!!! OF COURSE!

Davepetasprite^2 still was around! They'll likely want to take over from John, thinking they're the ones destined to kill LE. ... Will... Will Davepeta and Dave TEAM UP though??? THAT WOULD ROCK SO HARD!!!

"You whip your head around just in time to see a bolt of orange-and-green energy racing by you like a bullet. It slams into Lord English and sends him stumbling." Odds are, John doesn't even know about Davesprite getting prototyped into Nepetasprite, so his reaction will probably he hilarious. And yeah, Davepeta seemed convinced her persona was something LE was weak towards. It didn't show during Collide, but at least they survived the Undertale attack there. :P

"DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < im back" BOOM! Fifteen minutes late with Starbucks, but they're here now! Hopefully this time it'll go better! It's still weird to think, that this kind-of-ultimate-Dave and a regular-Dave are going to be working together. In a way though, it's a fitting end to Dave's arc. Also, it's a homage to Davesprite's team-up with Bro vs. Jackspers Noirlecrow.

Dave stands there with his sword, absolutely agog, his expression perfectly reflecting a blend of horror and the total inability to process who or what he is looking at." YES. PERFECT DAVE REACTION. 'who the devil are you' wouldn't even suffice! If this were a cartoon, Dave's shades would have dropped to his lips by now.

"DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < we purrmenantly merged forms and worked out all our shit!

DAVE: oh

DAVE: well that sounds fucked up but ok" Dave's like: eh, there are worse sprites I could have had. :p (*coughCALSPRITEcough*)

Davepeta spreads their wings, sending waves of warm light through the battlefield. The light feels comforting, somehow, when it hits you." Like an angel. :P Or yeah, like Blaperile points out, regular sprite healing.

"Above the bedlam, Davepeta is finishing up an inspiring speech. You realize you tuned most of it out due to the surrounding chaos." Welp! Well, John mustn't have missed much, lots of furry puns probably. ;)

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < i know it looks pawful right now but we can do it

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in fact were literally the only ones who can do it

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < after all

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < it is our destiny B33" Ah, okay, the speech was mostly aimed towards Dave, I suppose. Unless they know stuff about John's destiny. :P

"You and Dave exchange a look that silently says all that needs to be said right now." Like how Rose 'n Roxy exchanged looks. Guess part of why we didn't see their conversations was because they didn't matter all that much. Unless Rose returns through the Ring of Life, and Jade turns out to not have been killed... (And Tavros was... just another version of himself that got killed?)

"Davepeta is right. You three are the only ones left, and there’s no room for failure." Eesh, okay, so all the ghosts have been doublekilled.

"> Final Round." HERE WE GOOOOOO

"Perhaps a well-oiled machine careening down a steep hill toward the edge of a cliff, but well-oiled nonetheless." It's a step up from most teamups in Homestuck, right?

"The butts of the hammers hit him over and over again, like racking up points in a slot machine." 777

"Dave manages to carve a red line up Lord English’s side, drawing real blood this time. The slash snaps one of his suspenders in half, and must sever something else too, because the sword makes a gristly, meaty squelch when he pulls it out." Awesome! First REAL wound and... Hold on. Is the prophecy about "the tyrant less an arm and an eye" going to come in play again!!

"You realize you seem to be stuck in a cycle and are in serious danger of running out of hammers." I'm surprised he had this much of them to begin with. Guess he spent a lot of time alchemizing hammers out of boredom, perhaps even still on Earth C.

"Davepeta scrapes their cool Wolverine claws up Lord English’s back, and then kicks him in the back of the head. You time it perfectly and complete the combo with a well-placed Vrillyhoo undercut to his jaw." Awesome combo!

"Which is why you refuse to let the handle go when English wraps his tongue around it and unhinges his jaw with a sick, wet pop." At some point, a man has to take a stand and defend their property. :P John: Extract hammer from jaw like the sword from the stone. You can do it, you're the chosen one! Will John hit the 8^8 right in LE's mouth?? It would be something if he can dislocate his jaw, and tear it off!

"Your heel slips on some drool, and your whole leg skids straight into his mouth.

You twist, off balance, and fail to catch yourself. You only let go of the hammer when you feel the walls of his throat constrict around your ankles. The pressure sucks you in up to the knees with one gulp." Dear god. His throat is also a black hole!! ... Oh no, Blaperile points something out. I joked about Caliborn's leg. I hope John isn't going to lose his!

"Vrillyhoo is in his stomach, and you’re following it down quicker than you can even process. Is this the end? No, you think. This is such an unfairly stupid fucking way to die!" John. John are you going to retco- No. He's going to blow LE up from the inside, maybe?! With windy powers??

Davepeta reacts quickly, shoving their claws between his molars. You can hear them growling as they slowly twist their arm to pry the massive jaw open." Wow, Davepeta rescued John, two times in quick succession! And they are ridiculously strong if they can pry his jaw open!

You’re not dead yet, but Lord English definitely got a big, sharp tooth in you. Your vision reels and goes blurry, then patchy, then dark, then—" Don't pass out don't pass out don't pass out don't pass out. There's no happy ending down that road.

"> Don't fucking die." Best. Command. Ever. Wish I could get Super Mario to respond to that when I mistime a jump.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < wrow you almost got vored to death

JOHN: what?" Don't google it kids. I'm not even sure if it's Dave or Nepeta that made a reference to vore here. Don't want to know, either.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < im afuraid to say that you look like total shit my dude" my dude is what Arquiusprite would say.

"DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < purromeows me you wont move

JOHN: i... purromeows?" The puns. It's a wonder John can read through them.

... Oh, he couldn't.

"DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < you should stay here while we wind this bitch down" Are they going to tire him for John to land the killing blow?

"You’re woozy and don’t have the energy to stop yourself from drifting. There’s blood floating up around you, dilute and bubbly in the air like cooking oil in water. It’s yours.

> Examine wound" Wow, it's reminding me of Problem Sleuth, who got so mortally wounded as well before Demonhead Mobster Kingpin was finally killed for good.

"You lift your chin and see it: Lord English’s gold tooth cracked off at the base and embedded in your chest." Oh, wow. So that tooth was the only 'vulnerable' one in the jaw, then. Since it wasn't real. Will he do something with it against LE, once he regains his strength?

"Dave finds his moment. He rams Caledfwlch into Lord English’s chest, all the way up to the hilt. It penetrates his flesh like nothing else has to this point. The wound around the blade sizzles slightly. The weapon—the unusual material it’s made out of—is poison to English." Cueball meets pool ball. Hah, eat shit!

"He cries out in a cracked, broken staccato. It’s an earsplitting wail that cleaves the last of the Furthest Ring apart. Reality falls away from the mooring of the all-surrounding white light like a peeled eggshell." ... Wow. The entirety of the Furthest Ring is evaporated around them!! Or well, definitely the part LE cracked. But what's the dimension 'behind'? Blankspace, or something else?

"Dave’s trying to get his sword free but he’s stuck. English’s shriek morphs into a sinister, predatory rattle as his jaw creaks open. His mouth envelops Dave’s head and snaps shut. He twists once, then twice, then again with a CRACK. A disaster of blood instantly coats his skull and upper torso." I-WUH. NOW? OF ALL TIMES?? JUST AS THEY'RE- FUCKING. HELL MAN. WHAT A MURDER DINOSAUR OF A BASTARD SON.

... My only, ONLY hope now is that through ultimate self means, at least hopefully the victory selves will be able to remember. Well, that, and that John will survive the next part. Maybe Davepeta will take the sword out now.

"Your limbs feel like lead. You consult your strife deck, but you’ve got nothing left. No hammers, no nothing." Eesh. Not even fistkind? Maybe?

"It’s up to Davepeta, who appears to have plenty left. If not in the strife deck per se, then in the heart." Maybe that last Dave dying... empowered them somehow, too.

I wonder though... Dave could never pull Caledfwlch out before, can Davepetasprite^2? John might be able to though! If Davesprite was to be believed, confetti would have popped out together with the sword if John had tried it. If he can just muster the strength now...

"Davepeta stands twenty paces behind him, crouches low to the ground, wiggles their behind, and pounces. " Now. Now of all times, the pouncegreet makes its return.

"They cling to English’s back, wrap their legs around his midriff, draw back their arms, and plunge their claws deep into the behemoth’s armpits." Hah, classic Wolverine.

"Davepeta then spreads their wings in an awe-inspiring display. An unwitting spectator viewing Lord English from the front might suspect the garish orange-green wings belonged to English himself." Pffff, just like an adult cherub WOULD have looked like. Blaperile just- WITH THE SWORD THROUGH HIS TORSO, LORD ENGLISH NOW ALMOST EXACTLY MIRRORS BEC NOIR!!!!!

Only thing left is for him to lose an arm and an eye, maybe!!! The tyrant will definitely die today, though.

"Davepeta then, with all their might, lifts Lord English into the air and flies toward the black hole, trailing ribbons of blood and neon." TIME FOR DAVEPETA TO FLY UP INTO THE FUCKING [s]SUN[/s] BLACK HOLE LIKE AN IDIOT. And now, finally, that SBaHJ strip has finally been seen realized.

"English resists fiercely, but they’re both already locked into the gravity well, beyond any threshold of escape." Wow. It's really going to be his undoing. But the Hole would have never been enough, it was the combination of the sword and Davepeta that brought him to the brink.

Now, the main thing is... Will John survive? ... Rose did seem to have had a vision that had her smile... sadly, perhaps. :(((

"This victory, this final sacrifice, has always been the destiny of Davepeta, as they have sensed from the moment they were created. And to die on this day, in this way, has always been the destiny of Lord English." Wooow. WWWWWWOOOOOOWWWW. It's really happening.

I wonder how conscious Lord English still is, whether something remains of that bratty Caliborn to bask in this defeat.

I do hope he truly can't escape it, not through some shitty timeline duplication or anything. Not even stuck as Caliborn as Lord of Time with cueball powers.

"The black hole—the gaping, implacable, cosmic embodiment of the dead cherub, his long-departed sister—finally welcomes Lord English home." Yeah, that was part of their mating ritual, one partner leading the other home to a black hole near their old home. LE is going to be the ultimate Homestuck.

"English and Davepeta are sucked in with a subatomic whimper. The reunion sends shock waves across the pitiful remains of Paradox Space. And then everything is wholly, utterly, and categorically silent. It’s over. Lord English is dead." Wow. 'Reunion', yeah. Because this represents Lord English becoming 'whole', reunited with his sister's embodiment!

Davepeta made the ultimate sacrifice. I hope post-victory Dave can cherish the memories. But... Yeah. Nepeta and Equius, the parts of them present in Davepeta and Arquius... Are gone for ever. And Nepeta and Equius are united, for ever.

And now.

I hope... I hope John won't succumb. I hope he can be safed. But I fear that it's not going to be as easy as the B2 kids finding them and Jane healing him.

Also, the Candy path, I'm getting more and more the feeling it might contain conversations that are the 'fluffier' counterpart to this path. That maybe it just shows Calliope 'n Roxy as they eat the candy. And then we get a lot of conversations that were cut out of the Meat part but still happen in the same timeline.

"But it doesn’t feel over, somehow. You don’t feel like you’ve won." I know, right?

"You can barely feel anything, actually. Eesh, John, stay with us!

"All you can think about, for now, is...

Davepeta. How they were so unfettered and brave. How they sacrificed themselves by flying right into the black hole like...

Like a fucking piece of garbage, you can almost hear Dave saying. May God rest his soul." Reference, locked and secured.

"You’ve convinced yourself of this truth well enough to allow yourself to exhale. Enough to allow yourself to suddenly acknowledge the agony coursing through your body, emanating from the gold tooth lodged in your chest. Enough to allow yourself to succumb to the overwhelming urge to sleep." Don't. Don't you dare succumb to unfathomable sleeplust. That's not going to end well. In spite of Jane, I'd settle for Meenah, but Thief of Life doesn't seem like a healer class.

"> Close your eyes." ... It ends here. The fucking end battle. Is over.

Wow. That was SO intense. So chaotic, but then that's always been the case with battles in Homestuck, all plans for naught.

... Will John be able to survive curtousy of the Ring of Life? But then he'd have to have it put on, first.

... On the other hand, if he were to... die, would he have even spawned a ghost? That goes for Dave and Rose, and perhaps Jade, as well. I mean, the reason for the dreambubbles is gone, and their makers, the Horrorterrors themselves, perhaps, too.

But man, I am pleased with the fact that we've had a conclusion to Lord English' arc, and the battle of the Furthest Ring.

It's way past my bedtime, so I'm going to log off now. Going to be digesting this.

#homestuck #upd8 #homestuck epilogues #homestuck liveblog #reaction #spoiler alert #lord english #davepetasprite^2 #john egbert #dave strider #tavros nitram #meenah peixes

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autumnblogs · 4 years

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Day 15: Troll Girls and Human Boyfriend Material

https://homestuck.com/story/2626

In exactly the same way that the indecency of Vriska’s abusive behavior (and the expectations of Troll Culture) are exposed when they come into contact with Tavros’ non-resistance, the indecency of the conditions of Troll Society are exposed as soon as Karkat is able to observe the conditions of Human society.

Karkat isn’t awake to that yet, though, so all his anger comes out pointed in the direction of the most immediate target - John Human Egbert. Thus begins the most legendary hatecrush in Paradox Space.

Dave and Karkat are both attracted to the same guy.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/2629

That little affair ended about as fast as it started.

I think what’s interesting about Karkat and Terezi’s relationship with full retrospect is that with the exception of their respective introductions, nearly all of their shared storyline takes place after they have already broken up.

Terezi is a bit of a serial romantic, leaving behind a trail of broken hearts, repeatedly breaking her own heart in the process. Maybe she’s trying to fill the void left behind by the end of her friendship with Vriska - if friendship is all it is. Terezi might not be the most important person in Vriska’s life (she also might be,) but Vriska is definitely the most important person in Terezi’s life.

Playing house with Karkat, turning Dave into a project, having her weird Batman and Joker relationship with Gamzee, but none of them fills the niche. I might be reading too far into that.

https://homestuck.com/story/2641

https://homestuck.com/story/2642

John and his Dad both address each other with symbols representing each other.

https://homestuck.com/story/2644

Being able to reunite with his Dad is, at this point, the same kind of fleeting fantasy that being able to fly is for Tavros.

https://homestuck.com/story/2652

Roxy Lalonde, Copium dealer.

Suffering is what all human beings share in common. Mom and Dad didn’t know each other until today, it seems, but they have their shared losses in common. That makes them friends.

https://homestuck.com/story/2653

Vriska probably latches onto John for the same reasons she latched onto Tavros - Breath Player. I have heard it hypothesized that Vriska envies the freedom that people like John and Tavros enjoy, their relative detachments from other people. She wants to be more like them. On the other hand, she also wants them to be more like her, and she does her darndest to turn both of them into hero coolguys (the kind of person she wants to be!)

On the subject of Vriska as coolguy, she is a parallel to Dave in that respect, and in more ways than that. Vriska ultimately wields the Ultimate Weapon against Lord English in the final battle as his nemesis, a role which is also foretold of Dave. Like Dave, Vriska has spent her entire life around vectors by which Lord English has infected her subconscious mind.

But Vriska becomes a dangerous antagonist whose presence represses other people’s agency. Dave, on the other hand, turns out to be a laidback and chill dude who rejects the violence inherent in the system. Dave has kinder, more understanding friends and easier living conditions though.

More push and pull between nature and nurture.

https://homestuck.com/story/2660

Maybe I do finally have something to say about the Carapacians’ emotional arc and the themes of their story.

It’s clear that the Mayor has aspirations of leadership and noble intent, but he doesn’t want Power with a capital P - not the kind of currency that power is in Carapacian life. Whether you’re a Dersite or a Prospitian, life for Carapacians is being part of a war machine, so the form that power takes is the capacity to commit violence and destruction.

A Mayor though, isn’t defined by his ability to destroy things, but to create them. His power doesn’t come from his personal capacity to commit violence, but from his community’s trust. Being the leader of the rebellion on the battefield is one step in the right direction.

As the Ringbearer, just this little guy caught up in a war that’s much bigger than he is, the Mayor is full of references to Frodo Baggins, who along with the other Hobbits, is part of the parable about violence that is central to Lord of the Rings.

The world will probably always have employment for heroes like Aragorn (and like John, and Vriska), and there will always be tyrants for those heroes to oppose like Sauron (and like Lord English, and Vriska), but it is the pity of Frodo in sparing Gollum, the humility of Samwise in rejecting the ring, Merry and Pippin’s love of simple things, and earnest respect for other sentient beings, that are ultimately what win the day. It is not the courage of the great, or the wisdom of the wise that rules the destiny of nations, but the compassion of the lowly.

Maybe the Mayor was the secret hero of Homestuck all along.

https://homestuck.com/story/2662

Vriska breaks character in this conversation with John a bit and continues the trend of secretly valuing the journey and just doing some cool things more than she actually values the destination.

She may pretend to be all business, the kind of girl who cheats, cuts to the chase, beats the final boss and wins the treasure, but Vriska loves meaningless sidequests.

https://homestuck.com/story/2663

She almost immediately reneges on the sentiment, of course.

John also has a bit of an interesting response, and one that suits his general gullibility. I could be reading into his non-plussed response, but I feel like it fits a pattern where John outwardly assents to the first truth claim that he receives, while pondering it and questioning it internally.

https://homestuck.com/story/2672

Few interesting things in this conversational sequence, actually. More of Paradox Space’s self-fulfilling, self-justifying, self-authenticating nature rears its head. Vriska meddles with John because she does - the meddling comes from nowhere in particular, she sees that John is standing around in his room for a few minutes doing nothing, and meddles with him, and it turns out that it was her meddling that caused it in the first place.

It’s these times, where a character’s actions result in a stable time loop, that I think Paradox Space uses to help them understand their own true natures - what does Vriska do in a vacuum? She meddles, because that’s what Vriska does.

https://homestuck.com/story/2682

Rose is uncharacteristically aloof here, and it should be our first clue that all is not well in LOLAR. None of the jocular flowery language she usually addresses her friends with - she is sharp as a razor and ice cold.

Rose is also careful with the words that she uses. She describes her relationship with the consorts as coercive. That is concerning.

I bring all of this up because it’s the first time we’ve seen Rose in hundreds of pages, and the very last time we saw her was the fallout from her awakening on Derse.

This is isn’t just about the game, it’s about everything - because the sorts of enemies and troubles the game manifests for the heroes to fight aren’t trivial, they’re rooted in the symbols that characters associate with their fears and social anxieties - Sollux’s Brain, Karkat’s Blood, Pipes as a symbol of John’s Dad and their ambivalent relationship, Water as a symbol of loss - Jasper, as far as Rose knows, drowned in a river.

Rose is tired of losing the things that are most important to her, and feeling antagonized by emotionally distant forces who she yearns for intimacy with. She’s mad as hell and she’s not going to take it any more. And of course, it might be that cutting through the bullshit surface-level quest and going off to create the Green Sun might have been Rose’s real quest all along.

https://homestuck.com/story/2694

The actual material of Karkat’s speech is not particularly important, and it’s clear because the reaction of all of his counterparts is not different from how they would normally react to Karkat. Kanaya is supportive of Karkat’s idea because she is supportive of Karkat. Terezi is dismissive. The point of the speech isn’t whatever Karkat said, but that it makes use of the relationships Karkat already has.

https://homestuck.com/story/2705

The other conversation John and Kanaya have.

Really, just so great.

https://homestuck.com/story/2725

Fashion!!!!

Fashion obviously becomes more important the higher on the haemospectrum you go, but even some of the other lowbloods are more fashionable than Karkat, so the reality is probably just that he either doesn’t give a shit about it himself, or does but can’t afford anything fashionable.

https://homestuck.com/story/2727

Rose is clearly not okay with the fact that apocalypses are pedestrian in Paradox Space, but she has revolted, and one part of that revolt is revolting against her own preoccupation with the transitory nature of existence. She coolly pretends to be fine with it.

https://homestuck.com/story/2728

Kanaya is attracted to Rose exactly because she is so dangerous - Rose fills a Vriska shaped hole in her heart.

Skaia and the Horrorterrors are directly contrasted here. Let’s make a simile.

Prospit Dreamers are to Skaia as Derse Dreamers are to the Horrorterrors.

Prospit Dreamers go with the flow, are comfortable with the status quo, optimistic and flexible. Skaia reflects existence presenting everything as it is to Prospit Dreamers, without comment.

Derse Dreamers are rebellious, uncomfortable with stability, predisposed to catalyze change. We should expect that the Horrorterror’s relationship with reality and all of Paradox Space, is to question it, criticize it, and probe its vulnerabilities with their tentacles.

They are polar forces. There is one Skaia, because there is only one reality that all of the characters share. There are infinite horrorterrors because outside of the bounds of the one reality, there are infinite possibilities that could have been, or could still be.

Rose is predisposed toward the Horrorterrors because of her intense dissatisfaction with life. At times, her dissastisfaction trends toward the ultimate - there are a few indications throughout Homestuck that Rose might have suicidal ideations, and a number of places where she unnecessarily seeks out extremely self-destructive possibilities in the heat of the moment because of that intense dissatisfaction.

Kanaya is predisposed to trust her first impressions of her surroundings and the people in her life, and that gets her into trouble too. Her misplaced trust in Vriska’s intentions and goodwill toward everyone lets Vriska exploit her. They balance each other.

https://homestuck.com/story/2730

Rose has become dangerous because her dissatisfaction has increased to the extent that she doesn’t trust the people who care about her any more. Sure, she enjoys their presence, but she’s not really willing to listen to their concerns. She won’t be dissuaded from being manipulated.

https://homestuck.com/story/2734

Vriska reproduces/transmits herself onto John by replacing his symbols with her symbols (except for his green ghost, which is emblematic and can’t be erased.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2737

Constantly dunking on each other is a part of these two’s schtick that I’ve brought up before and I’ll bring it up again - they can barely go two seconds without exchanging shallow and insincere hostilities.

https://homestuck.com/story/2742

The Alternian Coolkid is, of course, Vriska.

Braggadocious, contentious, competitive. Terezi, like Kanaya, is trying to fill a Vriska-shaped space.

https://homestuck.com/story/2759

Man, somehow I forgot that Sollux is not merely their hacker guy, but their IT guy in general.

Suddenly, I am 1,000,000% more sympathetic to Sollux.

https://homestuck.com/story/2780

These past few pages have been absolutely swimming with good Dave dialogue.

Dave fills his speech with sexual innuendo and outright explicit language, particularly when means to shock and offend or deter someone from interacting.

He tends to string together multisyllabic adjectives and punctuate them with profane or explicit words in particular as a form of humor, and the words that he chooses tend to be literary references.

He tends to coin new words by stringing together adjectives or nouns.

Uses lots of slang suggestive of rap culture and basketball, both of which Dave has a fascination with.

I’ll preface this by saying your headcanons are valid, but I’ve always viewed Dave Strider as an intensely white character. For exactly the same reason that his use of Apple Products and his ironic coolkid routine come across as performative, so does his engagement with things that are culturally coded as black. Dave is an outsider, and a poseur. It would seem incongruous for Dave to actually be a member of the subcultures that he engages with by parodying them - because in no small part, he parodies them because he wants to feel like he’s a part of them, to enjoy the sense of community that comes from them.

https://homestuck.com/story/2784

John really is a clever and perceptive lad.

https://homestuck.com/story/2789

Even this early on in the comic, it’s obvious that Karkat and Dave have chemistry. Dave doesn’t respond to him with the kind of verbal legerdemain that he reserves for people who make him uncomfortable, he jokes around about himself with Karkat.

https://homestuck.com/story/2790

Wow this is a great conversation, there’s so much in here to unpack.

Let’s start with one of the first things.

Dave and Karkat’s language here is pretty indistinguishable from the way that they both normally talk to their friends - Karkat is always rude and shouty to everyone (except Kanaya), and Dave is similarly pretty rude and dismissive even to his pals. The thing is though, Dave is doing his whole performative alpha male thing, and so is Karkat, and it creates this really unpleasant tension between the two of them. These guys should obviously actually get along with each other for reasons that are complementary to the reasons they both get along with John, but they’re both so insecure that they can’t let the other’s challenge to their dominance go.

As a coming of age story, Homestuck is to some degree or another about puberty, and the effects that it has on social life - sexuality is intruding into formerly sexless spaces as youngsters become aware of their own bodies, and each other’s bodies. So that’s another tension in this conversation - being the alpha dog doesn’t just mean being the guy who is toughest, but being the guy who gets the girl, and part of that routine is Dave deliberately using his burgeoning friendship with Terezi as a point of contention with Karkat - making Terezi an object of competition.

The same tension makes everything awkward between all three of them because Karkat is attracted to John, and Dave (while still not awake to it) is also attracted to John.

And then Karkat wakes them both up to the possibility of the invasion of the sexual into formerly sexless friendships by bringing up the possibility of reproduction and the only biologically and culturally viable breeding pairs. (Breeding pair, as long as we’re on that topic, is as I understand it, film-industry jargon for the male and female romantic leads when considered together. Don’t quote me on that.)

Classic John is being completely puzzled by the existence of sexuality - completely oblivious to others’ attraction toward him, completely oblivious toward other people’s bodies. The only time in the comic John seems to show legitimate attraction toward another person is Roxy, but we’ll get back to that later. I think John might be Ace, which could be a bit of blatant wish fulfilment since I am Ace, but what am I gonna do, not project my own foibles onto characters I relate to and enjoy?

https://homestuck.com/story/2791

I am not going to play an interactive game right now, it’s getting late, and my break is about to be over.

So for now, this is Cam signing off, and you know the rest.

#liveblogging #commentary #lord of the rings

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