#still thinking on my avatar joke from yesterday and a discussion i had about jake's emasculation in the plot & how

[lucabyte]

stray homestuck2 thought: there's something about how jake likes blue ladies; and jane, who is coded blue, but chooses to wear red.

[theworldgate]

Now that I’m done with the avatar change, some somewhat spoilery thoughts on the epilogues are due!

And some non-spoilery ones first: Both of them are ‘creepy’ for want of a better word, though this seems to be mostly intentional (the more “wait is this meant to be creepy or not” stuff is in Candy; I can’t recall something like that in Meat). Like, I suppose this is a somewhat spoilery thing but also there’s a massive wall of trigger warnings, and it comes before the choice for a reason.

I think Meat sticks the landing better.

I hope you aren’t too attached to two particular Alpha Kids <laughs in ‘literally just changed my avatar from one>. I think it’s compensating for the actions of them in ‘canon’ that didn’t age well, and I’ll stop before getting into spoiler territory.

Gamzee makes everything terrible.

Seriously, Meat is pretty solid, though I can see why it’s polarizing. I’m not sure I want to read it again, but I’m also not sure that I don’t.

The second part of that sentence doesn’t really apply to Candy. I think it does provide some key context. Probably. But meh, a lot of it isn’t my sort of thing, and there’s a plotline kind of but it doesn’t go anywhere.

There are strong satirical elements and the issue is that, especially in Candy, it gets a bit muddled as to, like, how satirical it is.

This one is a spoiler a bit, but I think putting it above the cut is in the same spirit as the warning tags: there might also need to be one for Gaslighting.

There is a LOT of content there; that I finished it within a few hours reflects that I have the literal exact reading speed that Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds brags about when it comes to fiction. Also ngl I did kind of skim some of the relationship stuff in Candy. But also there being a lot of content means that this is not going to be comprehensive.

Not to mention that there are some explicit callbacks that could really do with links.

And into the spoilery stuff:

Honestly, you would think Vriska would have a bigger role given that there are 8 epilogues in each? She also provides one of the “I think this is meant to be creepy but I can’t tell???” moments in Candy. (well, I mean (Vriska), but the one who wasn’t in brackets during the canon but acquires them)

The Gamzee ‘redemption arc’ stuff really did not need to be dragged throughout the literal entire Candy epilogues. I mean, the core of the joke is pretty funny (it’s very dark humour, but still), but it’s eggs it a bit too much and Alive Calliope’s rationale for it is confusing and seriously Jane went full fash like 10 chapters before, have her do something to get him out the story before that. Like, it’s sort of what I got mad at wildbow for what (I thought) he was doing with March in Ward late last month, except if March also did nothing actually plot relevant and was just there being obnoxious. I mean, I’m glad the Homestuck comparisons still stand (though I think the content of Candy in particular vindicates Wildbow for drawing his lines where he does as far as sex stuff goes).

Oh, yeah, right. Jane went full fash. Twice. In one timeline I’d actually be willing to chalk it up to “yeah, this is a Dirk idea”, but he full on removed himself from the timeline (... suicide feels like an odd word when it’s not-unlikely that that Dirk did it in order to merge with Dirk Prime) and she just kept at it. Her actions, and the responses of the cast to it (universal horror by the end) definitely fall into the things I was thinking about with the level of satire being muddied. I can sort of see the point, but I think Hussie Hussied too hard and... it does actually read like a not-terrible-but-not-great-edgy-AU fanfic now I think about it. Like, the resistance is totally a stock fanfic setting for Homestuck. Huh.

Also, like... poor Jake and Tavros.

It actually nails Kanaya’s voice reasonably well? Which, yeah, makes sense, Promstuck is like the only fic I can think of that features her heavily and actually pulls it off (she is... not lacking in smoothness, but also not particularly interested in being a force of seduction), and from urbanAnchorite’s other fics I’m pretty sure that’s down to cephied_variable.

And that actually does bring us to our sometime narrator of Meat: Dirk. He’s actually a pretty well written villain. Very much in the Lord English vein which, like, makes sense given his handling of Caliborn and how the latter seemed to like him. Said handling was also the thing I meant yesterday by the “this shows the danger of humouring assholes”. But, y’know, there’s an element of assuming Dirk is memeing when he isn’t that is also very present here now. And, y’know, not exactly lacking in cultural relevance given that, again, Jane went full fash and at least some of the rationalisations for it were provided by him.

The other narrator of Meat is pretty chill, though leaving us hanging was kind of a dick move not gonna lie.

Oh god yeah, poor Jake again. Dirks is such an asshole. I mean, I can’t say enough how well written his assholery is, but that doesn’t, like, make him not an inutterable asshole.

I am not particularly qualified to comment on the Roxy gender stuff (beyond “the pivot to he/him is literally something I’ve had several AFAB NB friends do, though usually accompanied by a name change”. Although I will probably just avoid using pronouns for Roxy unless I mean specifically Meat Roxy or Candy Roxy since I think they (plural) did ultimately settle on different approaches to their gender(s? I think they’re both agender (like, specifically; Candy!Roxy very much reminds me of agender people I know) due to being the same person but go very different ways about it due to life circumstance stuff; I imagine Candy!Roxy would consider herself a woman for sociological purposes, but I very much doubt that Meat!Roxy would do the same himself).

Back on Candy discussion - there’s definitely a narrator, and actually maybe the final bit of Meat before the postscript (which follows on from Candy and likewise Candy’s is the immediate follow through on Meat) implies that it’s Dead!Calliope, but then the stuff that makes me think it has a particular speaker (before Dead!Calliope outright says so) makes me think otherwise. I know I both briefly thought Rose and then encountered some stuff that made it make less sense for it to be Rose (even ascended robot Rose, even if that would provide a neat symmetry to Dirk’s hostile narrative takeover+desire). It’s also a lot more... heterosexual than Meat, which makes me wonder if it’s Dead!Caliborn, but dead!Caliborn wouldn’t care about seeming sexist in this one line early on. Rose totally would despite being (as far as I can tell) a woman. Hmm...

Actualy, rereading the Meat postscript, I’m more sure that Candy is... not so much non-canon, as utterly orthogonal to the main storyline. Or it is now.

I mean, at least some of it will intersect; it gives us background for davebot for starters. Actually, given the treatment of robots as frequently de-facto nb but happy to roll with gendered pronouns (a la Candy!Roxy; I believe Mark Rosewater has said that this is broadly how Karn (the silver golem) thinks of himself, for example).

Okay, so I’m also 90% sure that Barack Obama is not actually the real Barack Obama, but that doesn’t give me any insight as to who created the fake Obama in order to get Dave to turn into Davebot. Unless it’s literally actually Jake because he does have some random robotics skill, and Jake is also a hope player. Plus Jake also used his Hope powers briefly in Candy I think? Which was near the end and I think possible precipitated it. But, like, Jake would have to have a reason for that, and I don’t think “Jane is a genocidal maniac” would prompt that specific response.

Speaking of an English... did Lord English take over the narrative of Meat briefly? I kind of kept hopping up above the line to add extra non-spoilery thoughts. Or acceptably spoilery thoughts. Like, the sort of thoughts that amounted to making the very intentional trigger warnings clearer. So, uh, I’m on about the callback to the vine thing. That thing. Plus some other stuff.

Another cognitive aid might have been a few drawings (I don’t think it needs full on panels, but just to make it clear where certain scenes take place), though I get why they wanted to avoid illustrating some of it.