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utopianparadoxist · 1 month ago

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On Fighting Nothing - Ultimate Dirk in the Struggle Against The End of Homestuck

[ Edited Excerpt from Through Loving Eyes--Who Is(n't) Dirk Strider?]

You and I have been through this, have been through that, have been at ease. Nothing scares me more than God, and Nothing cannot sustain.

Let's consider this verse from the Homestuck: Beyond Canon album song, The Leaving, as it might relate to the Epilogue's Ultimate Dirk Strider and the nature of his character arc.

It’s a well known fact from the days of Bladekindeyewear (who’s back and occasionally liveblogging HS² on Tumblr, if you’re interested) that The Neverending Story is a major source of thematic inspiration for Homestuck, with the twin ouroboros symbol from the movie appearing in several places in the comic connected to Cherub lore, including their mating rituals, which are said to tap into the innermost essences of Paradox Space.

If you don’t remember the Neverending Story, its a book/movie about the magic realm of Fantastica, an infinite realm of fantasy and wonder living inside an in-fiction book also named the Neverending Story, which is experienced by all who read it. Our protagonist Bastian reads the book, and inside lives a story where the protagonist Atreyu is sent on a quest to try to overcome the threat of the mysterious force called the Nothing, which is bent on consuming the entire fictional world.

The Nothing of the Leaving, then, is a literary reference. What scares Dirk more than God is not “nothing” in the sense that he’s unafraid of God, but instead the specific darkness of non-existence that overtakes the realm of Fantastica, obliterating it completely, reducing it so utterly that there’s not even dust left behind.

And what turns out to be the source of the Nothing in the Neverending Story?

The inevitable apocalypse that comes for all stories: The thump of the cover as you turn the last page. The moment when a living narrative passes from the reader’s experience and turns into an immediately fading memory. Whether it happens quickly or slowly, everyone who’s loved any story eventually moves on.

And that is precisely the armageddon that has struck Earth C at the beginning of the Epilogues. Seven years out from the end of the comic, it is a world almost entirely forgotten, populated by people that we almost don’t even recognize as the characters we loved.

Dirk and his friends struggled through the entire labyrinthine nightmare that is the plot of the webcomic Homestuck to reach their happy ending, and almost as soon as they got there, nearly the entire community of readers that shared the journey with them abandoned them and moved on.

One world burned up in fire (Beta Earth). One world silenced by psychic death scream (Alternia). One world drowned and boiled under water (Alpha Earth). And now? A fourth world, Earth C, doomed to death by simply being forgotten, extinguished in its cradle because it wasn’t loved enough. Gone not with a bang, but with a whisper.

That is the nature of Homestuck’s fourth and (so far) final apocalypse.

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And striving against that fate, watching all of their friends and loved ones succumb to the dark like a beloved horse…we have Rose Lalonde and Dirk Strider. Our platonic (in the literal sense) Adam and Eve at the end of the world. So what else is there for them to do, except to bite the apple?

To Ascend, though it is terrible.

THE LION EATING THE SUN — THE FLAME OF SCORPIO

The only way to fight against Darkness is to Light it with a torch, and the ultimate torch is the Sun. Yaldabaoth, the denizen with the symbol of Light placed upon its head, is also the denizen shared by Caliborn and Dirk. Mythologically, Yaldabaoth is a satanic Demiurge or creator God, analogous to the God of Biblical scripture but either flawed or evil, depending on who’s talking about him.

Caliborn, who goes on to dominate the plot of Homestuck to the point of being responsible for the existence of the Alpha Timeline, and thus the plot of Homestuck itself, is decidedly the evil variety of Demiurge, ruling over the rest of the cast of Homestuck through brutality and death and reveling in every drop of the blood he spills.

And let’s make no mistake: Dirk, already consumed by the process of ascending to Ultimate Self, carries with him the risk of advancing and carrying on Caliborn’s legacy.

Lord English, Doc Scratch, the Soul-infested version of Lil Cal — all three of these entities carry Dirk’s Soul inside them, and so they can potentially count as splinters. And all three excel at manipulating and controlling unaware parties into carrying out their goals, such as Lil Cal corrupting Bro’s training of Dave, or Doc Scratch exploiting and weaponizing Vriska.

In the roiling oceans of Dirk’s ultimate self, how can we really tell who is the puppet and who is the puppeteer? We can’t. But we can tell that so far, Ultimate Dirk doesn’t exactly operate the way Caliborn did. Like the Demiurge in Timaeus’ Testimony, he insists on at least a veneer of nobility, even if he’s flawed or imperfect at it, claiming he’s only doing what needs to be done. And notably, Dirk doesn’t physically hurt a single person throughout the Epilogues.

It’s under this logic that he chooses to take on the role of antagonist, deliberately raising the stakes of his reality high enough to kick the story of Homestuck back into motion. He does this while actively knowing he’s signing up to be executed, preferably by Dave in his opinion, but certainly by someone else otherwise — Kanaya being another likely contender.

Either way, it makes the entire antagonistic enterprise one long suicide attempt on his part. Dirk may not have given up on Homestuck’s future, but in deciding to be willing to fight for it, he has given up on his own life.

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It is, in essence if not intentionally, the bargain of the Flame Of Scorpio.

“The Scorpion killed other bugs and ate them. Then one day, the weasel found him. The scorpion fled, and fell into a deep well. He thought to himself: ‘How long have I eaten other creatures? And yet, the one time that I was the prey, I fled in utter terror. And look what came of that. I’ll die in this well, alone. I could have given the weasel another day of life with my sacrifice. But now my death will help no one. I’m useless. Dear Lord, I beg of you, look into my Heart and hear my prayer. In my next life, don’t let me waste myself. Let me use my body for the true happiness of everyone in the world. And then the scorpion burst into flame. A brilliant crimson glow. And by the light of his burning body, he lit up the night forever.’

— Night on the Galactic Railroad

It’s a covenant with God, a kind of magic whereby a scorpion — an entity that hurts and consumes by its nature, a Natural Antagonist, if you will — sacrifices itself to light up the night sky. A sacrifice that is depicted in 2011’s Mawaru Penguindrum’s homage to Night on the Galactic Railroad beautifully succintly with the act of…

Tearing one's heart out.

You sent me FIRE. FIRE, I’ll tear my throat out. Burn my blackened lips. You gave me FIRE!

Fire, I’ll tear my Heart out. I’d rather tear my Heart out... But I can’t stay here! --The Leaving, Homestuck Beyond Canon

If this seems familiar conceptually, it might be because it's a very similar logic to the one adopted by Vriska Serket in the original Homestuck comic, who adamantly believed that since she’s taken so many lives, she can only justify her existence by Rising Up and defeating Lord English for the benefit of everyone in Homestuck.

Vriska throws herself into the role of Hero/Protagonist, while Dirk throws himself into the role of Villain/Antagonist, but they do so with the same kind of fanatic quasi-religious zeal: That by embracing their own sharper features and committing to sacrificing for the greater good, they can make things better for everybody else.

And so Dirk commits his biggest and most obvious gesture of antagonism: He kidnaps Rose Lalonde, taking her with him on his journey to start a new session. In the process he moves her soul into a (frankly sickass) robot that he claims can withstand the infinite processing power necessary to hold her Ultimate Self, which her physical body can’t sustain.

While whether or not that’s true remains to be seen, this move has been deemed highly unpopular by the fandom, to say the least. Yet there’s a logic to why he had to do it. If Dirk had said fuck it, taken his ball and fucked off the planet on his own, what would’ve happened?

His friends and the fandom would’ve collectively gone “Weird move, but go off I guess?” and collectively moved on without a second thought. Dirk simply doesn’t carry the emotional weight to carry an entire narrative with the question of whether or not he gets a happy ending. He just has the sort of personality that inclines us to go “Probably not, but oh well. Sort of the dude’s own fault anyway.”

But Rose? Everybody loves Rose. Everybody fucking loves Rosemary! There’s nothing the Homestuck fandom wants more in the world than for those two girls to be happy together. If Rose isn’t okay, we’re not okay, and that’s exactly what Dirk needs: Something to be so wrong in the world that we can’t help but keep watching, in the hopes that eventually, someday, it will be set right again.

Rose is the very Sun Dirk has stolen in the process of making a Narrator-Demiurge of himself. She is the guiding Star that leads to the future, the very Light of Homestuck.

And look, Dirk gets a lot of flack for the whole Rose-snatching thing, but let’s put something into perspective here. In the epilogues, Rose is dying, or suffering so much she may as well be dying. Dirk may or may not be exploiting or undermining Rose’s agency, but his Rosebot innovation for her does end her immediate excruciating pain.

Ultimately, Rosebot agrees with Dirk about taking this course of action, deliberately thanking him for taking her with him and expressing her own feelings on the importance of their cause before Dirk succumbs to his temptation to eke out a hollow victory over his loneliness by using his narrative powers to encourage her eagerness.

While there are secrets being kept and the power dynamic is unbalanced, Dirk and Rose are not abuser and victim in this venture — they are co-conspirators. Remember that Rose, too, has a role to play.

If Dirk is the dragon, the damnable villain, then she is the princess in the tower, the damsel in distress. It’s in both of their mutual interests for her to play to an attitude of relative innocence and ignorance for the audience’s benefit.

The better to keep us watching.

#homestuck #dirk strider #rose lalonde #Homestuck: Beyond Canon #Homestuck^2 #The Homestuck Epilogues #Vriska Serket

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thefandomexpert · 8 months ago

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ok. i see u complaining about how long it takes to get to shb, how are you supposed to get your friends into the fucking WONDER that is shb when they have to get through all of The Other Stuff First

I used to have this problem with Homestuck, people who wanted to skip to the trolls, or pass on the intermissions. I will repeat what I said then now:

The later stuff is mind-blowingly good BECAUSE of the setup slog. which is also fun btw, you’re having trouble selling it because you keep saying it’s a slog. it’s good storytelling! yes even arr and sb (i didn’t say it was the best storytelling!! but i’ve seen way fuckin worse!!!). You need to spend 300 hours with the characters and to watch them grow gradually for a LOT of the little character moments to even register later on, and i’m not even talking about the ascian reveals. estinien is a completely different character. thancred’s deep-seated issues have been brewing subtly since 1.0. the socio-economic political climate of the universe is SO important and SO well set up by the arr random task/fetch quests (BABY INCONSEQUENTIAL QUESTS. YEAH THE STUPID ONES IN THE INTRO PRE-SASTASHA SEQUENCES WITH THE NPCS YOU DONT REMEMBER. THOSE.) and that info is integral to character decisions made in every expansion afterwords, and is built upon consistently. the consistent build-up of the lore is, in my opinion, almost entirely the reason ffxiv’s writing stands out against other games of the genre. and it’s BOLSTERED by the fact that it’s a live service game with a shit ton of expansions you HAVE to play through single file when you start fresh. narrative games are usually 15-20 hours. ffxiv is giving you 500+ in msq alone (won’t get into how much the optional and side quests support the storytelling as well).

It’s like one of those long-running book series. you can’t ask someone to read Just the last book of animorphs and expect them to understand the narrative implications of what’s happening, or to get attached to the characters enough to care. that attachment and understanding is built by spending time and reading the other 1500 books prior. shb should not be treated as a stand-alone. in fact it’d be a bad standalone. it’s good BECAUSE there’s 500+ hours of playtime required to get there.

#this is not on the post bc that person was lamenting the fact that u do in fact have to convince people to play The Whole Game in order #for a proper fandom integration #which i absolutely relate to #HOWEVER #after years of dragging my highschool friendgroup into homestuck by forcing them to read through act1 before they could decide to quit #arr and other early expansions on NON NEGOTIABLE AND EQUALLY IMPORTANT FOR LATER STORY BEATS #this is also why wow doesn’t work. they don’t let you play past expansions. drives me NUTS #meg speaks #ffxiv

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selamat-linting · 2 years ago

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yeah okay so a few mucking around, john flying over the gate, and suddenly its four months with half of the crew dead or missing? and somehow rose is good at dream hopping and dave is a time knight master? lord. i have officially lost the plot. no more theorizing this time im just gonna let the story take me wherever it goes. i cant even keep up with the trolls.

#homestuck liveread #on a quest to read homestuck

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crushedsweets · 4 months ago

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Here’s my troll oc+dancestor(has never read homestuck and was entirely guided by my homestuck friends to learn 90% of these words). Her quest is to stop being a lying gossiping asshole and melt her frozen over planet. Global warming !!

#sweetart #not crp art #sucker ocs

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lime-bloods · 28 days ago

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so long as I've been talking gravity, it feels like I'm obviously missing something by not talking about the Green Sun, which formed the gravitational center of Homestuck's cosmos long before black holes became part of the equation. it's emblematic of Lord English, obviously, the villain who keeps our heroes gravitationally bound to their homes, but that felt too simplistic... I think I've hit on something more solid, though.

Cascade, part 6.

in the sense that the Green Sun - being composed of the rendered-down remains of both of Homestuck's universes - is a very literal representation of the comic's incestuous slurry of ideas, Dave and Rose emerging from the Sun's radioactive green sludge very much reads as their being reconstituted from ectoplasm. indeed: Hussie suggested years ago that to "die spectacularly in an explosion of green fire" is actually a requirement for reaching the god tiers without a dream self, and while this doesn't turn out to be exactly true, the central premise remains; the old self must be immolated completely to make way for the new self. in this exact same way, trolls find themselves gravitating toward the cocoons they were born from and are completely destroyed via explosion in the process of ascension - for Dave and Rose, the Green Sun is the figurative birth-cocoon they return to in order to be broken down into slime and built back up again.

(so it's interesting, at the very least, that the very same black hole that usurped the Green Sun's position as the center of reality is now the cocoon Vriska Serket finds herself trapped within - complete with lain-thick imagery of fire and death!)

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compare as well the Matriorb and Tumor, obvious visual twins which also serve the same purpose as malignant growths which must kill their previous host so as to give rise to a new brood. for Rose, in particular, the gravity that keeps the suburban family unit together - the Green Sun's gravity - is also the gravity that pulls her toward the familial role Sburb has lined up for her, that of the mother. and the icons of the Green Sun hidden, womb-like, within the guts of Rose's planet tell us everything we need to know about the role the Green Sun is supposed to play in this motherhood destiny.

(from Hussie's commentary in Book 5, p. 271: "This is another one of those things that makes it feel like this quest is narratively what is demanded of her [...] it's supposed to feel that way to her, and has a strange sense of obligatory gravity surrounding it.")

Scratch's deception regarding the Green Sun then takes on a characteristically insidious subtext: he's tricking Rose into giving birth. and not just to the Green Sun, or to Lord English, but - in the characteristically incestuous, cyclical nature of things in Homestuck - to her own ascended self! and as such, in the inverse: when Rose flies out to the Furthest Ring believing that she's about to defy the role Sburb has laid out for her by aborting the Tumor, she's also unknowingly setting out to abort herself - a "suicide mission" in more ways than just one.

#homestuck #analysis #rose #dave #to a lesser extent. wow. i don't talk about dave a lot on here #cocoons #< getting really really abstract with my definition of cocoon here #gravity #?#i've been tagging gravity stuff as black holes thus far. but i am also becoming increasingly abstract with my definition of black hole LOL #green sun #vriska #beyond canon #< my most tangential connection of all. but i'll definitely have to return to this regarding the ongoing plot point arc

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cryptids-and-muses · 1 year ago

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Post canon homestuck crew play Dungeons and Dragons

Karkat and terezi

Co dms

Unstoppable when actually working together

Terezi will get sidetracked messing with karkat

Karkat trying to write a deep and well fleshed out campaign that’s thematically resonant vs terezi’s desire for chaos and traps and trying to “trick” her players FIGHT

Terezi believes in karma and will make the world bend to this

Karkat is trying to set up romance arcs and argues about how it adds to the theming

Dave draws them fanart of their characters. Terezi loves it while karkat argues about accuracy before admitting yes he also appreciates it

Calliope also does fanart and karkat praises her skill and accuracy unlike some people

John

Arcane trickster rogue

Forest gnome

Just a goofy little guy!

Mostly just playing to have fun, starts off with a fun but simple character who develops over time

Ends up SUPER invested and taking this so so seriously

Karkat worked a dramatic reveal into the, in his words, “bare ass bones two paragraphs that a fucking wiggler could have written backstory” and John did not see it coming and loved it

Goes head to head with terezi a lot on her various traps she designs for them. She is getting more and more absurd with it. Karkat had to talk to her about breaking the world building with things she’s introducing. He is the only rogue. Send help.

Rose

Drow warlock

Tries to justify picking drow as anything other than she just thought it was cool

Nearly went old ones for patron but settled on archfey for story reasons

Has a 10 page lore document detailing her tragic past and her toxic relationship with her patron

It became 15 pages after going back and forth with karkat for a bit and adding even more

Only her and one other person are taking the romance arcs seriously and they become karkat’s favorite players

Tries playing morally ambiguous but terezi can be annoying about that and claims it’s just “the consequences of her actions”

Her and karkat both get very very into the scenes between her and her patron, the drama! The acting! Dave is uncomfortable and karkat brushes it off, it’s not like him role playing as his sister’s abusive girlfriend is weird. It’s in fact very important to the plot Dave

Has written fanfic of the campaign

Jade

Dragonborn barbarian

Path of the beast

Don’t ask me I just know

Her GLEE when she says “I’m gonna rage :D”

ANIMAL COMPANION! She nearly went ranger just for that but knew she wouldn’t have as much fun. Found a way to get one anyway.

It was harder naming her animal companion than her character

Having fun and likes the problem solving side of things, but likes breaking things with her massive strength just as much

Terezi likes to throw stuff at her, both traps and encounters, and finds it funny if she can just wreck her way through

“See John that’s how you deal with a pressure plate trap”

Takes the rp side of things very seriously

Once argued with Karkat over if her favorite npc would do that and cursed him out

Has read roses fanfic of the campaign

Dave

Plays a teifling with grey skin and orange horns

“What are you talking about karkat this is just my dude, don’t you like him?”

Hellus Jeffus

He’s a valor bard, eventually multiclasses paladin

Starts out just trying to mess with people but like John starts getting into it, though he tries to down play it

Have hellus more of himself than he realized and it’s making him face things about himself

Eventually hellus self sacrifices to save the party in this deeply intense moment. There were tears, Dave was wrecked, they went on a whole quest to revive him. It was touching and karkat is smug

Dave might have worked through some things

Jane

Halfling cleric

Her and John are small buddies!!!

Started out life but wasn’t having a lot of fun with it so with terezi’s permission switched to war or tempest with later s few levels in fighter

Her John and Jade are the biggest front liners, John’s character ends up really close with both of them as it’s easier for the rogue to bond with the person giving them sneak attack

Jade and jane’s character have an in game arm wrestling match

Took a bit to get into the rp side of things but eventually got the hang of it

Roxy

Tabaxi, easily, it’s so obvious

After much deliberation settles on glamour bard (though wizard and rogue were tempting for the joke, she wanted to branch out)

So many horny bard jokes but very little actual follow through, karkat gets frustrated by this as she’s all this talk but isn’t pursuing any of the romance options he’s giving her

She has SECRETS! She is HIDING THINGS!! Her cheery persona is a FASADE!!!

Cue complaining to karkat about how hard it is to wait to tell the others about her secrets and him threatening violence if she tells anyone before the in game reveal

She tells jake

Lots of egging on Dave and helping him with his fucking around

The BOND between her and Dave!!! They are the duo to end all duos. Team rocket type shit. There is nothing stronger than the bond between the bards of the party. My theory is it has to do with trading bardic inspiration.

Dirk

Half elf Druid circle of spores

Wildfire seemed fun to him but wasn’t as good

Wasn’t originally planning on being a Druid but after going over all the classes he liked all the customization and decisions that go into Druid like prepared spells and such

Didn’t really think about his backstory much, just improved something. He keeps improving new additions and it’s getting more and more elaborate and complicated. He has multiple hidden and long lost siblings by this point. Still doesn’t write any of this down. If he messes a detail up he justified it with more improv.

Yes his character has spiked up red hair and sunglasses. Don’t question how the Druid got sunglasses karkat.

Really likes the tactics side of things, he’s even pitched a few things to terezi she updated and later worked in

Sometimes works on plans and strategies out of game or making a million back up characters that play off the others in interesting mechanical ways

Is considering becoming a dm some time

Jake

Needed some help making his character, he just didn’t know where to start

Eventually after much discussion settles on a teifling bladesong wizard

Wanting to get away from his usual adventurer style Roxy helped with the backstory and they came up with this evil scientist raised in a cult who’s good hearted but was never taught right and wrong

He gets very into playing him and his moral struggle but can lean a little too good for his backstory, karkat points this out and Jake swears to get better at it

Dave pitched a lot of names for them and it was eventually settled on “Bernard Gunn” even though he has a sword. Jake just likes how it sounds

“Why is he blue jake?” “…..uhhh” “why is he blue?”

Calliope

SHE LOVES THIS SO MUCH

Teifling Druid with a focus on healing

Circle of shepards

Not a troll color pallet like Dave though, honestly it might get a bit trickster

Beautiful backstory that she coordinated with one of the others to make joint. The most obvious choice is Roxy but I think it was actually jade, Jane or John.

She gets so into it you guys, like so into it

Gives at least one dramatic speech completely on the fly

The other character who takes karkat’s romance arcs seriously and his other favorite player

Has also argued with terezi about world building and consistency. This may put her above rose in karkat’s eyes

Was also allowed to read rose’s fanfiction and offered full on reviews

Also considering going into doing but for the opposite reasons to Dirk

Vriska

Fairy artillerist artificer with a dip in war magic wizard

Min maxxed to hell and back

(Technically there was a better race, but fairy has its own advantages and she couldn’t resist)

An elaborate backstory too with some secrets of her own, I’m thinking full on lost princess

Yes she is That Player, you know the one

Has nearly been kicked multiple times and now won’t leave on principle

Not the best at sticking with the party and not just doing whatever she wants, but suprisingly Dirk has been able to talk her into it with his talk of tactics and playing smart

Second most effective is John who just looks at her like “vriska you’re not making this very fun :(“

Kanaya

Fire genasi ranger

Really tried to get into it but this just isn’t her thing so eventually decided to leave the group

Karkat came up with a fun story reason for her to leave and eventually brought her character back as an Npc

Did help rose make a cosplay of her character, after which John, Calliope, and Roxy wanted to make ones too

Vriska eventually tried to “manipulate” into helping her make one for her character

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pale-opal · 4 months ago

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Hear Me Out:

I know that image and what I'm about to say has a chance of being incredibly niche, because I have no idea how much overlap there is between the Homestuck and Mega Man fandoms. But if there's anything I've learned from the internet, it's that no matter what fandom you're in, it's almost guaranteed that someone in said fandom has read Homestuck before. So I think someone out there will understand the rant I'm about to go on. But for everyone who hasn't read Homestuck before, here's a quick explanation: Homestuck is a webcomic that was written and published by a man named Andrew Hussie. It ran from 2009-2016. It follows the misadventures of four kids as they play a game called Sburb with the help of twelve other kids known as "trolls." Together, they go on a quest to complete the game, as the initiation of it has caused the world to end (so even if they wanted to quit, they couldn't. Whoops). It is currently available to read on mspaintadventures.com, however I do NOT recommend reading it if you are a minor, or if you have sensitivity to content that contains violence, strong language, etc. - There were also two (technically one?) epilogues produced afterward, as well as a sequel called "Homestuck^2". - The disclaimer above applies to those works as well.

Okay. Now that I've explained what Homestuck is, let's get into why I put these four Doctors in the squares that I did.

Dr. Cossack: Has read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - He just seems like the kind of man who casually knows a lot about a lot of things. - A "nerd," if you will. - I can see him reading this in college and subsequently getting totally invested. - He relates to John Egbert (one of the four kids I mentioned earlier) on a personal level. - He did not like the epilogues. - He likes Homestuck^2, though. Dr. Light: Has Read Homestuck, Doesn't Know What Homestuck Is - I imagine that Light was introduced to Homestuck through Cossack while they were in college. - Like, what if Light got sick at some point, and Cossack came over and showed him this random webcomic he found in an attempt to make him feel better, only for Light to wake up the next day, convinced the whole thing was a fever dream? - Cut to many years later, after the birth of Proto Man. - Light and Cossack are having a conversation on the phone: - Cossack: "Hey, Thomas. Do you remember Homestuck?" - Light: "...Homestuck?" - Cossack: "You know, that webcomic I showed you when you got the flu back in college?" - Light: "I'm not sure I-" - Cossack: "The one with the little gray people?" - Light: "Little gray- wait. Wait, that was real?!" - He has not read the epilogues or Homestuck^2. Dr. LaLinde: Has Not Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - I think that Dr. Cossack would go on many coffee-fueled 2 a.m. rants to her during last-minute attempts to finish projects on time when the two of them were in college. - LaLinde would always listen respectfully, and as a result knows the entire lore behind Homestuck despite never reading it. - One day, she decided to give it a go. Here's how that went: - LaLinde: "Okay, let's see here- what? Eight thousand (8000) pages? Where am I going to find the time to read all of that?" - And so, she has to this day never read the darn thing. Dr. Wily: Has Not Read Homestuck, Does Not Know What Homestuck Is - The reasoning behind this is simple: he just couldn't get into it. - Dr. Cossack tried several times while they were in college to convince him to read it, but it sounded really convoluted to him. - Dr. Light tried to get him to read it before the whole "Dr. Wily becomes evil and takes over the world" thing after he remembered what it was. - That didn't work either. - Plus, the whole thing just seemed too long. - He eventually just forgot it existed once Light stopped trying to get him to read it. But here's something else about the Doctors: they all had kids. Kids who all grew up with different levels of parental involvement. Kids who would've probably heard their parents talk about this strange little webcomic at one time or another. Which brings me to my next point:

Blues: Has Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - I imagine that he heard the aforementioned phone call between Light and Cossack, and asked Dr. Light about what they were talking about. - Light straight up tells him that he's not allowed to read it. - Blues accepts this. - Cut to Blues' life after he runs away from home. He's at the library. - He's also in the midst of his "I hate my dad" arc, and as a result is more than willing to go and read this comic Dr. Light told him was off-limits. - He spends a whole day reading the webcomic, its epilogues, and its sequel. - He is there from the time the library opens to the time it closes. - And once everything is said and done, he is a changed man. - His favorite character is Dave Strider. - He also used to like Dirk Strider and Jane Crocker, but then he read the epilogues. Bass: Has Read Homestuck, Doesn't Know What Homestuck is - Bass was just minding his business, until he finds Proto Man broke into his house... again. - I like to think Blues breaks into Wily Fortress sometimes, just because he can. As a treat. - And to visit any Wilybots he's friends with. - He goes to confront Blues, only to find him in the midst of his third reread of Homestuck. - He asks what he's doing. - Blues tells him to pull up a chair. - He starts the reread over so that Bass can understand what's going on. - Bass, too, ends up a changed man. Even if he has no idea what he just read. - His favorite character is Karkat Vantas. - He made a trollsona (basically a troll OC), but has never told a living soul about it. - Also, he will never admit it, but "[S] Game Over" messed him up on an emotional level (if you don't know what "[S] Game Over" is, don't worry about it. Don't look it up. It's okay. Just forget I said anything). Tempo: Has Not Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - Quake Woman has not read Homestuck for the same reason her mother hasn't read it: She's simply too busy. - Blues tries to convince her to read it, though. - But here's the thing: Vesper Woman HAS read it... but she just thought it was just alright. This leads to conversation like this happening: - Vesper: "Don't listen to him, Tempo. It's okay at best." - Blues: "..." - Blues: "...would you like to elaborate on that?" - They get into arguments about different aspects of the plot a LOT. - Tempo just listens quietly while she works. - Out of curiosity, she ended up looking it up one day when she had free time, and ended up stumbling across Hiveswap instead. - Hiveswap is a spin-off game that takes place in Homestuck's universe. The first Act was released in 2017, and the second was released in 2020. - I will admit that I haven't played Hiveswap, so I'm not sure if the disclaimer I provided for Homestuck applies here. Kalinka Cossack: Has Never Read Homestuck, Does Not Know What Homestuck Is - My reasoning behind this is even more simple than Dr. Wily's: - Dr. Cossack does not let her know that Homestuck exists in an effort to keep her innocence in tact. - That's it. That's the reasoning. You can all go home n-. - ...wait. Is that ANOTHER image down there?

You see, there's one more set of characters that I want to discuss in this long, long post. Characters that wouldn't be influenced by their parents, meaning that whether or not they've read Homestuck would be more up to happenstance:

...I can explain.

Zero: Has Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - Part of the reason I put him here is because he ended up being the opposite of what Wily wanted him to be. He wanted a ruthless killing machine, and instead he got someone who helps save the world on multiple occasions. So why not have him be the opposite of his creator in Homestuck knowledge as well? - (Although if you think about it, Zero is technically a ruthless killing machine, but that's not what we're here to talk about). - Another other part of the reasoning is that I thought it was funny. - Zero had trouble getting invested until Act 5. - After he reached that point, he was locked in. - He sees a little bit of himself in Rose Lalonde and Dirk Strider. - He has never read the epilogues, or the sequel. Once he saw the Snapchat bonus content, he thought that was it. - Zero successfully got Iris into the comic as well. - Her favorite character was also Rose. - I like to think he and Layer also became friends after realizing they were both Homestuck fans.

Axl: Has Read Homestuck, Doesn't Know What Homestuck Is - He found a dub of the series on YouTube on day while watching random videos. - He was invested almost immediately. - Axl would talk about it with the other Red Alert members a lot - especially to Red and Tornado. - But there was one problem: He didn't know the name of it. It just completely slipped his mind at one point, and he wasn't able to get it back. This led to stuff like this: - Axl: "And THEN John and his friends are losing to the Condescence, but-" - Red: "That's nice and all, but what's this webcomic you read called?" - Axl: "Uh... I dunno. I can't remember." - Red: "Are you sure you didn't just make it up?" - Axl: "Wha- Yes! Yes, I'm sure!" - Red: "...sure thing, little buddy." - After joining the Maverick Hunters, Axl casually brings up the plot of this comic he can't remember the name of. Zero soon says this: - Zero: "...are you talking about Homestuck?" - Axl: "That's what it's called?!" - He made a trollsona like Bass did, but is a lot less shy about sharing it. - His favorite character is Roxy Lalonde. - Axl got Palette into it as well. X: Has Not Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - He heard Zero talk about it with Iris a lot, but it sounded a bit too violent for his tastes. - He did play the Pesterquest visual novel, though. - Yes, the disclaimer does apply for this visual novel. - I like to think that at some point in X7, X complains about Zero and Axl's interest in "overly violent media" and asks if Zero has started "corrupting the youth." - He is promptly told to shut up. - X is more open to the idea of reading Homestuck by the time X8 comes around though. But it isn't until Axl is recovering from the game's ending that he actually starts considering it, since he knows it'll make Axl happy. - Speaking of which: will Capcom ever give us X9? - I just want to know if Axl is really okay, or if Lumine messed him up somehow. - It's been almost 20 years since the game released. 20 years is a long time to leave part of a video game franchise on a cliffhanger (but then again, Mega Man Legends fans have been waiting for 24 years...) Sigma: Has Not Read Homestuck, Does Not Know What Homestuck Is - The reason Sigma is in this category is very easy to explain: - He deserves nothing that could give him any semblance of happiness. - Also, I hate him.

Alright, rant over.

The inspiration for this post, as well as the original template, can be found here.

...now you can all go home.

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homestuckreplay · 7 months ago

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Week 1 Retrospective: Who Is John Egbert?

It’s official - Homestuck is one week old today! And while a week is not a long run for a comic, it’s already got more pages than the author’s earlier work Bard Quest, so maybe it’s something worth recognizing. So I wanted to mark a week of Homestuck by doing a deep dive on what we’ve learned about our protagonist John Egbert so far. It’s some fact collection, some wild speculation, and some ongoing questions. It’s over 3000 words, so it’s under a readmore for anyone who’s interested.

If that doesn’t sound like a fun time to you (or even if it does), you can take the John Egbert Big 5 Personality Test to see how you score on John’s five key personality traits. It’s 14 multiple choice questions, so a much quicker read.

We’re introduced to John on page 4, where we’re given five key interests of his: bad movies, programming computers, paranormal lore, amateur magic, and gaming. I’ll take these one by one and use them as a framework for John’s character so far.

“You have a passion for REALLY TERRIBLE MOVIES.”

John has eleven (11) movie posters on his walls. Of these, three star Matthew McConaughey and two star Nicolas Cage. More notably, six have a Rotten Tomatoes rating below 50%, and two of these are below 10%. I haven’t seen any of these movies, but as far as I can tell, here are the one sentence summaries [broad spoilers for all these movies].

Little Monsters: A boy befriends a monster and visits the monster world, where they try to convert him into a monster too.

Con Air: A paroled man disrupts a gang of prisoner’s escape from a prison transport plane.

Deep Impact: Earth tries to prepare for extinction after a comet is found on a collision course with Earth.

Ghostbusters II: After going out of business, the Ghostbusters reunite to combat a negative energy slime monster.

Mac and Me: A boy befriends a young alien who gets separated from his family and lost on Earth.

Contact: An Earth scientist successfully discovers alien life and travels to an alien world.

A Time to Kill: A father is acquitted in court for killing the perpetrators of racial hate crimes against his daughter.

Failure to Launch: A 35 year old man’s parents hire a woman to persuade him to finally move out of their home.

Face/Off: A terrorist and a FBI agent go through facial transplant surgery and temporarily swap identities.

Armageddon: A group of space workmen go on a mission to stop an asteroid from destroying Earth.

Ghost Dad: A man temporarily dies but is able to interact with his children in ghost form.

From this we can see that John really likes science fiction movies related to aliens, ghosts and monsters, as well as action comedy. We also know from page 21: ‘Films about impending apocalypse fascinate you’. A Time to Kill and Failure to Launch are the only ones that don’t fit his taste. The implication here is that John really loved Matthew McConaughey in Contact and so watched his other movies even though they were things he wouldn’t usually watch.

I’m curious if these movies are intended as clues to John’s character, the future of the comic, or both. In terms of his character, they make me see him as someone who’s imaginative and goofy, young and carefree, not concerned with other people’s opinions, more interested in watching movies for their surface meanings and exciting stories, maybe wants to escape to a different world, might be a little bit gay.

In terms of the future of the comic, it could be that we’re going to see literal aliens or monsters - they could even be already here, keeping John ‘homestuck’. Slime monsters are particularly highlighted, with Slimer from Ghostbusters appearing on John’s shirt and computer background, and his chumhandle, ectoBiologist, relating to slime. Slime invasion honestly feels too obvious, and anyway, several of John’s movies are about befriending a more benign supernatural force - could John’s Pesterchum friends be something other than human? Or maybe it’s a more metaphorical meaning, referring to John having a very different life to his friends?

Two of these movies feature Earth extinctions by giant space rocks, but there’s absolutely no indication of this being a real world threat John is dealing with. Again, it could refer more generally to a sudden, life changing event that’s about to happen to disrupt John’s current state, something that would fit thematically with this being John’s 13th birthday, a milestone age.

There’s also a theme of crime and the legal system in several movies, including Con Air, the one that’s been most highlighted. The most obvious interpretation of John’s dad right now is that he’s a clown or performer, but there’s an outside chance he could be in law enforcement, or a criminal. It’s even possible that he’s currently in hiding or some kind of safe house. This would explain John being ‘homestuck’ and sick of spending time with his dad.

Speaking of John’s dad, I’m concerned for him based on the Ghost Dad summary - the comic keeps teasing his presence, but we haven’t actually seen him yet. Could he be a ghost? Or become one at some point? Alternatively, we know John has an already dead relative - could his nanna be a ghost? Did John dropping her ashes release her ghost? Family is a really common theme in movies, so I don’t know if a large number of these movies being about family (especially fathers) is relevant, but I’m noting it all the same.

“You like to program computers but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT.”

John claims he ‘likes to program’, but it actually seems to make him angry. We first learn ‘[y]ou were never all that great with data structures and you find the concept [of the stack modus] puzzling and mildly irritating.’ We then see three files on John’s desktop, two in ^CAKE - ‘pff.^CAKE’ and ‘FUCK FUCK FUCK.^CAKE’ and one in ~ATH - ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.~ATH’. These tell a clear narrative of John trying to work on his programming and getting increasingly more frustrated with his attempts, until inevitably giving up. Both of the programming languages are puns, too. ^ is often called a carat (carrot cake) while ~ is a tilde (til death).

I know this is wild speculation, but… John started off coding in a harmless programming language, was already struggling, then for some reason switched over to the most ominous possible sounding language, screwed it up even worse, and now… he’s constantly haunted by the ghost of failed programming attempts in the form of his sylladex, which he appears to be new to using (he had no prior understanding of it on page 7 - although this could be handwaved due to video game tutorial logic), and which operates similarly to a computer program and seems to cause John endless frustration. He’ll have to figure out how to exploit the inventory system in ways that help him, which involves actually figuring out some stuff about coding, in order to partake in some real life ghostbusting, or monster hunting, or dealing with whatever threat he’ll have to deal with by using inventory hacks.

“You have a fondness for PARANORMAL LORE,” (...)

By far the interest of John’s that we’ve seen the least of so far, John’s love of the paranormal is mostly inferred through his movie preferences, and we don’t see any direct evidence of an interest in lore. However, I can’t stop fixating on John’s chumhandle: ectoBiologist. The comic’s first act was to draw attention to giving John a name, and for many 2009 kids, the names they go by online are more meaningful and representative of them than their real world names.

‘ecto-’ means ‘outer, outside, external’ according to dictionary.com, and it’s actually a common prefix in a variety of fields of biology, but there’s no such thing as ‘ectobiology’ as a field, or an ‘ectobiologist’ - neither term has any search results prior to Homestuck. I think it’s way more likely that this refers to ectoplasm, a term from both cell biology and spiritualism that was popularized by Ghostbusters to mean any substance secreted by a ghost, in practice often manifesting as green slime. Slimer, who we can guess is John’s favorite, is a benign ghost made of pure ectoplasm. I love the idea that John loves this dumb ghost so much that he’s memorized all the lore about them in their appearances throughout the franchise, and devised this username based on being an expert on these ghosts right down to their biology (or at least thinking he is).

The only catch is, ‘fondness for paranormal lore’ is very passive and doesn’t even imply much knowledge, much less action, while ‘biologist’ implies that John has been doing actual experiments. The idea of John trying to create a real life Slimer the same way other kids make slime in their kitchens is really entertaining, if an off the wall theory. Does ‘homestuck’ just mean John is grounded for an unethical science project?

(...) “and are an aspiring AMATEUR MAGICIAN.”

The magic chest is one of the biggest, most eye catching and most colorful objects in John’s room. We see its contents on page 8, which lean more into joke store items than things a magician might use, except for the trick handcuffs and perhaps the collapsible sword. The narration on this page states that John is neither a skilled magician nor a cunning prankster. I’m nitpicking definitions here, but everything John has done so far has been way more about pranks than about magic.

John’s uses of the magic chest to date are…

various putting things into his inventory and removing them (funny, but unintentionally)

combining fake arms with cake (p.36) out of necessity, which ‘makes the cake at least 300% more hilarious’

merging hat with beagle puss to create a clever disguise (p.45) and wearing it for 25+ pages, which he acknowledges is a ‘shitty disguise’

attaching fake arms to harlequin doll (p.65), which makes it ‘AT LEAST a million percent funnier’

All of which are definitely not magic tricks, and honestly not even pranks. Arguably John’s best and most successful prank so far has been when he pretended not to have arms for the first six pages, before revealing his arms after the interface had gone to the trouble of moving the cake off his magic chest to get him some arms.

John keeps thinking about reading Colonel Sassacre’s Guide to Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery, but always finding some excuse not to. He can’t read it until he captchalogues it, but once he does that, it gets buried in his inventory. He assumes that the book can tell him the exact percentage increase of hilarity a prank leads to, but it’s too big for him to actually look anything up.

An outside theory for this that I don’t think is likely simply because it’s so much darker than the comic has been so far, is that John loves this book, but since the incident where his nanna was killed by a copy (perhaps even this copy?) he hasn’t been able to bring himself to read it. A far more likely theory is that while John is an aspiring amateur magician, it’s more of a big idea, and he hasn’t actually done any magic yet. This also tracks with his weaksauce pranks above. And if that’s true, then it says a lot about John that he defines himself by a hobby he aspires to but doesn’t actually practice - he’s someone with big dreams and less motivation, just like his big dream of going to collect the mail from his father despite the lack of motivation that’s kept him messing around for 70 pages.

“You also like to play GAMES sometimes.”

Potentially most important of all is Gamer John. We get a list of games John likes to play from inspecting his CD tower the same way we get a list of movies from looking at his posters.

Bard Quest

The Caper Havers

Problem Sleuth

And It Don’t Stop

What Pumpkin?

Ghostbusters II MMORPG

Little Monsters (for Nintendo)

Harry Anderson: Call My Bluff!

The first five games all reference previous work by the author of Homestuck, and as such probably don’t need in depth analysis. However, the fact that within the world of Homestuck, these are all games (instead of comics) is one of several suggestions that we should think of Homestuck as a game, something that needs further analysis.

The next two games are video game adaptations of movies we know John likes, and the last is a branded video game from Harry Anderson, whose book we’ve already seen in John’s magic chest. Notably, none of these are real video games in our world either. It says a lot that John plays game versions of things he already likes (he’s put ‘countless manhours’ into this assortment of quality titles).

However, it’s undeniable that the most important game in John’s life right now is Sburb. The poster is behind his head in the first panel, placed centrally with one of the only two splashes of color in the panel. The beta release is the only thing marked on his calendar for April besides his birthday, and the Sburb logo is even the picture printed on the calendar - perhaps it’s a calendar themed around new game releases? There’s clear delight on John’s face when he thinks about getting the beta, and his quest to fetch it from the recently delivered mail is the closest thing to a story this comic has so far.

Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about Sburb, so we don’t know what it says about John that he wants to play it. It’s publicized as the Game of the Year, and according to GameBro, the game may be about houses and the player may not get to thrash anything, although these details are provided by someone who hasn’t played the game so I’m not taking them as expert opinion. It might be multiplayer - TT has been pestering TG all day about playing it with her. Maybe John just wants to share a game with his friends.

Speaking of GameBro, John can’t stand the magazine, although he for some reason has a copy on his desk. He describes the publication as ‘a joke’ to TG, and he makes the effort to take it downstairs to the fire and burn it, presumably releasing asbestos fibers into the house and causing serious lung damage to himself and his father. Does he read this because it’s the only games magazine that exists? Or did he like it just fine until now, when it trashed the game he’s excited about, and now he’s furious with it? Either way, it tracks with John’s overall fondness for critically panned media that he would be angry about contrarian critics.

–

All of this has left me with a few questions about John as our main character. These are the things that I’m keeping an eye on and trying to answer as the story continues.

What is John good at?

We hear so much about what John is bad at. He’s explicitly stated to be bad at programming, pranks, and magic. He’s bad at using his sylladex. He’s clumsy and knocked over his nanna’s ashes. He’s got bad taste in media. He’s funny but only when he doesn’t try to be, and even then he’s sometimes the butt of the joke, where the joke is how not funny John’s joke is. He was tempted to squawk like an imbecile and shit on his desk. He has like six different prankster props and he doesn’t even use all of them. I’m saying all this with love and kindness because he also just seems like such a sweet kid, but so far he doesn’t have any defined strengths or skills.

Is he going to turn out to be really good at gaming and kick ass at Sburb? Are we going to get a curveball where it turns out John is an amazing baker, and he hates the cakes in his room and the smell of Betty Crocker because he can do so much better than that packet mix? Or is he starting off from this low point so he can develop skills as time goes on?

What is John’s relationship with his dad really like?

John doesn’t want his dad to monopolize his time and feels trapped in his room, despite his dad baking cakes and leaving notes on gifts telling John he’s proud of him. John’s dad gets his son one great present that John’s really appreciative of, and one terrible present that John immediately hates. All of this feels very reasonable and normal for a teen feeling misunderstood by a parent who’s trying their best.

And then there’s the clowns.

John can excuse magical frivolity and practical japery, but he draws the line at harlequins. He’s an aspiring magician, but his dad’s figurines are ‘fucking garbage’ and his dad ‘sure can be a real cornball’. John seems like somebody who gets angry at ultimately unimportant things, like bad reviews of games, too many cakes, and harlequin figurines, but because of the subject matter it reads like an intense rivalry between two highly specific subcultures that outsiders would group together. John is really making a huge deal of needing to disguise himself and mentally prepare himself to go down and face his dad, and I want to know if there’s any genuine reason behind John’s fear, or if it’s solely the overdramatics I’m starting to think are typical of him.

Is John ‘Homestuck’?

‘Sometimes you feel like you are trapped in this room. Stuck, if you will, in a sense which possibly borders on the titular.’ (p.30)

John clearly feels like he’s stuck at home, but is this the extent of the title’s meaning? His dad has recently returned from getting groceries, so leaving the house is in theory possible. Reasons why John might be homestuck include: he’s not allowed to leave the house (for example, he’s grounded, or his dad is very controlling), he can leave the house but there’s nowhere to go (he lives near major roads, bodies of water, farms, or other obstacles, and there’s no public transport to get anywhere), or he can leave the house but it’s not safe to do so (there’s some sort of external threat, either supernatural like a monster or alien invasion, or mundane like a criminal or bomb threat). Seeing out of John’s window and into his front yard does not provide any clues; it looks like an extremely average front yard with a tree, swing and mailbox, and we know the mail was recently delivered, so there can’t be anything too world-ending happening in the neighborhood. Right now John’s goal (the Sburb Beta disc) is inside the house, so this might not get answered right away - in fact, my running theory is that the game itself might hold the answers, as its logo is a house.

What’s the differentiation between John and the narrator?

My biggest question of all, and one that probably deserves its own essay. I’m fascinated by the lines ‘In a kid's yard, a tree without a tire swing is like a proper gentleman without a monocle.’ (p.27) and ‘In a home, a FIREPLACE needs a fire, because that's what FIREPLACE is for.’ (p.50). These lines carry so much opinion, but because the narrator is constantly addressing John with the second person ‘you’, I don’t think these are John’s opinions. The narrator does have a window into John’s thoughts, so the line between them can be blurred, but there's clearly a distinction somewhere, because there have been pushbacks and disagreements between the two of them.

One theory is that John’s dad is the narrator - John’s at home a lot for whatever reason, and so the constant and overbearing presence of his dad means that he can’t get him out of his head even when he’s alone, the commands at the top of each page reflecting John’s dad’s level of control over his son’s life. But I think this question is open ended enough that I’m not willing to commit to one theory yet. After all, we ‘examine 3rd and 4th walls of [John’s] room’ which is a directly meta allusion to the comic’s audience that only really makes sense if the narrator isn’t a character in the comic itself.

–

I think John Egbert has been really well characterized so far. He feels like a real kid, one who keeps getting off track and forgetting what he should be doing, but one who it’s enough fun to get to know that I don’t really notice. While the main character in media often doesn’t end up being the most interesting character, I do want to keep an eye on John because I think he has a lot going on to analyze. Above the style and the world and the mechanics, John as a character is the aspect of the comic I’m most interested in right now.

#homestuck #john egbert #analysis #chrono

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