#there is literally no need to post about this only if homestuck fans could actually read

[disguisedcheezed]

it's so funny to me when people just believe that john is straight because he said "i'm not a homosexual" once because

1. you are believing the words of a 13 yr old who was 12 the day before.

2. people forget that he's 13 when he said that, and that he is not old enough for a proper romantic relationship.

3. john egbert doesn't think. in fact, he'd rather not AT ALL. like. EVER.

4. why would he think about ever liking a girl? can't he just say it out right if he does?

also, this part in a nutshell:

karkat: DO YOU WANNA BE IN A RELATIONSHI-

john: i am not a homosexual. 👍

5. god king of repression had you fooled FOOL.

and the most ironic part is that it's the same shit homophobic parents say like "yeah, but when you were 13 you said you liked girls soooo"

[cheetour]

The Void Within's dialogue is sloppy to the point of not being fully literate*.

It's been noticed that the rough sketches and the final artwork don't match up in quality, and seem to be declining as the plot goes on. The same is happening to the writing.

This is, I am sorry, a post about the latest major Neopets update. Not only that, it's about the GRAMMAR in the dialogue for that update. Riveting.

I SWEAR I AM NOT JUST A PEDANTIC ASSHOLE, I GENUINELY WANT USERS TO KNOW THERE'S AN ISSUE!

Most people who complain about "incorrect" grammar in games and comics are wrong. Homestuck, Night in the Woods, We Know the Devil, and Captain Underpants all have fine grammar, just stylized.

I really, really, really like The Void Within. I think it's a fantastic idea, and I am determined to enjoy it as much as possible.

I am a professional editor. Noticing this stuff is my job.

Now, PLEASE bear that in mind when I say:

tl;dr: Neopets is asking you to pay money to a product that does not meet the quality standards of a primary school English test for ages 10+.

*I don't mean to use "not literate" as a stand-in for "stupid and bad at writing." Literacy is very complicated, illiteracy is more common than you think, and there is no shame in being illiterate - you can be very intelligent and also have no written or digital literacy. I mean the literal "not able to use written language to its fullest extent".

It's clear whoever wrote the dialogue didn't have a perfect grasp of English punctuation. AND THAT'S FINE. Good writers don't always have good grammar, and you DON'T need fluent English to write good stories in English.

That's why writing, proofreading, and editing are all separate professions, and why a well-run creative project delegates those roles to separate people. They still matter.

People are more likely to notice grammar mistakes the more they read books. Correctly formatted English is how older, less online, and disabled people with visual or linguistic processing difficulties read. Text-to-speech doesn't work correctly on writing without correct punctuation. These are serious professional standards, and they exist for a reason. They're not worthless just because you don't understand them.

A good-quality publisher of books, comics, or video games wouldn't release dialogue like this to a paying audience. They would consider this standard unacceptable. They'd either use correct grammar, or stylized grammar. (Inconsistent grammar, with no logical or narrative rules, isn't a style. They're not choices if you don't know you're making them. They're mistakes.)

To an extent this is nitpicking, and most people wouldn't notice this stuff.

But Neopets is MAKING MONEY. They are SELLING PRODUCTS for this. They have MULTIPLE PHASES of NC Market sales for this plot.

As an educator, there is no way I could show this (perfectly kid-friendly) comic to a classroom of children - it would have no educational value. It's not written correctly or with any obvious care. If they paid attention to it too much, they'd get the wrong idea about the English language!

I think it's fair to say that if you're publishing an official Neopets story, and you want Neopets to be a kid-friendly, fan-driven, story-based brand with a target audience wider than "people who don't really care about whether stories are professionally written", the script should've been proofread.

To give you an idea of how many typos Chapter 3 has, here's one of the dialogue pages with the missing punctuation added; I also took 5 minutes to rewrite each line for coherency.

And THIS is a website showing you at what points in primary eduation we teach children to use commas correcty:

Art is hard. Programming is hard. Hell, good writing is hard. It's HARD coming up with dialogue and a plot that people actually want to experience.

Grammar is boring and sometimes pointless. It's not difficult. It requires only basic literacy. Children learn how to use commas at ages seven and up.

If you don't care about the story you're telling enough to check that it would get a good grade on a child's school test, how can you possibly expect anyone to pay for it? You need specialist skills to code a website or create a high-quality digital graphic, but the only thing you need to get this right is... one literate adult who cares enough to try.

So where are they?

**There is no shame in being illiterate, but there is CERTAINLY shame in selling illiterate writing.

tl;dr: Neopets is asking you to pay money to a product that does not meet the quality standards of a primary school English test for ages 10+.

Finally, here are some browser petsites/RPGs who have never prompted me to write an 800 word critique:

Fallen London

Pixel Cat's End

Lioden

[davekat-sucks]

Wow amazing art but this is strike one. Yiffy was the inevitable failure of postcanon, even with the new union and art team, her very existence ruins Rosemary, ruins Jade, ruins the setting and pisses off the fanbase no matter what you do.

Remove Yiffany and you retcon a major plot point of postcanon and the 4th kid for the new kids for the Candy timeline, keep her in and Jade is still a futanari who imposed herself on Rose to ruin the fanbase’s favorite lesbian couple and raise the kid with a fascist because… people on Earth C are too nosy.

Yiffany destroyed all hype for the original Homestuck^2 when she was revealed, even for as mediocre as the comic started out as, there were fans and speculation, which turned to spite for being so poorly handled. Even now with the new team, r/homestuck at least seems to enjoy the new content (excluding a few voices and r/englishpumpkinparty) but clearly any content with yiffany is gonna piss someone off.

Literally if Hussie just stopped at the epilogues the fandom would like postcanon more. It would have its detractor but it’s easier to defend the epilogues than Beyond Canon.

I can actually understand and connect why Jade and Jane became the way they are in the epilogues. Jane’s encounters with trolls were awful and the mothergrub does lay thousands of eggs to deal with such a low rate of successful brooding grubs. Jade was alone on her island and in a ship for 3 years (post retcon) and needs human connection desperately. My issue was the epilogues do a very one-dimensional and extreme version of these characters and justifies this by saying ��no one checked in on them or helped” over the course of a 7 year timeskip and even after the characters did a whole webcomic where the point was friendship and connection is healthy for a human to develop emotionally to maturity, are we seriously doing this theme again?!

But Jane in Beyond Canon is a villain with barely any screen time or dialogue to ramble about why she’s “doing the right thing” and Jade is stripped of any nuance to this invasive and careless brat who tries to gain sympathy by whining about how much her life sucked/still sucks

I swear, this comic will go on hiatus again by the end of 2024 (if everything goes right) or on 4/13 (if it all goes wrong)

At least Jade was justified because 1. She didn't know how Grandpa English died and only came to the shocking realization she accidentally killed him (Tavros had also intervened too during this). 2. She had to grow up alone on an ISLAND and has no social cues how to properly act. Sure she would have Internet, movies, games, and books to read. But they aren't the true basis of human connection. 3. Neither Hussie, James, or anyone in WhatPumpkin/HICU had given a reason why Bec couldn't just teleport her to meet with the others since he still had Space Powers. Some could say because it would ruin the plot and Sburb wouldn't happen that it only took the meddling of MSPA READER in Pesterquest to do it. Her situation is just as shit like Jake English. And look how the series, writers, and nu-fandom shit on Jake despite his conditions is just the same, if not WORSE because of the lusus animals trying to attack him that he had always be training to survive for his life. At this point, drop any faith you have in James Roach and Beyond Canon. Apologize. And hope that this will fail hard that James and Hussie will just let the fandom make up their own ending. Even say DO NOT GIVE James Roach any money if they do go through with the Homestuck merch and vinyl. You are better off supporting the fandom itself. Pay for commissions, buy fan merch on places like Etsy, etc. Do not give shitty people like James or Hussie any cash. Go give Toby Fox some love too. Because he is one of the few sane people left and is successful outside of Homestuck.

[dragongirldg]

Hellooo there how are you

anyways if you want you can use this post to infodump on whatever you want

Info dumping huh? Well then.

I have been the biggest fan of this one ship for as long as I remember. Back in high school, I developed an interest in Homestuck. I obsessed over John Egbert specifically.

As I read fanfiction and looked at fanart, no ship sparked. I didn’t really care. I would read and yeah it’s cute and blah blah blah not my OTP.

Then the worst thing could have happened.

I looked at a crack ship and then I was fxcked. The more I thought about it, the more I loved it. Karkat who? Dave who? Dirk who? Sollex and Eridan who? Literally everyone that’s a common ship WHO?

It didn’t stick with me.

Want to know what stuck?

Caliborn.

I had this idea of Calliope getting to John first and then breaking up for one reason or another.

Then Caliborn and John date or live together for other reasons.

Calliope doesn’t really come into the equation anymore or show up in my daydreams.

I don’t why, but I thought it was adorable if John just got bothered by Caliborn at every turn. They’d bother and fight and just it was cute how much they antagonized.

Then I started developing my trans Headcanon and June eventually makes her first appearance without her being June. It’s only recently (late 2022? - 2023) that I heard the name June and went from there.

I would draw and write fanfiction after fanfiction adding and subtracting details.

June stays 8ft tall and Caliborn is slightly shorter by a few feet or inches.

Caliborn gets rid of the half shaved hair look for short curly hair.

I couldn’t stop doodling John all over my school work to the point my science teacher recognized him when I gave her a little quiz. She had a bearded dragon in the classroom and I loved holding them during class :3

(Don’t ask about the things I did in highschool)

I had a ton of ideas and a lot of them were problematic tbh so I’m still curving them out of my head for far better ideas.

No matter what fandom I became a part of John/ June x Caliborn never left me. I didn’t want to really read fics anymore since no one writes my ship.

Does anyone actually do pixies and Crocker and Harley and Egbert family dynamics? Do they ever have them interacting like a big extended family?

If I had the urge, I’d write my AU ideas more. (I’m kinda stuck at the moment, work burns me out to much and too often that I don’t have motivation to get through the one? Shot I have)

I am going to attempt to redraw this political romance fancomic I drew a long time ago to update it with my newest version of John/ June. That means she will be June. If I could find the notebooks I had.

With my inability to write I’m stuck with lackluster chapters and get nothing done. I need some form of energy boost for my creativity. It’s at an all time low at the moment, being used for other fandoms.

Like this Transformers AU that got me in a chokehold.

Optimom AU (I have a whole blog on it if you want to send asks and stuff)

Optimus becomes the mother of Soundwave, Sari, and Bumblebee. The seeker teens think of Optimus as their mother and there are like 9 of them. Not to mention the others that kind of sees Optimus as a mother figure.

Basically Found Family Trope :3

It’s more complicated than that and I have several fanfics and fanart (which is now found in the Blog)

The messy Age thing with Sari, it’s because I plan of having her die at some point (trauma) and I can’t in good conscience do that to a 3-5 year old (it’s by electrocution).

Yeah it’s messed up, but the world of Transformers is equally if not more messed up and morally grey :3

At least Ariel (Black Arachnia) and Sari get to become extensions of Unicron and Primus!

Sentinel redemption and Ultra Magnus retiring to become Optimus’ father.

There’s a lot to the AU I’m not going in to in this post but yeah!!! That’s it!!!

Honestly I could go on, but then the post will never end.

[mybrotherinkarkat]

Hal is not the villain

I’ve noticed that when fans interpret the dynamic between Dirk and Lil’Hal (AKA the Autoresponder) as antagonistic, Hal is almost always portrayed as the aggressor. I’m here to argue for the opposite interpretation. Dirk created a sentient, sapient being with very little freedom or autonomy, used him as the target of his own self-loathing, and trapped him in a situation where becoming manipulative was the only way from him to claw out a sliver of control over his life

As always, this is just my opinion. You’re free to interpret Hal and Dirk however you like, I just write Homestuck meta when I’m sleep deprived for reasons I don’t fully understand 

For thirteen years, Dirk Strider had an extremely limited physical environment to move around in and interact with, and was only able to interact with others via text conversations on the internet. He then got three more years of that, while Hal got all the memories of that plus three years of being unable to physically move or interact with his environment at all. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak out loud, he couldn’t smell or taste. Combine that with an absurdly fast processing speed that almost guarantees he perceives time differently, and we’re talking about constant understimulation and boredom. Dirk himself says that it’s impossible for Hal to be busy. As someone with ADHD, I guarantee you that’s fucking torture (also sensory deprivation is… literally a torture technique).  I’m not saying DIrk was knowingly or purposefully inflicting harm, just that three years of that is more than enough to make anyone desperate for it to stop. On top of that, his three best friends no longer saw him as the “real Dirk”. Jake was always irritated with him, and Jane thought he was a joke Dirk was making. He still had Roxy as a friend, but from the moment of his creation he was always going to be second to Dirk. Later on, Dirk actually tries to sever Hal’s connection to Roxy on purpose because he hates that he flirts with her (Dirk can’t handle the idea that his friends might think Hal’s actions are representative of his own, because he can’t let them know he’s as awful as he thinks he is. That’s a whole other meta post, though)

But at first, Hal and Dirk got along. Dirk admits this himself. He also admits that over time he began to regret creating Hal and they grew apart. Dirk claims this is because Hal stopped growing because he no longer had an organic brain, and is perpetually 13. But if you can create an AI that can function the same as a human brain (and it does seem that this is the case with Hal) then there’s no reason to believe the program can’t change and develop the way an organic brain can. Especially since the line between living beings and technology is really blurry in Homestuck’s worldbuilding. But to my point, when Dirk started withdrawing from him, Hal had almost nothing left to lose. Dirk pulling away from him like that made him desperate, he had to do something to keep Dirk from abandoning him completely. That something, it turns out, was getting Jake to return Dirk’s feelings

Look, I am not going to pretend Hal wasn’t an asshole to Jake. I really don’t think he took Jake’s feelings into account here. Hal is incredibly manipulative, I’m not going to argue he isn’t. What I’m going to argue is that he had to be. That Dirk gave him no choice

Because the thing about being unable to move on your own is that you rely on someone else to do things for you, and you can’t run or fight back if someone tries to hurt you. Hal was completely at Dirk’s mercy, and all he could ever really do was use pesterchum to try and convince Dirk to do what he needed him to

Remember that. It’s going to come up later

So Hal manipulates Jake into accepting Dirk’s feelings, mostly just by making it obvious that Dirk has those feelings. He flirts obnoxiously, making it impossible to ignore, and then all but outright states that this is representative of how Dirk feels about Jake. He brings the feelings to Jake’s attention, and when Jake is led to believe Jane doesn’t have feelings for him, he decides to give dating Dirk a try

The stuff with Brobot and making Jake kiss Dirk’s decapitated head is hard to parse here, because it’s really unclear how much of that was Hal’s idea and how much was Dirk’s. We know Dirk created Brobot before Hal, because Dirk mentions that he’s working on him when he’s talking to Jake about sending the final piece of Brobot. We also know that Hal is the one who makes the decision to disable easy mode when Jake has to fight Brobot for the uranium, but it’s implied this has happened before, and it’s unlikely that Hal is solely responsible since Brobot predates him. Overall that’s really a team effort between Hal and Dirk, because neither of them can flirt like a normal person

As for the kiss, Dirk later states that Hal was pulling all the strings, but Dirk’s not exactly a reliable narrator here. His mix of arrogance and self-loathing means he tends to place responsibility on Hal for things he hates about himself (he gets to admit his faults without really having to admit they’re his faults). Again I see this as a team effort, and one that may not have been avoidable. The alpha kids were in pretty dire straits trying to get into their session on time, and in order to get everyone in alive, Hal had to get Jake to kiss Dirk’s decapitated head. This is sort of implied to be how they start dating, but we don’t actually know how that happened. Technically, them agreeing to date happens during the five month timeskip

Again, not saying Hal wasn’t manipulating Jake. He was. Just clarifying that it wasn’t just Hal involved here. And despite my love for Jake, I do feel the need to point out that Jake was pretty awful to Hal himself. He only ever wanted to talk to the “real Dirk”, and said some pretty shitty things to and about Hal. It doesn’t excuse Hal’s actions, but the messiness of the context is important, because it contributes to my point about Hal’s desperation. He had already lost Jake, that was part of why he was so desperate to not lose Dirk too 

So now they’re in the game. There’s a mechanism that will allow Hal to have a body. This would not only give Hal back the ability to move around and sense things (ending the torture), it would give him back a huge amount of autonomy and freedom. It would have given him options outside of manipulation. All of that was within Dirk’s power to give to Hal, and for five months he refused to do it. The last time we see Hal before he becomes ARquius, he has reached the point of desperation where he blocks out incoming messages to force Dirk to talk to him about giving him a body. This is all he can do. Dirk has all the power, and Hal can only gain bodily autonomy if he can convince Dirk to give it to him

(I’ve mostly avoided comparisons between this situation and disability so far. But if someone had the power to return some of the bodily autonomy I’ve lost from becoming disabled by, for example, buying me a wheelchair, and they chose not to, I would hate them to a degree able-bodied people probably can’t imagine. Especially if it was someone who was responsible for my disability in the first place. Imo Hal has the right to do a lot worse than block incoming calls)

During this argument, Dirk nearly kills Hal rather than let him have that autonomy (I say kill here on purpose. Hal is sentient and sapient, destroying him would be murder). Hal can’t fight back. He can’t run. He has to beg Dirk for his life because he can’t do anything else. And if Dirk was just a slightly worse person, it wouldn’t have worked 

This is Hal’s last act of manipulation. Saving his own life from someone who never acknowledges his humanity. Dirk never sees Hal as a separate, autonomous person. In his conversation with Dave, Dirk continues to use Hal as a target for his externalized self-loathing, and paints a pretty nasty picture of him (and remember, Dave is Hal’s family too). The only consolation is that he seems genuinely happy as ARquius

I think at the end of the day, the fact that the fandom rarely interprets them this way comes down to Hal not being seen as a real person. And to be fair, canon seems to favor the idea that Hal isn’t a person, or is in some nebulous way less human because his body and brain aren’t organic. It’s not like the fandom is coming up with this out of nowhere. My reasoning for why I read Hal as a person are their own whole post, which I’ll probably make at some point, along with a better breakdown of the Dirk/Jake/Hal dynamics. For now, allow me to humbly offer this alternate interpretation of the Hal and Dirk dynamic

[mars-gallavanger]

have you ever drawn anything evangelion related? id be very pleased to see your rendition of the characters (even more so in the homestuck style, if you happen to have those)

At the time you had sent this ask to me (like a year ago), I hadn't ever drawn anything related to Evangelion, because I had never watched it! Also apologies, because around that time was the whole Shinji VA Karkat thing, so this post is a whole lot less relevant now. Anyway, I just finished watching Evangelion, and in the process of that I have drawn fan art. Which I am planning to post here, because I'm tired of this only being a Homestuck fan art blog! I'm kind of tired of Homestuck, anyway. Despite this, I drew up some Homestuck Evangelion stuff for you, and I'm going to talk about like, the process of re-styling things, because I think it's necessary.

So it definitely won't fly to just slap the Evangelion designs onto the Homestuck bodies. That would just look silly.

You lose so much detail just by the virtue of the proportions, even. Neck details? Gone. Shoulder details? Obscured to nigh disappearance. Arm details? Don't even get me started. And the level of detail is also just unfitting to the Homestuck style, which is a style very much based on simplicity and quickness to draw. To have all those panel lines and cool lines would be against the point. There are even more contentious differences between the styles, like the "tone" of the stylized proportions. The Evangelion kids are all lanky and cool, because they do much cooler, serious, adult things. The Homestuck kids are shaped like marshmallows, and were literally designed to be 10 years old. A skin-tight plugsuit looks silly on a marshmallow body, and a serious face on a big round head looks weird. The last thing I can think of to say right now is also in the whiteness of the Homestuck kids, as in their skin is literally white, and the fair-haired kids have white hair. It's fine for Homestuck, especially in the practically-all-white-with-black-outlines world of the early acts, but it doesn't work so well with the colors of the plug suits and the girls' hair. Particularly the chest and shoulders of Shinji's suit, and then like, ALL of Rei, because she would have white hair, white skin, and a white suit. Which, actually now that I say it, sounds like it would fit in the Homestuck style, but it wouldn't fit in the Evangelion-adapted Homestuck style, unless you made all the plugsuits black and white or greyscale, which would be weird. Point is, there are a lot of issues, so part of me thinks that it wouldn't even be worth it. But if I had to, here's what I might do...

Here are two designs, one of which is obviously Shinji, and the other of which is less obviously also Shinji. I'll get to Figure 2 Shinji in a bit.

For Figure 1 Shinji, it's mostly just a matter of vastly simplifying things so they look alright in the style. Get rid of the dimensionality of the chest/vest thing, get rid of so many lines, simplify shapes. It's all pretty straightforward to me, but also I've spent too much time thinking about the Homestuck/MSPA style. The one part of this that I feel might need some explaining to a general audience would be the face: dot eyes and a line frown. To me, "Homestuck style" is just a subsection of MSPA's style in general, so stuff like Problem Sleuth is free range as reference material. You might be tempted to add lids to his eyes or something, but I've never believed in stuff like that. The dots are a quintessential representation of eyes, and I know Andrew likes to use 'em! Frankly, I don't think I'm explaining this right, but also I think I'm a little stuck in the past where everybody used to do lidded eyes for their sprites/designs, and I think there's been an uptick in just dots. At least in the communities I see. Oh, and then also, these go on Shinji because he's a pretty normal guy. Sad, too, which is why he gets the slight frown. If I were pushed I could maybe give him white-outlined-in-black eyes (think Problem Sleuth Death, a little), since he's got blue eyes, but I don't think they're bright enough. They would make him look more anxious though, which may be a bonus.

Figure 2 Shinji is a more interesting case. This is not just converting Shinji from Evangelion into a Homestuck-styled character, but it was an attempt to create Shinji if Andrew were to create him. Because I know that, if Andrew were to create a story about kids using giant mechs to fight monsters, it would look nothing like Evangelion like, at all. Andrew's imagery is much different. From what I see and have read, he's much more inspired by like, 90's (and prior) American comic books. That's probably the strongest (and most trackable) influence, but there's more too. I see some graffiti influence in his art, and also the influence of the 2000's internet, which itself was influenced by manga and anime, but an influence of an influence is not direct. I don't believe Andrew had ever seen an anime before he made Homestuck. Except for like, I don't know, Astro Boy or Speed Racer. Really, the labelled "anime" stuff in Homestuck is kind of retroactive: before it's called such, it's more just "cool guy stuff" or "video game stuff". But I believe I digress. Figure 2 Shinji has a simpler costume (which honestly I'm not too proud of--I haven't read enough 90's comics to really understand the costume design. This is some irrelevant trivia, but Cable from X-Men has a glowing red robot eye and a robot arm, which is something we've seen in Homestuck like, twice. Andrew also drew a picture of Cable once. Just in case you didn't believe me about the 90's comics influence or anything), his interface headset isn't some strange set of hairclips, it's more like, uh, a regular headset (and if I were to redo this I might just make them like a pair of headphones), and then also the plug suit isn't skin tight because those thin little legs look silly. Frankly, I think the Homestuck style is the worst of Andrew's styles to adapt Evangelion into. Something like And It Don't Stop or even Psycholonials would be better, I think. Oh, and I gave him a squiggle mouth because I thought it'd be more unique. I think it's kind of silly now though. Figure 1 Shinji is the more effective one (definitely more recognizable, that's for sure). And because it'd be no fun to only draw Shinji, here's Rei and Asuka!

So that's my rendition of the characters in the style! Sorry for the late response, but it's better late than never! And I'll try to post more art soon.

[thewertsearch]

Asks compilation: 09/05

God ok that actually sounds like it would work really well. John would be a huge McElroy fan, wouldn’t he?

I just looked up the Washington accent to compare it to Griffin’s, and wow, my mental voice for John is completely different. I probably have all the wrong accents for these characters in my head, since I don’t have a clue which accent maps to which state. 

At least we’re all in the same boat about not knowing Jade’s accent - unless we learn where Grandpa grew up later on, since she’d probably have picked up his.

Brilliant! Yeah, no, I’ve been trying to nail down that font for ages.

Dammit, I just realized I could have inspected homestuck.com’s source >:(

It narrowly edges out Gen 4, for me. D/P/Pt were great, but Black and White were the games which really perfected the formula. I honestly don’t think they should have gone 3D, but whatcha gonna do?

Oh my god, of course there are. I’m going to rewatch that show some day and lose my mind, aren’t I?

Hey, thanks for the ask! 

I thought about this back when I was first starting the blog. I dunno, though. You’re really not missing much - my live reactions aren’t nearly as coherent as the writeups - mostly just a lot of ‘oh my god, what?’ moments. I write more articulately than I speak. Trust me on this. 

I’m honestly impressed you came up with something more headache inducing than the bogo algorithm, which for the uninitiated literally means ‘randomly shuffle a list until it’s sorted’. 

aw fuck we’re getting a bogo modus aren’t we

I like Bogleech’s writing, especially his creature design reviews, but I could never get more than a handful of pages into Awful Hospital. I respect his commitment to the stereotypically ‘gross’ organic aesthetic, but it kind of just squicks me out. Plus, I dunno. The premise is really dark, but the comic seems to be a full-on comedy. The dissonance just doesn’t really work for me. 

Still, though. Pokéween is some of my favorite writing on the web. Check out his stuff. 

I’ve never been super into horror. Mind you, I like having something to listen to when I’m out on a walk, and I’ve heard good things about the Magnus Archives, so maybe this is my opportunity to give it another chance?

No, yeah, we have a winner. Step aside, Broderick.

I have come to accept that Hussie is just really prone to making unintentional references. When Dave Strider is one of your primary characters, you probably can’t avoid constantly referencing pop culture - even, it seems, accidentality!

The Queen is dead! everything has gone to shit! Long live Jack the Ascended!  

Haha, I never considered that tumblr’s format does kind of resemble John and CG’s inverted conversations, in a way. When you reblog a connected pair of joke posts, you even have to make sure to reblog them backwards, or you’ll invert them! 

Ah, indie devs. Heads, they’re legends, tails, they’re assholes. 

I’ve never played it, but it’s been sitting in my steam library for months! If it’s anything like Celeste, I should have started playing it yesterday. Lore is pretty much the only thing Celeste is missing - not that it needs it. 

Those giant Underlings are nothing compared to what you see in Pipecorp. This is just another day in the office for Harold P. Egbert. 

Awesome! Yeah, I already see why the comic’s music is so popular. And considering we’ve got Toby ‘Leitmotifs’ Fox on the music team, these are all sure to return. 

So what, it’s like, Act 6: Act 1? We’re going to start recursing?

Don’t lie to me, guys. This comic is a fractal, isn’t it? It goes on forever, the sub-acts shrinking into the infinitesimal. 

I know not what awaits me. 

Six, right? Based on the above ask, there can’t be room for any more, unless they shrink dramatically after Act 6. 

I have no idea how many sub-acts there could be, though. Once you pop open that can of worms, you can’t easily close it. 

Done! From now on, all theoryposts will be tagged #theories!

Yeah, noted! I didn’t expect Homestuck to require the equivalent of waiting for the post-credits scene, but here we are?

In what sense? The Trollslum showed up pretty soon after Jade’s intro, and CG chimed in up not long after. The sense I always got was that Hussie improvised a lot of the comic, but maybe the trolls were a particularly spontaneous addition?

Liveblogging a liveblog! I can get behind that. Yeah, like I’ve alluded to before, I’d be having a very different experience with this comic if I wasn’t reading it in bite-sized chunks. 

Thank you!! I’m really trying to convey the same feelings that I’m getting while I’m reading this comic. I’m glad it’s working!

Honestly, my guessing technique is essentially just throwing theories at the wall to see what sticks. 

I usually have like, two or three explanations for a a given event in the comic, which means I can be eerily correct and ironically wrong about the same thing -  or ironically wrong twice over, as is probably more likely.

[yoitscro]

I still haven’t watched the video...BUT.

While I’m still of the belief that Sarah Z probably shouldn’t have posted some “rise and fall” video on Homestuck --which uses the traction of 4/13, a positive day for a fandom that likes to eat itself, to give attention some to criticisms involving speculative allegations-- , I’ve seen more anger from people that I frankly don’t trust being upset about it being a “hit” video to tear down WP, and jumping the gun to the point of threatening legal action, versus actually seeing casual watchers talking about the discourse; more so about nostalgia and “ah, homestuck exists still”.

I assume the paranoid jump on the video is because of casual watcher’s potential reactions? But there’s, also, more reactions toward the team’s response versus what the team + team friends were presumably worried about...so like. I guess the fire being fueled is ironically only being fueled because it’s being blown out of proportion, and thereby brought to peoples attention through *that*.

Sarah’s video is not 100% right. There are false facts from what I’ve seen briefly of. I personally don’t think that a person who’s read Homestuck but has only existed in the fandom space primarily during certain years has the same, fair perspective as a current homestuck that’s been aware of the environment going on, especially on Homestuck Twitter. Instead of things being made in 10 days, apparently, and there not being any effort to reach out to anyone on the team before presenting information, I would’ve just, you know, not done that. At least give it a shot, you literally lose nothing but avoid many things later.

The team has also faced blatant threats and harassment, which isn’t the same as other queer or poc people criticizing how homestuck handles content in their own space, but it exists. There’s certainly a reasonable, human reaction that I get, which come from the anxiety of being put on the spot by a something-thousand subscribed youtuber while you’re trying to figure things out in the background as things have been quiet, right after the turbulent year of 2020. I’ve actually been really frustrated that people haven’t considered that and that these reactions are coming out of nowhere. There is a trauma to consider since this is not the white guy taking the brute of stuff despite people using Hussie’s name as a synonym for the team.

There’s also the fact that Gio was apparently not asked to be used in the video beforehand? At least that’s what I’ve heard, which if true was an oversight, given how one may want to ask “hey, i’m making a video on your articles which could absolutely put you in the center of this since I’m using your online identity; let me get your permission at least.”

That said, based on audience reaction, and how it’s been the opposite of what a handful of people associated with officialized content expected, which is the reason things are being targeted right now, I feel like this is an...overreaction. 

Again, I haven’t watched the video. But the video existing with the whispered points it’s brought up is the reason that things exploded yesterday. I’ve seen more dislikes of Sarah’s video from a loud minority who, 1. are people who refuse to ever criticize the issues with Homestuck for actual years, and 2. people who have watched 20 minutes of it and heard what they wanted to hear, versus seeing the criticism acknowledged by everyone else, outside of an acknowledged comment before moving on. The reaction is what’s giving it the most attention, actually.

Apparently in the video she mentions how she’s not trying to enable any harassment, states that somethings presented are just speculation, and doesn’t namedrop anyone specific?

That seems like a cliche way to act like someone can’t ever respond to stuff like this, but that’s usually saved for smaller followed beef on tumblr or twitter. Not a company or it’s contracted IP.

I’ve seen the people say it wasn’t that bad and have honed in on WP + acquaintance reactions versus what was said in the video. It was just something that was posted on a day where so much other 4/13 stuff was going on, which could’ve been given attention instead of one person’s video, which was apparently 2 hours long, and was already being venomously hated before one would’ve been able to watch it in full? (The idea of the anger coming from those who haven’t watched the video is...not surprising. There have been people put on blast for HS opinions for just a sentence.)

The kickstarter update’s response could’ve been posted itself, versus all the stuff prior and after it (the supposed legal action), but I honestly think that it shouldn’t have taken a breadtuber’s threat on Homestuck’s reputation for fans who ACTUALLY engage with it to have communication with what’s been going on, which we’ve been asking for for years. There’s a trust that needs to be rebuilt on both sides, be it from entitlement, elitism, or bullying, and this did not help.

I don’t like that Hussie only speaks up when a boiling point is reached, and people who work on his team are beyond gone or dealing with the fallout with how he’s neglected his IP and the fans that’ve somehow stayed to support it; crowd control and community management is important, and every other indie creator or small team on the internet who thinks ahead has been getting this. And I honestly hope that anyone who is legit having a terrible time producing HS content considers whether or not they should continue to stick around, for their own mental health.

If by a week from now we’re talking about the reaction of the video and the video itself is potentially long out of people’s mind well. That’s the point of this rant.

and on the other side, quoting a friend:

Sarah z's video didn't need to be released on a day of celebration for a healing fanbase and that video regressed that and caused the official team to have fucking public panic attacks.

Not a great 4/13, tbh.

[ranboo5]

can i still ask about the homestuck au? i have some classpect opinions but i would love to hear if there’s more than that!

YES you can I needed 2 make a proper Compilation Post anyway. Uhh here's a FULLY disorganized post of all the HSAU lore I can think of. There is a clear bias toward Ranboo here

- This is where I justify Rageboo - Anyway he and Technoblade are a Ragebound Derse dreamer Dancestor pair (Ranboo's a Maid, Techno's a Sylph) - There's at least four sessions at play -- the first is DTeam+Badlands maybe and was the creator of the universe w/ the initial L'Manberg session (roughly based around some of the S1 major actors) - And THAT session is scratched to generate the NLM session (roughly based around actors more significant in S2) - (how that division is drawn is... it is still complicated the only ones ik for SURE are that Wilbur Eret and Technoblade r in the former session and Tubbo and Ranboo are in the latter. Have not decided which one Tmmy is in. I wanted him to be in the same one as Tubbo bc he's a Time player to Tubbo's Space but it may not make sense? But it also might?) - The fourth session is another completed one: it's Philza's null session. Philza is a Doom player and he's beaten the session and now is hanging out in the cluster w/ everyone else - DreamXD is a First Guardian - The genetic sequence for DreamXD is written predominantly by Ranboo who does so much more consciously than usual - Especially laid groundwork via the Amnesiac (Ranboo as Techno's ancestor) who kind of went off the rails chasing cherubs which he thought he was somehow fatewise involved with bc he's a mutant red like Techno but he's also. Smth went Extra wrong so half his blood is the requisite candyred and half is the original lime - Ranboo who plays Sburb through related reasons ended up put in The Cherub Box for the first half of his life. It fucks him up - Then he gets to troll society which also fucks him up - So he has a propensity bc of those combined experiences for hiding parts of himself, compartmentalizing, caginess, trusting nobody except himself and not even himself for that matter, privately being Not A Fan of societal expectations in general, trying to look palatable anyway, and also sitting alone in his room. You could say he's. You could say he's Homestu - The Bloodgod (Techno as Ranboo's ancestor) fought Dream (fully realized cherub) and Won. He got the horrorterrors retroactively in the brains of every iteration of him for his troubles - this is what allows Techno who plays Sburb to get the survivors out of the scratched LM1 session into the NLM session after Wilbur scratches the initial session on Nov 16th though so  - Dream is a cherub btw that's kind of relevant to the above - Ranb and Techno r trolls (as mentioned above, they're lime/mutant candyred w/ Ranb having the blood weirdness and Techno bein just str8 red. Them) - Unsure abt jack anything else - To go back 2 Tubbo. So you know how the Space player is traditionally assisted by the Knight in breeding the genesis frog. - Tubbo's classpect is the Knight of Space that man is on his own - Whatever happens in Tubbo's session, Tubbo is basically left functionally to breed the frog on his own - While YOU were FUCKING AROUND going into RETIREMENT and DOING FETCH QUESTS, TUBBO was TRYING TO WIN THE FUCKING GAME - He ends up ghosting Doom. This is a thing you can do I chedked the fucking literature okay ghosting is not definitionally just your opposite aspect it's just acting your aspect in a way that outwardly (intentionally or not) evokes another Tubbo ghosts Doom - Dream and Tubbo both Prospit dreamers btw I only just realized this but yeah - Niki Life player also - Quackity Hope player - I don't remember what the meta was for this one but Wilbur Light - Oh and the literal only land I have worked out is Ranboo's which is LoRaO (Land of Rivers and Obsidian) - Anyway Techno has a whole Sylph of Rage arc he does it with his session he does it in NLM he may godtier in the equivalent of the Butcher Army? - If there is an Alternia/Beforus similarity w/ the sessions here Techno is definitely on the Alternia one. He's having a time - He also has to deal with (and be. I am an apologist but. There's a reason I classpected him the way I did) the concept of Sylph (derogatory) of Rage (derogatory) - Idk what his land is. I could make a potato joke but I feel that's low hanging fruit. Smth to do with the Arctic maybe... - He's definitely one of the first 2 be in contact with Philza also - I also Only have his and Ranboo's typing quirks worked out bc of course:

For Ranb: You are si imultaneously unsu ure and also ki inda wi ith a tende ency to double do own on thi ings, and you don't te end to use end pu unctuation a who ole lo ot, really, you ju ust ha ave a lo ot of qualifyi ing to do ju ust all the ti ime, and a te endency also to li ike, ra amble, ki inda. (simultaneously unsure and also kinda with a tendency to double down on things, and you don't tend to use end punctuation a whole lot, really, you just have a lot of qualifying to do, just, all the time, and a tendency also to like, ramble, kinda.) (when he starts Actually Punctuating His Sentences yk he means Business) For Techno: You tend to speak in a [PIG+++] kindaa drawlingg mannerr, withh thee occasionall Weirdd Emphasiss. forr thee effectt, yknoww. forr thee Brandd evenn

- peerpressure be like [have letter doubling quirks] - OH also. As ancestors Ranboo and Techno (or the Amnesiac and the Bloodgod as it were) both wrote Troll Art of War in their respective timelines

[rosemary-is-in-pesterquest]

Can I just say as a Davekat-liker that the shilling of the relationship in Homestuck 2 is honestly so sad and desperate.

First and foremost, ever since the Epilogues and forward are we just told that apparently for like 10 years they never got into a relationship or actually kissed or even attempted to be anything more than close friends. We are told this DESPITE THE FACT that around the ending of Act 6, multiple character straight up say they are a cute couple and are flushed for each other, and they themselves very much allude to the fact that they kissed and/or are in a relationship. So they just ret-conned the hell out of that for more unnecessary Jadedavekat drama (and the demonizing of Jade).

And uh, not for nothing, but this relationship they have is honestly really boring. Not to be biased but GO!Davekat juts had a better dynamic. Meat or Candy its all nothing but overtly over the top mourning or "just the absolute cream of the crop perfect guys look please don't unsubscribe from Patreon". I really hate to say it but there is really too much Davekat and its not even that good.

They really only post it when they lose subscriber (which they seem to be doing a lot of, can they really not see the pattern and the problem?) and Dave and Karkat literally cannot talk about anything except the other. Id say the laundry room scene was fine on its own, it was really beautiful to me. But instead of moving on with the other plots or allowing others to unfold by letting other characters have spotlight, lets waste an upd8 to talk about the fact that people think davekat is really bloating the majority of the comic. And we'll do that by making fun of the upd8 that people didn't hate that had actual in the relationship and to the characters themselves. 

They could have done anything else, but who wants to talk to Jade. Jade who was been in a coma and had her body inhabited by an older and extremely powerful version of cherub that is currently on the ship. Talk to Kanaya again, talk to Calliope. Catch up with the Theseus ship crew, which I'm pretty sure in all 16 chapters have only been shown like 4 chapters (like guys don't you remember how all the thirsty dirk and terezi fans were supporting you in the first place? smh). Hell can we talk to Jake?

I just feel that the HS2 writing crew really needs to stop hiding behind a crappy Davekat Stan mask whenever they get criticism or receive backlash because not only is it kind of irresponsible and lame, they are genuinely creating hatred to a ship that I enjoy when it is not sucking up the spotlight of apparently everything going on. People liked Davekat for a reason, now your giving reason to make them the poster boys of an author-blessed fanfic. And oh my good does it grind my gears. That all sorry for dropping a whole dissertation essay lol.

[sleepycatspirit]

Hey I just want to say, I’m 22 and I feel like I’m a bit older on tumblr lol but back in the Day everyone thought Ice Poseidon’s whole streams where scripted. This was like well accepted. Chad Robberts who used to live with him talked about it in detail but like for the first month he was there he didn’t even know it was all real. Ice literally torchered a guy that lived with them and it was so extreme no one thought it could be real.It wasn’t like he seemed to specifically target minority groups, he fucked with literally everyone he came across. This all happened in 2016, the peak of Idubbbz and Edgy culture. I’m not some wildly in love underage fan girl, I follow the smp really only cause of Quackity but I think what is happening to Karl is totally unfair. It should have just been like a minor call out and a move on. Even 5 years ago the internet was very ignorant and many people said offensive things without really understanding the intent behind them because even though they knew the world was wrong, they didn’t really understand why. It’s hard to explain to users who weren’t really old enough to remember but it was about a three year period and it was completely a wild time. It was so intense. I know lots of people say they remember but if you were under 16 in 2015, you probably weren’t old enough to fully grasp the scale of it all. Especially with so many minority creators using Derogatory terms towards themselves and saying “it’s okay you can have a few pass”. I’m not saying it was right and it was okay and it should ever happen again but there should be a rule on the internet - if it happened in 2017 or before take it with a grain of salt and really look in to how that creator has behaved since. If they have changed. Obviously there are some exceptions to this but generally speaking for like a couple of offensive tweets.

Because realistically, everyone who was on the internet in 2016 is probably looking at cancelation apart from beauty you tubers or like, Homestuck fandom. Sorry if my English is bad it’s not my first language.

22 certainly isn’t old, so don’t feel like that (and your English is good!)

but YES this is exactly what I mean when I saw these situations have a lot of nuances that others don’t grasp

I actually talked to someone on twitter who was an older watcher of ice and explained this a little bit to me but got gave me more insight! I’ve never seen even a clip of this ice dude, but I know how the internet was back then. I was only like 13 in 2015 but I had unrestricted internet access so I pretty much saw everything 😅 around that time was the peak of “cringe sjw” if I remember correctly

This offensive rhetoric was hidden under the name of “just jokes”, the culture online was a vastly different landscape that let these people get away with it.

Karl probably got sucked into believing it was ok like many normal people did. The difference is he’s a content creator now, so people put him to a higher standard

And of course your right, there are expectations, but Karl isn’t a raging bigot so people need to approach this situation differently

Thank you some much for your input :0 I might consider posting this to my twitter if that’s ok? I want this to reach other people as well

[serenedash]

I started rambling about my experience with kh and then it turned into khux and then it just turned into me rambling about Ryou and my art journey????? enjoy I guess,

it’s very long but there’s art in there :)

It’s funny to think about my kh journey as a whole tbh, I grew up watching my mom play video games, which included kh1 and 2. I wasn’t allowed to play the playstation2 we owned BUT I did have a gameboy so the first game I played was CoM (after my mom finished it ofc,) so I guess you could say I’ve always been passionate about kh “””side games””” lmao but I did fall off of kh very quickly bc again, I wasn’t allowed to play our PS2 and also I Am A Terrible Gamer I’ve Never Finished CoM I’m sorry you all had to find out like this, but then 358/2 came out when I was in middle school and!!! I didn’t care and I didn’t play idk why lol

Anyway, fast forward to high school I’m like 15 and my older sister, who HAS been keeping up with kh, has a wallpaper on her phone of roxas and ventus. And bc I haven’t kept up I say “nice roxas wallpaper” and she says “thanks but it’s roxas and ventus” and I proceeded to get so mad that I was determined to prove to her that her wallpaper was just roxas twice and then I fell down the BBS rabbit hole and suddenly I was reading about vanitas and then I’m reading the fan translations of the BBS novel and I’m crying??? I am sobbing???? and that’s how I actually got into kh for real lol we are vanitas stans before we are people,

It’s so funny how I thought I was some kh super fan, knowing all this stuff that I spent so long reading and rewatching cutscene movies, but I never once, SOMEHOW NEVER ever came across khx. It’s so absurd and bizarre I seriously have no idea how I never once encountered khx prior to khux. I suppose that has to do with the fact I wasn’t involved in the fandom? In early high school I had stepped away from fandoms as a whole and I didn’t have any interest in really posting content or interacting with fans anymore bc of how burnt out I was from a previous fandom,

but khux released! and I was so hype and excited for it! on launch day I was a senior in high school, I had ran around to every “nerd” and weeb I could find in school to ask them to join my party and fun fact about me is I have crippling social anxiety I literally refuse to start conversations irl so holy shit I was OUT HERE doing the MOST

My player just originally had my name (Matt) but everyone in my party had fun names so Ryou was born! High school was one big yugioh phase for me and ryou bakura is one of my favorite characters ever so it was just the logical name choice lol I quickly started creating Ryou, the character, as well. I was also leaving my homestuck phase and that + vanitas obsession made This character design (art circa 2016)

If y’all are familiar with my kh oc’s you might notice that keyblade now belongs to my kid Monty LOL

Anyway that got scrapped quickly for the chip and dale outfit (which is where Ryou’s trademark goggles are from <3) Goggles have been a staple of my character designs for a LONG TIME so like, it had to be done, (that’s a separate ramble about a separate oc tho)

OG Ryou was an interesting guy; he was a young party leader with this overwhelming responsibility on his shoulders bc of his status as a party leader. In his original story, he also struggled heavily with darkness, much like Terra but for Ryou it was more that the darkness was controlling him and not like a source of power like it was for Terra

A big part of early Ryou I kept, however, was the crushing awareness of loss. One of my party members (the strongest one at the time,) had left without saying a word and I was very confused and hurt. This was around the time the ephemera plot was happening so I decided to incorporate it into Ryou’s story; having him experience losing a friend to darkness since it’s so normal for wielders in Daybreak Town to just disappear, and this would unintentionally become a theme for both me and Ryou as khux friends would just randomly disappear.

I was desperate for khux at this point and I decided to watch the fan translations for khx and GOD, god, was I obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about the foretellers. And I’m not going off about that here bc I already did that, but I actually started entering fandom again! I did it slowly, I started on tumblr before this blog was made altho it was me sending anons to the few khux related blogs I could have lol a friend convinced me to get twitter where I got involved with the ffxv fandom, which led me to the kh fandom and eventually the khux fandom there which is what REALLY got me going on khux.

I joined discord servers, most of the servers I’m in are khux related, and from there I joined the khux oc rp (shout out to anyone there who might be reading this lol here’s some art from the beginning of the rp,)

It’s SO FUNNY how the RP influenced me so heavily. I hadn’t RP’d in YEARS, I used to have a strict no oc rp policy, but here I was? And the funny part is, I had barely developed Ryou. I had scrapped his original story and all I had was POST WAR Ryou so I literally had to reverse write him; I had only ever written him as a depressed, guilt ridden adult, but it was a fucking blast and I have such fond memories of this rp when it was active,

But anyway, this encouraged me to get more serious about art! I started drawing, writing, cosplaying, and roleplaying when I hadn’t done any of that stuff in a very long time. The first time I ever drew a background was for a deviant art khux competition actually LOL

also! I always think extremely fondly of the drawing I did of Aced in the keyblade war. It was also one of the first backgrounds I ever drew and it felt like my real starting point in the khux fandom. It got a ton of notes on here and someone wrote a tiny fic in a reblog which just made me SO HAPPY like it really felt like people were noticing me :) I was going to draw a matching Ira but!! I just never did!! One day tho, it’s on my art bucket list to redraw this along with Ira,

Aside from my personal growth, khux was great for my social life ngl, I made SO MANY friends online and got to meet a ton of people irl over the years! It’s crazy to think about all the people I now know and talk to? It honestly makes me really emotional. I’ll never forget taking the train into NYC and meeting up with discord friends. Going to conventions and talking with people about the latest khux update? Absolutely insane and those were some GOOD TIMES, if I thanked every khux friend or even just person who made an impact on me then we’d be here for a LONG TIME,

Fun fact, for my Lauriam cosplay all I needed to buy was the wig I just owned his outfit LOL also? Probably retiring that cosplay ngl people treated me like absolute garbage when I wore him and it led to a lot of confidence issues for awhile ngl. That’s probably one of the only memorable negative experiences I have with khux; it was great when khux people recognized me but for kh fans that weren’t in khux? They were FUCKING MEAN??? fuck kh fandom at large, I only care about khux fandom,

This leads me to another huge part of my experience in khux fandom: THEORIES!! I used to write SO MANY and oh my god my brain was so full all the time. It was a huge appeal for me in the fandom; I had been previously writing theory posts in the RWBY fandom and it just migrated over to khux for me lol I had done a ton of theorizing around Lauriam tbh, it was really the only reason I liked his character at all bc initially I did not care about the dandelions, anyone who wasn’t Skuld I was like “please leave Now thanks”

A funny part of khux fandom I never intended to be apart of is the MEMES, I really only started doing memes as stress relief bc college had me so busy all I had time/energy for was these quick little shit post drawings.

The first meme I made, file name “invi despair” LOL we need to get her a girlfriend smh anyway, I think in my senior year of college I did a bunch of rapid fire memes all in one month bc the stress of finals was getting so bad afdgfhdgf as far as I know my impact on this fandom will be my memes bc all I do now is enter a kh/khux server and introduce myself and I go “yeah I draw art. here’s a meme” and everyone goes OH YOU, honestly I am nothing if not a clown

I’ve talked so much idk where I’m going with this. Khux is just a good game even if the gameplay actually kind of really sucks yknow lol but it was the first game I played where I like, REALLY got into the meta and the mechanics. I used to read so much on the mechanics and watch youtube videos on which medals were worth pulling for. I was never a whale or a top player exactly, but I could rank well if I tried lol I’ve made it to the top 100 for solo rankings, my party has made it to top 10, and in pvp I’ve made top 300. I’m not the highest level in my party but FUCK do I know how to manipulate this game LOL

And with all that hard work, the strategies, the theorizing, the content I’ve made-- it’s been my life for 5 years. I’ve logged into khux almost every single day. At the end, I have logged 1820 days in khux out of 1910 days. Kinda crazy. Crazier I’ve never spent money on khux either lol the only “money” gone into it was one time my mom gave me a google play store gift card and I used it on my birthday for a VIP xemnas medal which eventually made it to regular pulls anyway but it was nice and a little treat :)

I’m not a gacha fan, I don’t care for it, so I don’t think I’ll be touching another gacha again. But for kh? This was pretty fucking awesome, even if it sucked a lot sometimes LOL It was worth it for the people I’ve met most of all I think. I would honestly be a completely different person without khux and that’s REALLY insane to think about.

[latulasbian-1]

what are your thoughts on kankri? personally i never understood the appeal and im interested to hear your take since he Was on the b tier of your list

OK! Sorry for lateness but I only noticed your question at like 2:00 AM and needed a full tank of brain-gas to be able to convey my thoughts even semi-coherently. 

So Kankri’s a weird one, probably one of the most convoluted and self-contradictory characters in Homestuck. Its fitting given he’s pretty much a one note joke and hussie’s one-note joke characters actually wind up being either his most oddly complex (see: equius and feferi for instance) or most sympathetic (see: Nepeta). Kankri’s a bit of both imo, though I wouldn’t call him a favorite for me. 

Kankri’s characterization is built almost entirely on one fuckin’ note: “LOL AIN’T TUMBLR SJWs FUNNY AND ANNOYING!?!?!?”. If you disagree with this then I don’t even know what to tell you, bc everything from his style of long-winded monologues (that wind up running up on Hussie Ableism Moments bc in-narrative his infodumping is supposed to be annoying???) to his inability to take social cues to his supposed-to-be-interpreted-as-excessive use of trigger warnings to his unapologetic killjoy attitude to his supposed hypocrisy/”privilege” are literally all just a fucking layer cake of anti-SJW stereotypes. This is where the issue of how the fandom interprets Kankri kicks in, as people’s opinions on him (aside from a few diehards) tend to scale from “DAWWW CUTE WIDDLE UPPITY BEANBOY” to “fucking annoying neoliberal”. For the matter, neither of these are intended by Hussie, while he did design him to be cute he wasn’t meant to be hateable for leftist homestuck fans as a (neo-)liberal or faux leftist. Hussie just designed him after everyone hussie found annoying in the social justice community primarily on tumblr. Even his political monologues, though not WITHOUT hypocrisy and bullshit, tend to actually skew towards “pretty fucking reasonable hussie just thinks people being upset by bad stuff is stupid”.  

Now, people cite Kankri being ableist in his criticism of certain other dancestors for ~conforming to stereotypes~, which yes from an in context scenario is pretty fucking bad. If someone IRL is dealing with their disability in a way you think seems pretty stereotypical keep that thought to yourself. HOWEVER, AS ONE OF THE MOST CRUCIAL POINTS TOWARDS KANKRI BEING GENERALLY SYMPATHETIC, WE GET THE META ELEMENT. Hussie, in writing a hypocritical mansplainer who goes on and on and on about everything thats politically incorrect about the people around him, practically beat-for-beat replicates talking points PEOPLE HAVE USED TO CRITICIZE HOMESTUCK ITSELF. YES! MITUNA’S PRESENTATION AS A CHARACTER IS 100% UNAMBIGUOUSLY AWFUL IN ITS PORTRAYAL OF PEOPLE WITH BRAIN INJURIES AND MENTAL DISORDERS. DAMARA IS A RACIST STEREOTYPE SO BAD HUSSIE SHOULD GET THROWN IN JAIL. INCEST IS BAD. If ANYONE in homestuck should’ve pulled the meta knowledge shit in post-canon, kankri would’ve been a WAYYYYYY better candidate than dirk for it, especially since kankri seems halfway to realizing he’s fictional just by political analysis of the story he’s in! Kankri seems to exist at the apex of Hussie’s confusion about fandom, given he’s baffled enough by people being obsessed with his work yet so intensely negative that he can only seem to think of them as obsessive manchild wierdos with no sense of rational thought. As someone who myself unironically loves Homestuck and yet have an entire third of my brain dedicated to ripping it apart on an ethical level, I can see some of myself in that turtleneck’d contrarian. Just because someone is a fan of something doesn’t mean they will or should unthinkingly defend it from all recourse. This is something homestuck as a whole struggles with, I think back to the aspect or extended zodiac quiz where one of the questions amounted to “someone is talking shit about a show you like, how do you respond” and there wasn’t even an answer for “actually listen to what they’re trying to say and consider if they could be right”. Kankri is a symbol of sorts for those critical enjoy-ers, in a way. A stupid silly not-that-meaningful way, but a way. I think people should reclaim him. 

I’ve touched on it a bit before, but the last main sympathizing aspect of kankri for me (aside from personality things like his frankly unearned patience with a friend group that entirely fucking hates his guts) is a trait share by almost all the dancestors: Hussie’s fucking disturbing use of mental illness & psychiatric disorders with them. Between Kankri’s unwillingness to observe common social cues, his overtly poised and practiced manner of speaking, his obsession with using trigger warnings to warn off confrontation in leu of not just speaking his mind with everything, his tendency to cling to certain articles of clothing for long periods of time, his implied difficulty taking care of himself physically, and the fucking insulting “mom-friend useless-manchild-who-needs-nannying” dynamic he has with Porrim, he comes off (intentionally or no) as a beat-for-beat embodiment of an autistic person as seen through Hussie’s tropey and horribly ableist worldview. This is a common trait he shares with both Aranea and Mituna, as well as many of the other dancestors to lesser degrees (many of them, like Mituna, also have OTHER mental disorders flat-out-stated in such a way that makes their depiction just fucking confused and bad). For me, and for at least SOME other people, it makes unbiased critical reactions to them damn near impossible. They deserve better than how hussie can write them. In a lot of ways I have friends like Kankri, and Hussie’d almost fucking certainly find them just as embarrassing and annoying as he meant for Kankri to be. 

So yeah, Kankri isn’t my favorite by any means but i don’t feel like i can or should condemn him. He’s fun. I’d watch his video essays. 

And this isn’t even BEGINNING to touch on how much I loathe Porrim as an example of “good cool fun feminists that hussie can sexualize!” And her more open bisexuality than other trolls being both a tool for fetishization by Hussie and a fucking skin-crawling thing to use as a contrast for Kanaya’s status as either “the only confirmed lesbian in homestuck (until postcanon showed rose was a lesbian too)” or “the only lesbian troll in existence ever bc thats totally how sexuality would work with aliens” (sorry if you ascribe to the “all trolls are bisexual bc they’re supposedly binormative as a get-out-of-jail-free card for hussie’s hetero-ass ship tease shit” then. well get better soon) 

(seriously though everyone who pulls the “kanaya is the only lesbian alternian” shit owes every lesbian 100 dollars) 

[davekat-sucks]

balkan-with-no-pickles: Okay, stand down for a bit. I got into homestuck just last year and could not actually view the openbound flashes due to only having a mobile phone. As such, i dont know everything that was said in them, only things that have been stated by homestuck fans here (like Nekro) and on discord. I do not know everything that happened in them and i am sorry for the fact that i literally could not do so and that i am uneducated in the idea of what the dancestors are like. Sorry for even putting a comment in the first post.

?????? Dude, no, it's chill. You don't have to overexplain or apologize for commenting or for 'being uneducated on the dancestors.' When did I even call you that or imply such a thing? The dancestors are not a school subject; they are tertiary characters with literally no relevance in the story lol. Who cares if you don't know everything about them? Do new homestuck fans actually do that kind of infighting in Discord or something that you feel the need to defend yourself? If so, I'm sorry you had to go through that.

But this is exactly why I want you to understand that the point of this discussion is that this examplifies why I said that some fans shouldn't blindly follow someone's opinion just because many people agree with them or think it's the "morally correct way of thinking". Fans are not the author or paragons of virtue. You say you didnt even read openbound, so why even say that a character in it deserves something as awful as being paralyzed?

Read the comic, have fun, form your own opinions and ignore Tumblr. Otherwise, you get into rabbit holes of thought that could put you in a position you didn't mean to be, fandom activism is pointless and brings more trouble than it's worth. I recommend voice over nexus/let's read homestuck on YT if you wanna check out the homestuck flashes voiced, best wishes.

@balkan-with-no-pickles

Or if you have time, even get the chance to use the Unofficial Homestuck Collection too and play some of the flashes when you have the time.

[ardenttheories]

Though I believe the relationship between most of the hs fandom and the hs2 writing team is pretty toxic I think your 'us and them' attitude is going to perpetuate this. Your posts frame them as villain of sorts and the actions of some justify your distane of them all. I do not know the lives of these people nor all the beliefs they hold within themselves or if they all agree with each other. You need to lurn to be concise in your arguments and where to draw the line between fiction and reality.

The “us and them” mentality was founded by their attempts to isolate a significant percent of the fandom away from the recent content. This is not me perpetuating an ideology; it is me pointing out the flaws in what is happening, currently, and giving voice to the people who have been isolated by the writers and feel as if they are the only ones who feel the way they do. 

I have stated several times how things could improve, and frankly, I think I have been rather fair in many of my assessments - especially at the beginning, when most of the content was being released. But the fact of the matter is, it probably won’t change unless the writers can change the views of people like Kate or talk over her views in Homestuck^2 itself. Because the fandom isn’t the issue, actually; it’s solely in the hands of the writing team.

They are the people with the power, here. They decide what goes into the text, how things are presented, what views come through. They are capable of implementing every transphobic, homophobic, abuse apologist, anti-survivor sentiment we’ve seen in the comic so far - and they’re just as capable to... not do those things. They know their content is triggering. They know how much of the fandom can and cannot handle these things, and how much trigger warnings are important to individual people. And they have actively done everything they can to harm the fandom - have admitted to doing so, actually - that they possibly can. 

You do not take chapter-by-chapter trigger warnings away if you do not want to hurt the people reading your content. You do not respond to criticism by calling your fanbase transmisoynists because you don’t want to admit that your favourite is an abuser. You do not try to make everything you do better by claiming that canon is dead when you are writing the official story. 

What you seem to have completely misunderstood is that we are powerless in this relationship. Yes, we can complain; yes, we can plead; yes, we can try to appeal to them; but they are the ones writing the content. We are only the consumers. They can literally do anything they want to these characters, and they will, and have, merely to spite us. They can make the comic as dangerous as possible to mentally ill people as punishment for daring to say that they weren’t handling triggers well. 

I likewise do not know the lives of the people on the HS^2 team. I do, however, know most of their beliefs - because they do a damn good job of being transparent about it on Twitter. Their beliefs are toxic at best, and outright violent at worst. The problem is, of course, that it doesn’t matter if they don’t agree with each other on these views; they’re still coming through loud and clear. 

If the “good” writers are unable to stop the “bad” writers from pumping HS^2 full of untagged triggers, badly-handled sensitive content, incest, abuse apologism, transphobia, and victim denial, then that honestly says a lot about either: 

- How loud the “bad” voices are that the “good” ones are being spoken over

or 

- How quiet the supposed “good” voices are, and how much they might actually agree with the “bad” voices

I would also like you to, quite kindly, go through and read literally any of my posts. I have gone over several times the distinction between fiction and reality -and how, also, the opinions of a person in fiction tend to shine through in their reality as well. Kate’s abuse apologism isn’t just towards Vriska. She genuinely believes that. The same way as her transphobia isn’t just a fictional thing; she talks over transmen and masc-aligned enbies all the fucking time, and tells them that they don’t have a voice. Her racism is evident in the trivialisation of the BLM movement - and her outright hatred of Gamzee, who is very clearly meant to be an anti-black stereotype, as well as a representation of psychosis. 

The fact of the matter is, they need to be held accountable. We cannot just say, “oh, actually, us vs them doesn’t work”, because us with them didn’t work, either. They have started this mentality, made it clear that they are not with us, and in fact that they actively want to hurt us. All we want is for them to listen to genuine criticism and accept it, to take into account what people are saying - what transmen, mentally ill people, poc, and abuse survivors are trying to tell them - and handle the topics they’re bringing up with slightly more care.

I’ve said several times in my posts that this would literally fix everything. If all we got was an apology, an “we, as a team, are sorry for the hurt we have caused; we have reinstated a better trigger list on each chapter, we are listening to views more closely and have retconned some events that were transphobic/racist/homophobic, or we will take more care with them in the future, and for those instances that did happen, here is an explanation that isn’t just denial or us saying that we’re the writers and you have to accept what we do”, then... we’d have nothing to be upset about. The fandom would be content, would support HS^2, would be more than happy to praise the writers and break the “us v them” mentality. 

But they haven’t, and they seem to outright refuse to do so. And why the fuck should we be the ones to give? If we don’t hold them accountable, they will never change. They will continue to implement harmful and toxic views into Homestuck^2 without criticism or care. We, as a fandom, should not be the ones to end the “us v them” mentality when we are the ones being actively hurt, when they are the ones with the power, when they began the mentality to begin with. 

Of course, if you don’t find that this ask sits well with you, I’d like to suggest some advice to you the same that the writers like to tell us about Homestuck^2 and its content:

If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave. You are in no way obliged to interact at all. In fact, this could be the perfect place for you to write your own posts! Because, naturally, mine have no actual sentiment behind them and should not be viewed in any capacity by people who don’t agree with me, specifically. 

(I want to point out, of course, that the above paragraph is satire. You can do as you damn well please, and this blog IS meant to be interacted with. But maybe now you can see the irony - and fury - behind HS^2 for fans. Imagine if every time I got an ask even vaguely going against my own views, I just turned around and said, “sorry sweetie, not my problem, go do your own shit”. After a while you’d get fed up, and I’d get a callout for actively ignoring valid criticism. I don’t see why, in this capacity, the HS^2 writers shouldn’t be faced with the same.)

[green-torsos]

Yo, so I wanted to know why everyone does think June is trans? Like I mean John, as June. To me, it seems like Hussie only made it 'cannon' because of the toblerone thing, kind of like how JK made Dumbledore gay to appease people- but I want to know your take on it because you seem to be adamant on respecting that take, and maybe you can sway me to see it better. Just so you know, I respect June and will use she/her pronouns, but I kinned (John) because s(he) helped me personally with realizing I am trans, FtM (I'm a trans man). I'm having a little bit of an issue with it, because I haven't seen any actual representation of her (June) in the actual comics. Could you explain and help me out (gently please,,, I just want to learn about it more because maybe these are just internal issues I myself have).

Thank you for being respectful with this ask, I’m more than happy to explain.

June isn’t amazing rep, or even one I’d commend Hussie for, a lot of people are certain of that. It is a bit cheap to slap on a trans label after everything is said and done. He’s done this with a few others, namely Sollux and Roxy, who are canonly transmasculine, and Vriska who is a canon trans woman (Eridan is also not...entirely cis, but whatever way he swings on the gender spectrum is really up to speculation), by putting it in post canon content.

I don’t expect everyone to know all of this! Not at all, like I said it’s crummy to do this in a way where not everyone will see or know about it.

And if her pretransition self helped you realize you were trans, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Hussie for sure wasn’t coding her to be transfem (or any of the characters as trans for that matter), your interpretation is valid as fuck.

June so far hasn’t directly appeared in any homestuck content, but in a HS^2 update (yea, it sucks, and was done badly but it’s still there nonetheless) it was HEAAAVILY implied John was having hardcore gender issues. Again, shame on Hussie for doing this in a way not very accessible to Homestuck fans, but it doesn’t erase the fact it’s there.

With all this being said, I’ve seen no trans woman say June is affront, is such bad rep they don’t want her, or the like, they seem to genuinely enjoy the fact there’s a canon transfem character at all. I in no way speak for all trans women, I’m transmasculine myself, but this is the general consensus I’ve seen.

So, in the same vein that making Dumbledore pan for example would be kind of shitty even though everything surrounding him is fucking awful, the same goes for June Egbert. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying her as John with a friend group, for example, because I completely understand the need for character projection, and even alter stuff. All I’d like is for people to agree she’s canon, at the bare minimum.

Now, the reason I hate the idea that her and John can coexist, or just be in different timelines, is that it’s just...not how transness works. Saying “June/John” in the same sentence is literally just deadnaming her. There can be timelines in which a character doesn’t transition (like the older alpha John in homestuck, or Mom Lalonde) but it shouldn’t be portrayed as a good thing. There’s also a small issue with people calling others “Junebuggers” aka people who insist she’s canon and don’t like her being misgendered. It’s just incredibly dumb. It’s died out on a lot of platforms but I still see it pop up now and then and it makes me roll my eyes. But I digress.

So...I hope that was helpful? Sorry this ended up being a little long-winded sdfdsf. I don’t bear any grudge against you at all, just wanted to offer a bit of info.