#this also somewhat goes for terezi

[yurimartyr]

I woke up like an hour ago so these might not make as much sense but I made more

Where is your art on the Kanaya spectrum

[divineerdrick]

Homestuck: Beyond Canon Upd8 for 413

Happy 413 everyone! We knew we were getting something today, as James announced that earlier. This time, it's an extensive news posts with notes from the whole team. Looks like we've got a few comic pages as well. Let's see what we got!

James: I can definitely relate to what James is saying. Homestuck and its community helped me keep going when it seemed like there genuinely wasn't a path forward. Obviously it hasn't always been sunshine and rainbows, but I do still feel there is a lot of genuine goodness and greatness in our little corner of the internet.

And yay! James is an Aradia fan!

Kim:

Kim is one of the people who grew up with this comic. I honestly can't imagine what that must be like. Although I had a lot of media I enjoyed at 13, I don't feel like any of it had the kind of impact on me then that Homestuck had now. It's not like there wasn't anything good on, either! It was 1993 when I was 13, and WB and Disney were at their apex. But Homestuck hit different. I honestly can't imagine what it was like being able to relate to those kids like they could be your friends in another life, growing up along side them.

Miles:

A beautiful mindfuck is a great way to describe it. Honestly the somewhat over the top, trollish, insincere seeming way that Miles is writing shows a great love for Homestuck and the project in and of itself. The love honestly does come through.

Chumi:

Chumi appears to be even younger than Kim, though I could be wrong there. And she also grew up with it, if maybe starting a couple of years into its run. But it goes a step further for her. Homestuck is her formative fandom. And again, I can't imagine what that must be like, let alone now creating art for it.

Andi:

Andi is another member of the team to have grown up alongside Homestuck. It makes sense that this would create the most talented and passionate people to work on the project. Like many fans, though, they also had Homestuck influence their identity and help them feel safe in discovering who they were. It will always be important we have people like them keeping this fandom alive.

floralmarsupial:

While the way Homestuck inspired me was different, she too was drawn in and influenced by the very artistic questions Homestuck posed. Looks like James has managed to put together a team that has all been impacted by Homestuck in subtly different ways. And I'm totally here for it!

Haven:

Oh wow! Coming in on Murderstuck! Ouch! Still, the effect Homestuck has had on them is very obvious!

It's nice to hear more from each voice behind the project. I'm glad they took the time to make this celebration a bit more personal. But with all that said and done, it's time to read an Upd8!

There is so much to talk about just from this image.

First off, this is the most like Bro that Dirk has ever looked. And it's not just the fact that we've just got a plain white silhouette with shades. There is a lot of chaos in this panel reminiscent of Bro's apartment. That outfit has absolutely never looked wackier. The anime ninja aesthetics combined with the pooffiness of those shorts is already crazy. But the Kamina cape in this looks more cliché villain than anime hero.

While we can't currently see one of the monitors, we absolutely can see that Dirk has been keeping track of our Meat crew. My guess is that the other monitor is Deltritus.

Also we get a throwback with some orange drinks floating about.

Dirk is, of course, being suitably condescending here. After all, in his mind this is the only way to make the narrative matter, to make anything that we'll give a shit about. He probably knows we still enjoy the "narrative kiddy pool" but he's counting on us truly getting invested in what he has planned.

Wow! Nice frame break! Also this art slaps!

Apparently Rose and Terezi are still a thing. Dirk only seems to partially approve of this. From his perspective, the relationship is a very Rose thing to do. And Rose doing Rose things is important to him and his plans. He also appreciates that Rose doesn't have infinite patience for the finetuning that Dirk could spend a literal eternity on. It keeps him on something resembling a schedule.

So are we going to see these "scions" of theirs?

I like that there's an obvious sea horse in that test tube. Also, outside of Hero mode Dirk is still sporting his character features at least. He hasn't slipped into being a full guardian yet.

Well fuck. That might just be the hardest anyone has ever "spoken too soon."

Hell yes! Adult Terezi is awesome! Also, she's not getting rid of her facial features any time soon!

I hope I didn't jinx that . . .

I'd forgotten Terezi can hear Dirk's narrative. She's also very much on the "Get on with it!" train. Dirk was planning to skip ahead anyway, but of course he wants to unveil his creation first.

So Terezi will be the one that actually makes sure the new session happens. I'm surprised Dirk is allowing that. I can definitely get why he doesn't want it automated.

I can honestly believe that Dirk really does care about his creation.

And I can honestly see Terezi playing the long game. I'm honestly curious why she wouldn't, beside Dirk's fuckery.

Ouch.

Also, damn this art is so fucking good!

We've seen the way Terezi can let what she sees as a mistake eat at her. We've seen how far she'll go to fix it. Is John's death doing that to her? Is even this older, seemingly more jaded Terezi unable to let something like that go even with what's at stake?

Or could she possibly be letting Dirk think that's what's going on? I really kinda hope that's it.

Now that's just being mean pretending you don't know what she meant by being in her "CH4MB3RS", Dirk.

Apparently Dirk still has a mouth when he needs to.

FUCKING!!!

DAMN!!!

That's an interesting way of showing them speaking at the same time. Kinda like it.

Okay. That is some legitimate Bullshit. I like that even Dirk calls it out as such. That is a ton of power to just flex like that. His reasoning is sound, but even he knows he's partly doing it because he can.

Wow.

There is so much to potentially read into this moment. On the one had, this might be a genuine Rose moment. Even if Dirk has been manipulating her a lot, this version of Rose might genuinely be appreciative of what they're trying to do.

The other possibility is that Rose is manipulating Dirk this time. There've been hints, and I find it hard to believe otherwise, the Rose is aware Dirk has been manipulating her somehow. She may not have figured out how he's doing it, but I feel she knows. As an ascended Seer of Light, her ability to read the most fortuitous path is literally godlike. I can't imagine that definition of fortune including one where she keeps losing more and more agency. So this might be a moment where she's telling Dirk what he needs to hear to stop him from stealing more from her.

The worst part is he genuine believes that.

[cherryluvrx3]

meat lovers amirite??

Dave Strider x Reader x Karkat Vantas

Chapter 2

It’s been two days since I ordered that pizza and it’s been two days having that smug brat with the nametag “Dave” stuck in my brain.

Honestly I don’t know why I keep thinking about him.

Maybe because it’s been a while since a guy who wasn’t Gamzee has been nice to me or played along with my jokes? Or that he actually seems like a cool guy? Oh geez he is genuinely cool and he knows it. That’s probably why he seems so full of himself- but it’s like you can’t get mad because he has good REASON to be full of himself. I haven’t talked to anyone new my age since I was like a sophomore. The friends I have now are cool of course but I need to start making new bonds! New memories! I’m a senior! I should be talking to more people- well they preferably should be ones from my school but guys who work at Pizza Hut could also work!

Well anyways, as I was saying before, Mr. Dave who works at Pizza Hut has been on the brain and unfortunately for me, my friends also see him as a golden opportunity for me to open up the romance section of my life. So, he, a guy who doesn’t know us, and a guy who we don’t even know has become a recurring topic that my friends can’t just leave alone. Well I guess they’re just trying to help me get a boyfriend.. but still!

——— two days ago..

After I closed the door, I was already prepared to listen to the four dickbags I call friends tease and mock me till the sun goes down, well actually, three guys because Terezi’s sole focus was tearing up the pizza she just snatched from my hands.

“OoooH! Would you look at that? I think someone actually has a little crush?” Roxy giggled as she pulled out cups. “Oh my- shut up Rox. I literally just met the guy, saying I have a ‘crush’ is total delusion.” I grumbled snatching a cup from her.

“Really? Then what was with how you were acting hmm?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “You were totally trying to impress him by ‘acting’ cool and don’t lie! You tried to drag out the conversation just to talk to him more!” Roxy smiled slyly and bumped me with her hip. I tried to hide the embarrassment on my face by digging my head in the fridge, pretending to look for something.

“Mhm! If you ask me -” “No one’s asking-” “I THINK! That adorable, nervous way you were acting was totally a purrfect example of having a crush!” “I'M JUST NATURALLY SHY!” I shout to Nepeta as I see her already adding Dave and editing her mental shipping chart. “Says the guy who’s currently blowing a motherfucker’s ear off..” Gamzee groaned as he was right next to me when I yelled. “Ah sorry..”

“Yeah right they have a crush on that guy! He’s ugly just like I thought!” Terezi laughed while still chewing all the food stuffed in her mouth.

“...”

“...”

“...”

“Uh…Rezi?.. You’re blind ‘member..? Roxy awkwardly laughed.

“Okay and!? I can just tell! He has like- ugly energy y'know? I can smell it on him!” she said defensively, again, with food in her mouth.

“If you can smell anything on him it’s probably fuckin’ pizza grease.” I grumbled.

“I thought he was purrty cute right?” Nepeta asked Gamzee who was chugging a bottle of faygo that he pulled out of nowhere. “Hmm… he wasn’t too bad… the shades make him look a little douche-y though..” He murmured, now more focused on getting some sausage slices before Terezi ate them all.

“So?” Roxy slid next to me with a sly smile.

“So...?”

“Well are ya gonna try to get to know him or not?” She asked in a somewhat exasperated tone. I sighed before speaking, “Ok, lets say, hypothetically, I have somewhat of an interest in getting to know him- as a friend, literally how would I do that?” I asked before taking a bite of a slice that looked… extra burnt?

“I think they fucked up on the peperoni..” Gamzee pointed out how it was much more.. toasty. “Shit, I’ll eat it!” Terezi said, snatching up the most burnt piece and biting into it like nothing.

“..anyways!” Roxy said, bringing me back into the convo. “You can uh..hm..call? Right now? and complain about the burnt pizza so he can come give us a replacement?”

“Girl that’s not flirty, that's just asking for a new pizza.” I deadpanned. “Besides, it's not all burnt and it doesn't seem like Terezi minds eating it- god her jaw just unhinges like a snake..”

“Well you can call tomorrow for pizza to eat?” Nepeta offered. “Fuck I look like? A ninja turtle? I’m not eating pizza for two days in a row.” “Okay! How about like two days from now?” She pouted before shoving a cinnabon in her mouth.

“Hmm..”

“It’s the best ‘natural’ option ya got. A motherfucker gots to take chances if they wanna sniff the sweet aroma of the thorn covered flower we call love.” Gamzee patted my shoulder. “Ugh don’t let him start preaching again!” Terezi groaned, face planted on the table, clearly sick from overeating.

“I guess that’s what I’ll try..” I sighed.

———- present…

Okay.. it’s two days from now and I should call. But what do I say? Order a pizza duh! I mean when he actually gets here what do I say? I gotta stand out compared to all the other guys around town he delivers to know? But I also can’t make it super obvious I wanna get to know him because that’s… like.. creepy…

ding!

Roxy <3

-You call yet?

Tezi >:]

-if you’re gonna do it, don't pussy out!

Ugh! If I keep worrying about the details I'll never get anywhere. I’ll call now. Right now.

————

Dave sighed and blew off the imaginary dust from the counter for the third time. John keeps this place really clean.. he wished he didn’t though… no, not really. It’s more like he wanted something to do. Today was a really slow day. Only thing he could do was count the seconds or annoy Karkat but he already over did it today, the guy seemed like he was on his last thread for real. Best if he didn’t go in the back for a bit and just let Karkat make his pizzas. It was sort of therapeutic for him? In a weird way?

Whatever.

He just wanted something to do.

Normally he could just talk to Aradia who was covering John’s shift but she was out on delivery right now. Even though she was always a bit weird to talk to, that's how desperate he was for something to do.

He sighed again.

.

..

…

….

Ring ring-

He never picked up a phone so fast.

“This is Pizza Hut, what can I do for you?”

“Yeah uh.. Can I get a delivery of a small pepperoni pizza?”

“Alright.. Anything else?”

“Uhm yeah can you...”

“Uh uh?”

“Can you..ugh.. make sure to send your cutest delivery boy again? Ok thanks bye!”

and the call ended.

Oh.

Must be that one guy from before. Last time Dave went he saw their friends peeking around the corner so he could figure out that the poor guy’s friends just set them up. Does that mean they’re doing it again? Already feels a bit like an old joke to play so soon but whatever, at least he had something to do.

A few minutes later Aradia came in looking as.. Aradia like as ever.

“Hey Aradia?”

“Yes, Dave?”

“We got another order for delivery but uh.. can I take it and you’ll man the cashier?”

“Hm.. alright.” Aradia said and just tossed the keys to him which he of course caught perfectly in a cool kid manor and he was out the door.

[findingtheperfectcharacter]

Uh warning for Murderstuck Stuff, religion stuff, tell me if I should tag more stuff?

Nobody:

Me: You know, at least part of the thing with Gamzee is that you Think during murderstuck they’re doing a bunch of bad cliches related to drug use and mental health. And it is worth noting that the subversion is both A. Not that direct so it’s understandable that people read it as played straight especially since like… What the hell is Terezi’s arc related to what I’m going to say- I pretend not to see it. And B. Relies on that original assumption to work making it uh… Iffy. Like, it’s still listed on the Wiki that Gamzee’s acts are related to his sobriety and not The Other Stuff-

Anyway, the trick is that he’s actually just… Following the script of Things That Need To Happen. It’s the same deal as Vriska creating Jack Noir, but with English. Arguably being led to do so by Lil Cal.

See if Jack Noir doesn’t exist, the Trolls game doesn’t end the way it does. Homestuck as it is doesn’t exist. He needs to exist in a sort of recursive way, and Vriska ends up doing a lot of shit to complete that cycle in act 5.

Same goes with English but with a looooot of additional points. English is made up of four people, Gamzee, ARquius, and of course Caliborn. For English to exist, ARquius needs to exist, so Gamzee needs to kill Equius and later use his blood to make a sprite. How does he know that? He’s been talking to Lil Cal who’s got that essence to literally tell him that. The same Time Inevitability nonsense comes when he says he’s literally the God Of Double Death (double death. As in dying twice. Like killing ghosts.) like… Kind of! Depending on what level of in his head Cal is, him saying ‘me (Gamzee) and ME (Cal)’ becomes EXTREMELY funny.

Don’t know if Nepeta needs to die though. That might just have been a dick move. Face scratch is somewhat questionable too-

Edit: Nepeta did also need to die for plot reasons (she would have killed him 😔)

[29pageshomestuckeveryday]

Homestuck, page 3,093

==>

Author commentary: Later, Terezi somewhat literally does fall prey to her own wild cherry apeshit apocalypse, when she goes on a harrowing Faygo bender. But let's not soil a perfectly good and interesting metaphysical discussion between two good characters by mentioning the names of certain bad juggalo characters. Then Dave calls out her Two-Face shtick. In the Hivebent book I pointed out most trolls have certain powers or themes that were directly ripped from other figures of pop culture, in particular characters from the superhero genre. Most of the time it's something incredibly on the nose. For example, Sollux's eyebeams are unmistakably Cyclops, Nepeta's claws are unmistakably Wolverine. Terezi has a funny combo of Daredevil (blind, red-eyed, lawyer vigilante), and Two-Face, the coin-flipping madman nemesis of Batman. Both characters are directly involved with the brutal dispensation of justice, one from a heroic angle, the other villainous. Two-Face was a once-upstanding district attorney who went off the deep end after his facial half-disfigurement and started doling out "justice" according to the whims of his coin, which was very similar in design to the one shown above. These ideas seem like a straight rip from those characters, but usually I tried to put a sort of unique spin on those elements that would make them more suitable to the themes of the character. One consistent theme with Terezi using her coin to determine the fate of others is that both forks in the road usually lead to the same grim consequences, since as she likes to say, "luck doesn't actually matter." (See the end of the above conversation.) The first time is during Lemonsnout's trial, when she maniacally and disingenuously ignores the flip result due to being "blind," thus revealing the execution verdict was always a fixed outcome. There's a similar outcome here, where the coin flip just creates two parallel Dave timelines, and both converge into this one macabre outcome, leaving Dave with a choice that isn't even a real choice. And finally, all this coin stuff culminates in the way Terezi ends up bringing Vriska to justice, which is also presented as a choice that isn't really a choice—and for Terezi, it's the toughest non-choice of all.

[calware]

edit: to clarify this isn't talking about taking a character and having then be trans (like transfem dave or transmasc kanaya or anything) this is about "what if a hs character was hypothetically originally written as the opposite gender"

edit 2: here's (most of) the context lol

making my own post because people keep getting sent weird anons and i don't want to put them on blast. anyways i really don't get how some ppl ended up at that conclusion that claiming "changing a homestuck characters gender impacts other aspects of their character" is transphobic like? what??

bc taking john for example, somewhat similarly to dave, a lot of his self image is based on preconceived notions of what it's like to Be A Man, which you can see most prominently imo in the way he idolizes action movie actors, esp when his reality does not live up to those expectations and he starts doubting his self-worth. also, the homophobia is also a pretty obvious indicator of the toxic masculinity he internalizes 🤨 ?

another thing to understand is that a lot of the gender significance in homestuck relies on the fact that we as readers have experiences in the real world that impact our experiences consuming and interpreting media. for example, with rose, a girl who frequently used gameFAQs in 2009 (which is seen as a mainly male-dominated space) is significant (something something gamergate)

not to mention... romantic attraction?? if you change a character's gender, suddenly the narrative significance of their romantic targets changes drastically. if dirk was a girl, act 6 would be completely different just from the fact that the love quadrangle ALONE would have an entirely new dynamic. kanaya is another huge example of this; if she was a boy her crush on vriska would no longer be about lesbian attraction, but instead just another heterosexual love triangle. even if that doesn't necessarily change much plot-wise, as i mentioned earlier it has a big impact on the experience the reader has because a completely different message is being conveyed. and that's just kanaya's sexuality, that's not even getting into her prominent themes of motherhood (or femininity in general)

you can do this with virtually any character. porrim being a woman is important because she is a very feminist character. kankri being a man is important because his male privilege allows him to ignore porrim's concerns about gender inequality on beforus, making a statement about gender inequality irl. jane being a girl is important BOTH because her character subverts the (YA novel?) female protagonist trope AND because the condesce chooses solely women to be heirs (this goes for jade and the prexies as well) which (at least somewhat) subverts female character tropes in general (even just the fact that a woman is the ruler of alternia is somewhat subversive as well). also, this is sort of a bonus, but jane being the first human in hs to wear pants was a moderately-sized Deal at the time. speaking of the condesce, the fact that doc scratch/lord english choose powerful women in the story to act as their pawns (the condesce, the handmaid, vriska, terezi, rose, even kanaya and jade somewhat)? gender's pretty important there too!! for obvious reasons!! roxy's identity is heavily tied to femininity, she refers to herself as a girl the most out of any other character. she herself even compares herself to the femme fatale trope, one that is paralleled by jake's interest in the trope as well. vriska and tavros's relationship depicting a girl harassing and abusing a boy is absolutely important when considering the fact that male victims of abuse are largely ignored irl. cronus is based off the greaser subculture, which is composed of men. hussie based aradia off the "spooky japanese ghost girl" trope. nepeta's interest in shipping would be taken differently if she were a boy, as shipping (and fandom in general) are typically seen as feminine interests, which is juxtaposed with her ruthlessness and violence. this is similar to how karkat's interest in romcoms (yknow. chick flicks.) is juxtaposed with his aggressive and unpleasant attitude. latula's commitment to "girl power" is a statement about the irl use of girl power and how it can inadvertently imply that women aren't inherently equal to men. literally everything about ARquius. damara is maliciously sexualized (although more due to her being japanese rather than a woman, but it's still influential). rufioh is literally based off another character. i could go on

the bottom line for most of these instances is that we interpret a lot from characters based on their gender because we apply the context of our own societal experiences and biases to the story. so no matter what you do, 99% of the time, even if changing a character's gender doesn't necessarily impact the plot, it's going to impact the way the character is received and understood

(this isn't to say that trans hcs or genderbends are problematic or anything. im just giving my opinion on a topic that's caused a bit of discourse recently lol)

then again it's been a while since i've read homestuck and im pretty bad at literary analysis. so what do i know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ feel free to add on, even if you disagree!

[palluniskillas]

Ideas for my 2009's humanstuck au:

• Nepeta, Sollux, Karkat and Terezi are close friends.(Karkat is their internet friend in common because he lives in Argentina and they live in the US).

• Nepeta is an otaku and fan of warriorcats, likes to rp with terezi and Feferi. Likes to draw and animate in her nintendo ds.

• Sollux is a computer wizard, a huge gamer (mostly plays Cod) and likes to spite Karkat and his gamer skills. He is a sarcastic king and charges people $20 to fix their computers.

• Sometimes Sollux pirates Nep's favorite animes for her and they watch them together.

• Terezi is blind in this au. She likes candy. A LOT(the reason why she wears braces) specially those cherry jelly gummies. She likes 90's fashion and watching dragon tales (couldn't be more proud about this fact)

• Feferi is a huge fan of everything sea related (coughmermaidscough). Attends to swimming lessons along with Eridan. Has a plethora of mermaid swimming tails. She also likes to take care of her fish pets, sometimes a little too much.

• Fef's mother is kind of absent, her big sister, Meenah, too. So the staff in her mansion take most care of her. Nonetheless, she always has a good spirit, even if she feels somewhat alone.

• Eridan is the typical snobby teen with straight A's and a rich family (which might be the reason for the A's). He often goes to parties with his "friends" in the academy, but really the only friend he has and understands him is Feferi. He often feels alone because his father leaves for business trips, leaving him with his excuse of an older brother.

• Eridan likes and owns all of the Harry Potter Saga (at the moment) but prefers not to nerd out in fear of rejection (only nerds out to Feferi). He is also an avid fan of greek history and mythology.

• Tavros (who is a pokémon encyclopedia) is close friends with Aradia, sometimes they trade pokémon cards and have a few matches. His family immigrated from Spain to Argentina.

• Tavros is best friends with Gamzee, they hang out often and have rap jam sessions with basic rap beats coming out of Tav's family computer.

• Gamzee is...you know how Gamzee is. He likes Porta and ICP, sometimes he ends up at the hospital for drinking too much soda. Likes drawing and making tye-dye tshirts. His father owns a huge furniture store but most people in town think the store is just a facade to hide more..criminal matters.

• Karkat sometimes hangs with Gamzee, but he's more close with Kanaya and Ter. He likes programming and playing Cod, but not as much as watching the pirated romcom cds he hides under his matress with Kan.

• Karkat also has a slight obsession with the telenovelas his dad watches(coughMaríaladelbarriocough), which are the same ones Kankri criticises for being too problematic.

• Kanaya attends a catholic school her mom is a teacher in with Karkat and Rose. She likes to buy fashion magazines and tries to copy the models with the patterns they provide. Has a small academic rivalry with Rose Lalonde, but there's also some sparks there.

• Aradia lives in the same neighbourhood as Karkat and Tavros, and is internet friends with Sollux, who she met on club penguin a few years ago. She is more of an outgoing kid, and is not often seen inside her house unless she is initiating an excavation in her backyard in search for bones. Any kind of bones.

• Aradia is also internet friends with Nepeta and Terezi (they talk sometimes in skype) they're planning to one day meet up in the future and play dnd together, with their new addition to the group, Vriska.

• Vriska lives in the US in Equius' neighborhood. She has been Terezi's friend on and off, because of differences between eachother. She also met Tavros on the online game "8 ball pool" and tries to teach him how to ace pool like her.

• Vriska is kind of the problem child in her school, a punk at heart. She skips school often and disrespects authorities. Nobody but Ter knows the reason behind this jealousy towards her older, more successful sister, Aranea (and perhaps some neglecting from her mother too).

• Vriska likes fantasy books (often where the hero is NOT weak and is VERY awesome) and likes to imagine herself in those worlds as a form of escapism. She also likes Avril Lavigne and has a pet spider, which is very demanding when it comes to food.

• Equius is the quiet but kind kid..if not a little weird. His family proudly owns a robotics company his father initiated in the 90's, Equius is the nervous heir in line.

• He is very close friends with Nepeta, to the point of having grown together. They have a small tradition of celebrating eachother's birthdays with a tea party. Nepeta likes her tea without milk, Equius prefers more milk than tea.

[rosemary-is-in-pesterquest]

John Egbert. May I rant some about him? Because he’s so ignored compared to other popular HS characters and that’s not right.

John is simple. He has his silly moments with his pranks. He’s absolutely a little shit without using hundred irony layers of the Strilondes or Karkat’s explosive demeanour. He’s often written as dumb, and yeah he’s had his silly moments… but he’s also so NORMAL when you compare him to the rest of the cast. He sees things like most of us would, scratching his head at complicate bullshit and how everybody else just increase the weird shit factor off the roof.

I think he’s one of the simplest characters ever. He obviously has his problems, his emotional turmoil, his traumatic moments even if the narrative sadly doesn’t delve into it, his funny remarks and what not. But unlike most characters, it’s easy to keep track of his motives and he’s not obscured in that sense.

And yeah! He’s been a trolling dick sometimes but he’s the most open about caring for his friends. He bought stuff for his consorts for Pete’s sake. He’s spoken so much with the trolls even though he had enough reasons not to (Terezi got him killed in another timeline, Vriska is… Vriska, Karkat is Karkat and too much Karkat).

Many people have pointed out his narrative purpose is to be bossed around by everybody else to make plot happen. And while it is somewhat true as somebody who goes with the flow without too much question, he’s not only some puppet. Come on. He actively chose to stay with Jade so she wouldn’t be alone. The times he’s been kind or trollish weren’t because of plot, metanarrative or commands or ulterior motives to make people act a certain way.

He’s simple. That’s his charm. It’s not a bad thing. In a webcomic with convoluted plot and characters who are hard to pin down, John remains a breath of fresh air with his simplicity. I feel he represents people who read Homestuck and couldn’t care less about intricate symbolism and meta.

I’ve seen him in HS2 and the epilogues. He’s mostly okay? Like he’s thankfully not strongly hit with OOC drama, but the writers keep torturing him with depression problems. Or with broken friendships. Or with sad family matters.

I don’t mean to say John always has to be the silly joyful dude we knew back in the day. By all means, he’s allowed to be depressed and less active! I would be too with a dad that was my whole world gone. It makes sense. He makes the most sense in HS2 and the Epilogues despite the bad kind of bullshit that exploded here.

And I think that’s my problem with him in those horrible continuations. He hasn’t done much wrong, really.

But if you want to paint him as a metanarrative device meant to lead your sad excuse of a plot, you can’t do so without the characters that lead him. Not without the people who sometimes called him a dumbass but later rectified or admitted he had his great things. Not without the friends that saw him as a leader who kept his calm in the most batshit moments, even though he flipped at a movie and not when he saw his dead dad.

So where are his friends? Where’s his sister Jade who went lonely for 3 years without him, who tried to cheer him up when he had nightmares? Where Dave, the guy who called John his best bro and the reason he went back in time to become Davesprite and save John? Where’s Rose, who impacted their session so much, who John saw all grimdark and incomprehensible and he just spoke to her like normal, like a friend?

Where’s Jane, her grandma and mom, a grounded friend to her group like John, with whom they’re share a like for goofy pranks? Where’s Roxy, the girl he saw suffering when she lost her mom, who was with him during Game Over, and who hit so well with her? Where’s Dirk… shit I can’t remember if they had interactions… but cold irony master Dirk with thrice the awkwardness of Dave, interacting with John? Would be hysterical. Where Jake who John complimented, even saying his goofy God Tier outfit rocked and how sidekicks were always so underestimated, how both loved movies?

And the trolls? Karkat, Vriska, Terezi, they’re all fucking disasters in some way and yet John would speak with them so much!

His ties may seem less obvious or dramatic, but he’s just. He’s got so many bonds people ignore because they’re not romantic… it makes sense for him to feel miserable and sad for all the horrible things he lived through. What doesn’t make sense is that so many people who looked up to him would leave him abandoned. He deserves company and support, dammit!

He’s so simple and good. The juju that breaks the metanarrative? We’re lucky it fell into HIS hands, any other character would’ve fucked up so much with so much power. Not John. He’s just chilling there.

Please pardon me for the rambling I was feeling passionate today

I don't have a grand enough reply except that John is so good

edit: also I just wanted to mention that I realllly hate how dumbed down people make John, to the point he's this completely innocent guy who doesn't know what a swear word is. John LOVED messing around with Karkat + the other trolls and their lack of human understanding

[davekat-sucks]

(Had to retype this, thank god keyboard prediction exits and I've learned my lesson to NOT go straight to typing big shit on tumblr without doing it on a document first. Keep in mind this is my very opinionated and bias shipping takes, ship whatever you want this what i like and dislike)

While ago I had questioned my liking towards Vriska x Equius and have figured out why I like the pairing. It all comes down to if Vriska is equally matched in strength with partner. I'm not into spiderbreath because I think John is too good for her plus he's sorta passive and she'll easily make him do what she wants. The only one I'll give a pass for is Tavros because of all that history and it could be turned into something interesting (tragic and or redefining). Same goes for characters she can overpower so, Terezi, Kanaya, Gamzee, etc are a no for me. Same goes for characters who could overpower her like doc scratch (tho that's the only one I could think of and it's not even because of the age gap because I think Vriska paired with Meenah is good).

Vriska x Aradia i can only see as a one and done deal with Aradia gets revenge then doesn't bother with Vriska anymore. Terezi was hesitant to kill Vriska, the relationship had really strained. Sollux wouldn't be interested. For me it has to be someone who'd be motivated by her but could also match and handle her. So with that in mind, other pairings I like with her include Eridan, Karkat, Caliborn, Meenah, Tavros, maybe the Striders and also maybe Feferi. Eridan and Vriska were a thing and they were going strong, they shared interests and power. I think if the game never happened they would've stayed together. Equius because they can cooperate and work together but have tricks up their sleeves to keep eachother on their toes. They have a somewhat mutual respect for eachother. While Vriska is definitely most stronger than Karkat she still respects him and listens to him, and Karkat can level with her and hold his ground. They'd banter for hours and keep a pitch energy going the  whole time. Caliborn never interacted with Vriska as far as I remember but if they did I think they would have a chaotic rivalry. Both try to one up everyone and will kick anyone down just to be on top. They have plenty of traits one of eachother can pick on, or hell maybe even apperciate. Vriska wants to be a hero and Caliborn wants to be a villain, they would put on shows of strength just to prove who'd be better(and plays, remember that paradox space comic?) If they'd choose to be civil they'd roleplay. 1/2

[compartmentalisinghmpf]

Another HS fic rec/review!

Yes, I have in fact read more than one fic in this fandom! Warning: this is long and detailed, really more of a review than a rec, although it is definitely intended as a rec. Still, if you’d rather not know very much in advance, maybe just go and read the fic now? Or read the first eight paragraphs of the review, and then stop.

Actually, you know what, I’ll put the readmore there.

the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart, by laurasauras

This is a post-Epilogues fic, it’s slash, and it’s kinky as hell. As such, it’s a bit of a surprise that it ended up one of my favourite fics in this fandom. (I’m almost exclusively a gen reader, and I haven’t even read the Epilogues, nor do I particularly want to.)

The basic setup is this: John’s come back to life on Dirk’s ship, after Dirk narrative-murdered him in the Epilogues. (Not having read the Epilogues, my idea of what happened there is somewhat vague; I hope I’m not too far off in my inference here.) It’s a year into the journey and everybody is bored to death already, or rather not to death, as everyone but Terezi is either a god or a robot or both.

Everybody’s also depressed, especially John.

This fic is many things: Moving. Disturbing. Funny. Romantic. Bleak. Heartbreaking. Weirdly hopeful. It’s probably also hot, but I’m not the best judge of that.

A big part of the appeal of the story lies in the peculiar composition of its emotional atmosphere. It’s the tedium of space travel, mixed with the melancholy of an immortality only just begun, and the incongruously innocent pursuits with which the ship’s passengers, including the self-declared villain of the piece, fill their all too ample time. Everybody’s getting along just slightly better than you’d expect, for a group where one of the four literally killed and/or kidnapped two of the others.

When John isn’t dissociating, mentally and also in the most literal sense, he joins in the odd social life of the ship: helping with joint arts and crafts projects like building an origami city, or live-reenacting the entirety of Shrek after watching the movies an unhealthy number of times.

It’s weirdly domestic; cozy in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way. Also, a reminder of the fact that these are, even if they’re technically all adults now, people who were subjected to a violent case of arrested development at age 13 or 15, respectively.

There is a kinship of sorts between them, perhaps born out of the fact that they have all had their lives shaped and violated by Narrative, and it’s stronger than grudges born of whatever they (mostly: one of them) have done to each other - though it doesn’t necessarily translate to a viable form of closeness. It’s a fascinating dynamic, deftly portrayed, and strangely moving

Rose(bot), and John’s relationship with her, is a particular standout here. Rose is recognisably Rose: prickly and brittle; aloof, ironic, and uncannily perceptive. Her machine body literalises her persona, trapping her in it. And John knows her, is as comforted by her presence as he is disconcerted by her form and its implications; tries and fails to comfort, himself.

The most important relationship of the story, though, is of course John and Dirk, and those two do not get along, initially. And really, should anyone be getting along with Dirk, here? Should John? John, for one, really isn’t sure.

Dirk provokes – constantly, compulsively; John reacts; and John is the air guy, the breath guy. Taking Dirk’s breath away, literally, is his natural defensive instinct.

Dirk, of course, gets off on it.

So it turns into a thing, and the thing blooms into something more, a strange, unwritten pact of mutual release and comfort, and then more, still.

It goes without saying that the kink here isn’t safe. These are two people with awesome (in the traditional, old-fashioned sense) powers, outsourcing their respective suicidal urges to each other. Mostly, perhaps, Dirk outsourcing his to John - but remember, Dirk had already killed John once, before the start of the story.

The John voice here is fantastic; it comes through even in customary Homestuck second person singular.  He’s doofy, flippant; possessed of extraordinary powers of denial. Some part of him seems permanently stuck in pre-teen-hood. There’s a sort of residual innocence to him that is perhaps mostly fecklessness, or perhaps it’s the other way around. His moments of cruelty feel childish, impulsive, lacking deep-seated malice.

Dirk also feels entirely in character: shitty in small, everyday ways too trivial to deserve the epithet “evil” (though with less equivocal evil in his past, and possibly future); wound impossibly tight; mulishly committed to his chosen role; yet also soft and uncertain, and ready for acts of devotion in all the worst ways.

Some of their dynamic here is about ideas of being evil and being a/the hero, because John is still hung up on a child-like idea of heroism (or perhaps it’s more accurately termed protagonism, here), and Dirk has dedicated years to fashioning himself into a villain (or, more precisely, an antagonist). These roles fuel their encounters, to a degree - though perhaps not as much as they think, because there are deeper and different underlying dysfunctions here.

There’s other things worth praising here, too. The writing is pretty damn flawless, and more: It’s one of those fics in which sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph just… punches you in the gut (or maybe in the heart) with how well it encapsulates an emotion, a character, a situation, or even, sometimes, a fundamental truth of life.

But this review is coming up on 900 words and it’s probably about time I stopped. I never know how to end these things, so I guess here I’ll just say: go read the fic!

[alienssstufff]

Can I ask about what classpects you DO have for the dsmp homestuck crossover? I'm particularly interested in Quackity and Slime's, and also Sapnap's!

WHWHWH I'm not particularily the best at classpecting but for you anon [and my own closure] I will do my best uwu

DISCLAIMER: None of these classpects I pick are set in stone and this au is always open for other interpretations

- - -

[ QUACKITY : Prince of Mind ] Was Dead Set on making him a Mind Player - maybe it's because of the reminder of Terezi - maybe it's because his cc is a mf law student (if we were to discuss what cc! Quackity's classpect is, it probs won't be the same as c!Quackity but still a Mind Player in my head uwu)

There are many ways on interpreting classpects though I'll be citing from this acc in particular: dahniwitchoflight

Some quotes from there I want to point out this paragraph

"Outwardly they can be fiery and passionate in their intelligence and thoughts and theories of what they know, with tendencies to let emotion cloud their logic at times in really heated discussions. They like to be somewhat stubborn and showy about how they do things as well, loving to explain every single step and outcome of how they think and the true conclusions that they come to, to everyone who cares to listen."

Very fond of his recent lore stream, the whole Las Nevadas series in general >w< this explanation with the love for explaining every single step reminds me a lot of the Lessons he told to c!Slimecicle.

"Let emotion cloud their logic at times" summarises well about some of his (initial) goals of using Las Nevadas to exact revenge, a fuck you, to the people he doesn't like - and also using revenge to repeatedly punish c!Dream just because (after a certain point) he starts to like it etc "They use their Minds as weapons of destruction as well as destroying Minds."

The passion in a Prince of Mind's intelligence is so very much c!Quackity. I haven't fully experienced that arc yet but if there was any time to demonstrate that side of him - it would have been during the elections and the Pogtopia arc >:] His want for power and knowledge for politics and the law (haha) would have definitely come in useful there.

"use their own false or fake personas and different roles in order to appear more unique and unlike everyone else. Their roles that they play would also constantly be destroyed in favor of new ones when the next one goes stale and not so unique anymore." While not completely true, I'm a huge advocate for c!Quackity (in the DSMP) being part shapeshifter.

Taking up different roles, personas - reminds me of the WEEK 2's Lesson to c!Slimecicle: QUACKITY: ‘Politics are the way to power.’ If you want power you’ll have to play the politics game. And what that means is that you have to meet people, *moves on the board*- SLIME: *mimics his steps* QUACKITY: -make friends, create relationships of all sorts, e-even with people you don’t like. [SOURCE: DSMP Transcripts]

Not a clean cut analysis but the intention is there uwu

Alternatively was going to place c!Quackity as a THIEF of MIND instead but argued otherwise because of "They are really not team players, very unwilling to share anything about themselves with others." since that guy literally yearns for community and belonging - One of the core reasons he made Las Nevadas. Like he Wants to cooperate with people - Examples being:

>Wanting to build El Rapids (then Las Nevadas) with c!George, c!Karl and c!Sapnap - then feeling betrayed that they went without him [SOURCE: 'Quackity Confront Wilbur and George' at 39:20] >QUACKITY: *taken aback* No! Listen, listen. We’re a country! We’re together! We’re supposed to be together! *blocks another swing of Purpled’s sword* We’re supposed to help each other, Purpled!" [SOURCE: DSMP Transcripts] but looking at him now I guess he's just not very good at it whwhwh-

- - -

[ SLIMECICLE : Heir of Time ] Again classpect analysis taken from here: dahniwitchoflight

There’s a lot we’ve yet to learn about c!Slimecicle [cc!Quackity did say that its story isn’t over and theres much to develop] - nor am I as certain as I was for c!Quackity’s classpect  but the definition of what an Heir of Time is intrigues me: “One who Invites Manipulation of Time or one who Invites Manipulation through Time”  Its journey so far being to learn (up close) about humanity, how characters in the DSMP function, and to witness the turnout of these characters and the events (consequences) they have caused. By choosing to no longer be a bystander and bringing itself into the fray (making itself known) of the DSMP’s antics, c!Slimecicle in turn allows itself to be changed by these events too in order to learn and grow.

Another interesting definition about Time Players I found came from [SOURCE: classpect-analysis ]: “Time is all about time, endings, accepting death, and inevitability.” Connect this with c!Slimecicle’s talk about ‘turning to dust’ and nihilism and there you go uwu (Also I like the idea of c!Slimecicle and c!Karl as while theyre ‘technically’ both immortal on the DSMP, they could work together and/or discuss events that have happened / will happen as time players >w<)

Class wise, “Heirs naturally gravitate towards their Aspect or unconsciously seek it out. They huge amounts of Aspect related strength as well.” from the Heir of Time summarises c!Slimecicle’s current character, seeking to witness the outcome of things. “Their challenge is to not get stuck on one thing, to know when to move on and adapt” it moves slowly (literally) but it moves anyway. This can also be interpreted quite literally since it IS a slime x]c. From the documentary video in Quackity’s 3rd lore stream, slimes are known to ‘goophmorphisize’ into other things in order to Adapt. 

“Inherits the Time”, meaning they believe they have all the Time in the world, and they may be right. The guy is immortal (still killable sadly, but immortal and cannot die of old age)- confirmed its existed for many years.

“An Heir of Time will have huge amounts of patience and a great natural instinct for how things will end up. They naturally gravitate towards the end, destruction or concepts of fate and destiny, because of this, they may have an interest in ambiguous fortune-telling or astrology that predicts how you might die.” ^^^THIS. ENTIRE. PARAGRAPH. THIS ENTIRE PARAGRAPH ^^^.

“They might have the personality of a naive spiritual saint that hopes they will make a change, or to end something wrong in the world, but doesn’t really act to go through with it, its more of a nice thought to them.” This quote too - it’s not stupid it just tends to let things happen because thats what it’s been used to its whole life. We do learn in the Lessons segments of Quackity’s 4th (and latest) lore stream that c!Slimecicle has good intentions and morals - c!Quackity in the end learning more from c!Slimecicle in return about kindness.

TL;DR  c!Quackity is a PRINCE OF MIND and c!Slimecicle is a HEIR OF TIME

Again - definitely not set in stone - I’m eager to learn more about c!Slimecicle and c!Quackity when the time comes uwu

[skaianest]

Active VS Passive

If you take a look at most classpect / title / class / aspect tumblrs most describe whatever class they’re talking about as “active/passive x class” but most people when asked what active / passive mean in regards to homestuck don't seem to have a solid answer of what that even means. This is further exemplified when certain classes active/passive - ness is called into question. There is also an unknown scale to which every class is graded upon that is their activeness / passiveness which is also a topic of debate, The fact that there is a scale however also implies that there is a notable enough of a difference in activeness / passiveness in classes that is not only recognizable but also integral to the character. The most popular theories that I've seen as to what active / passive refer to is their capabilities and tendencies such as Active Classes force their aspect / Passive Classes are natural

Active Classes have to learn their aspect / Passive Classes are instinctual

and the biggest one I've seen is

Active Classes use their aspect selfishly / Passive Classes use their aspect for others.

now based on what I've read from homestuck and from the word of god, I'd say that that what activeness / passiveness refers to is in any situation how likely they are to act / react. and I believe one of the biggest misconceptions is that this does **not** only apply to their use of their aspect. In regards to your classpect (title) and how its shown in the story I believe it is a good idea to read the above linked post as it came from hussie himself and gives examples from within the story as well, but my interpretation of it is that active/passive is your class GOAL and may not accurately represent the character early in their arc (I.E rose is active early in the story but her class is passive and as soon as she becomes god tier she simmers down, the opposite can be said of jade who was passive but became active.)

Of course as stated in the above link that is only one distinctive difference in active/passive, as stated by calliope a rough starting point is that active classes tend to use their abilities selfishly and passive classes tend to use their abilities selflessly, this however as stated is a ROUGH STARTING POINT and not an absolute, this is likely because it can be difficult to interpret if an action is selfish or selfless, was aradia using countless aradiabots lives to simply buy time for her and her allies to escape from jack selfless because she did it for her allies? or selfish because she killed countless other timeline aradias to save herself? is vriska selfish for mind controlling the ghost army to fight lord english? or is it selfless because she knows she can't convince them and its the best bet against a multi-dimensional multi-timeline destroying demon and as we see in act 7 vriska confronts LE with the house juju, which shows she planned on fighting along side the ghosts on the front line and not letting them (double?) die instead of her.

and while we're led to believe most of the active/passive system is a list of tendencies and not absolutes I believe that going god tier may give you an instinctual realization of your class/aspect goals to some degree, Possibly over time through the accumulation of all of your alternative selves knowledge and prowess as seen in HS^2 with Dirk, or possibly somewhat immediately likely to help you be able to utilize your newfound abilities easier shown when Dave/Rose both go god tier and become more passive, or when jade goes god tier and becomes more active.

The best examples of active/passive would be Gamzee and Kurloz / Eridan and Cronus, When we look at these pairings we see or hear about them doing similar but notably different things.

Gamzee worships lord english and attempts to get his friends to believe in "MoThErFuCkIn mIrAcLeS" he later uses his aspect/highblood powers to psychologically torment terezi which leads to a kismesissitude and to her restoring her sight. Meanwhile Kurloz worships lord english and preaches about "messiahs" and "angels of double death" and later is shown to use his aspect/highblood powers to control meulins, his former matesprite, mind.

We see Eridan, a boy who does not believe in magic and he wishes to murder all "land dwellers", he constantly pursues other trolls into a black relationship, when he entered sburb he started killing the game constructs referred to as angels but doc scratch claimed (without naming him) that eridan was "taken under the wing of fearsome angels and learned to destroy hope with their light" and at some point he learnt a prophecy about the "lord of all angels" however disillusioned he believed the only hope was to join jack who he believed was the lord of all angels, soon after he believes in white science and gains a science wand. And lastly we see Cronus, a boy who truly believed in magic, He constantly pursued other trolls for a red romance and he attempted to feign suicidal threats to garner attention albeit to no avail. and at some point he learnt a prophecy from the game constructs known as angels to defeat an evil magician however disillusioned he no longer believes in magic at all.

The Active/Passive dichotomy has much more complexity then the things stated above however the extent and what that entails is honestly unknowable unless hussie comes out and confirms things, which I actually doubt he will ever do (make me eat my words hussie).

edit: I posted this at 12AM and believe I didn't do the debate quite the justice it deserved in regards to more specifics and what calliope has said in the comic, and so I am adding onto this.

[radramblog]

What happened to Dirk in Homestuck^2?

Why am I doing this to myself.

I memed a little yesterday when I was posting that article around social medias about Homestuck jokes, because once again we are in lockdown and I am therefore Stuck at Home. Canned laughter goes here. But there’s a topic related to the comic- or more specifically, its aborted sequel, Homestuck^2, that I’m interested in delving into a little bit. I’m going to avoid talking about spoilers as much as possible, but considering said comic takes place not only after the events of the massive sprawl that is Homestuck but also the more linear but still messy Epilogues, some amount of sus shit is inevitable.

Anyway. Much maligned is what the Epilogues and 2 did to everyone’s favourite decapitation target, Dirk Strider, and I have a theory as to why it happened this way.

To begin with, let’s summarise what and who Dirk is through the course of the comics. Fair warning from me, though, it’s been a while since I read through this.

Dirk Strider is a teenager who grew up in a post-apocalyptic future Earth, completely devoid of physical contact with other people and only really ever gets to talk to 3 other people, only one of whom is in anything remotely resembling a relatable situation. He struggles with self-identity, having created numerous robots including an artificial intelligence based on his own brain, aka Lil’ Hal. He’s somewhat of a control freak, and a bit of a cold aloof asshole, but means well, and is pretty gay. NBD. The kinda guy to set up a plan meticulously and thoroughly, not informing any of the moving parts even if said parts are his friends, and often involving some form of self-sacrifice.

Throughout the comic he further reckons with self-identity problems and his own self-loathing including entering a relationship with Jake which doesn’t go well and he eventually breaks off since he knows his overbearing and manipulative behaviour is Not Cool and Pretty Toxic but doesn’t know how to shut it off. Eventually he reaches the God Tier as a Prince of Heart, gaining the power to literally annihilate souls, which he never actually uses since he gets yeeted into deep (Paradox) space and then everything goes to shit. Except none of that happens because of the Retcon (aside from the God Tier bit) and we don’t actually see how that shit progressed in the canon timeline. I think. Dirk’s arc, as it were, doesn’t really come full circle- while he does assist in Dave’s character…growth? he really isn’t the focus of that conversation. This immediately precedes the action climax and there isn’t literally any dialogue after that so that’s what we’re left with.

I like Dirk in Homestuck a lot. It’s hard not to, considering the flashes heavily featuring him (Unite/Synchronise and Prince of Heart: Rise Up) are genuinely excellent, along with many of his music themes being absolute bangers. He gets to interact with Caliborn a lot, with a pretty great banter, there, and the whole splintered personality thing is a really interesting hook for a character. I think he’s my favourite of the Alpha kids, a controversial pick considering I know everyone loves Roxy so much. I think, I’m not as in tune with the fandom as that statement implies I am.

And then the Epilogues/Homestuck 2 came.

Now I read the Meat half of the epilogues first, but that’s more interesting, so we’ll tackle Candy first (this is going to get real confusing for those who haven’t read this comic, huh).

In Candy, Dirk almost immediately kills himself, citing the irrelevance of the timeline as cause, an act considered by whatever mechanism governs God Tier deaths to be Just because he hates himself (and also bc of things we’ll get into), so it actually sticks. This isn’t super relevant for the discussion, but that’s just kinda so unbelievably fucked up? Entirely? I’d imagine if you read Candy first you might get entirely turned off by this, which I’m sure a lot of people did.

Meat is where the, well, meat of post-canon Dirk is. You see, a concept very quickly introduced in the tail end of the original comic is the Ultimate Self, an idea where you somehow encompass every different timeline iteration or alternate version of yourself. This was pretty clearly tacked on to make it so characters whose arcs all happened in the retcon timeline could have their not getting an actual arc explained away, but it didn’t land then and it sure doesn’t land for me now. Anyway, in Meat, Dirk becomes his ultimate self, making him near-omniscient and able to control the fabric of the story himself- for much of this story, he is the narrator. And he uses this power to fuck with all his friends really distressingly without their knowledge (or consent), including breaking up a marriage, in order to further his own goals which largely appear to be just keep the story going so to not fade out of relevance. It’s a plot that makes no sense with his previous characterisation, but I guess now that he’s the Ultimate Self he’s a different person? But I liked old Dirk, and I don’t like New Dirk. He’s a villain now, but he made a much better anti-hero.

But this would be fine if he (or the epilogues, or Homestuck^2) were written well. But they aren’t. Dirk’s dialogue is long, painfully drawn out, with tangents that tend to amount to pure wank, misused literary references and pointless metaphors that go on and on, filling the screen with a bright orange screed that hurts to look at as much as it does to comprehend. It’s not fun. And we’ve seen Dirk communicate before, obviously, the story of Homestuck is built around chatlogs, but it wasn’t like this. He was sarcastic, dryly witty, blunt at times. Even when he was literally talking to a different version of himself it didn’t get that masturbatory.

I was so confused about what the hell happened to Dirk, because I had no idea what the hell someone writing this character was thinking when they turned him into this. And then, the 21st page of Homestuck^2 dropped.

And it all came together.

What Ultimate Dirk and Terezi are referring to is Pony Pals: Detective Pony, a children’s book about some girls who hang out with ponies and solve a mystery. It’s a real book, buy it for your 5-year-old.

Except they’re not referring to that, they’re referring to the Homestuck Canon version of Detective Pony- a birthday gift from Dirk to Jane, heavily edited and to be much more obscene and eventually developing into it’s own story, stated to be “tough, emotionally draining, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible”.

Except the quote “Remember Longcat, Jane?” and references to philosophy, dead languages, and ancient earth culture aren’t referring to the three pages of the Dirk-edited Detective Pony we see in the actual comic itself. That quote doesn’t appear there.

That image is from Detective Pony, by Sonnetstuck- the 40,000 word fanfiction from 2014 that serves as a completed version of Jane’s copy of the book. An expansion of what we see in canon. And it’s a tough, emotionally draining read, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible.

It’s a very good fanfiction.

In the later bits of Detective Pony, we can start to see the origins of what would become Ultimate Dirk’s signature style of writing. Long blocks of rambling text, orange dripping down the page, references to philosophy and history and language that go on and on. And it probably does look familiar to those who read the Epilogues and ^2. 

But there are a couple of key differences here. First of all, it’s just better written? The way these rambles circle back on themselves is so excellent, the absolute absurdity of this being written on top of a pony book for little girls, the humour (beyond some of the more immature stuff), it’s just a really well-written piece of fiction. Hell, you don’t even need to be familiar with the character of Dirk to enjoy it. It’s a harrowing piece, but it’s also self-aware- because it’s not supposed to be tough, draining, cathartic etc. just for Jane- it’s clearly that for Dirk himself.

The second part is, of course, that this is a fanfiction. It’s not canon, it’s not official, this is by someone who really likes Dirk for people who really like Dirk. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, so if you bounce off it (and I’m sure a lot did), then you don’t have to keep reading it, it’s fine, thanks for playing. As much as Homestuck^2 tried to doll itself up as “dubiously canon” it’s still the official continuation of the story, and that means if it’s as difficult to get into as Detective Pony, that’s going to be a problem for a lot of people.

The other part of it is that Detective Pony’s exploration of Dirk’s character is, well, in character. When the man himself steps in as a character in his own book, the explorations of what he is as an author, who he is as a person, make perfect sense for what we see of him at the start of the comic. He is that manipulative, blunt person, and he is aware of his faults. He’s the kind of person to hide a lamentation on his own failings inside an impenetrable maze of a story layered on top of a book about fucking ponies. Ultimate Dirk does not act like Dirk, outside of the “manipulator” angle, something that Dirk was aware of and trying to improve in the comic. But I guess people don’t have arcs, right?

It’s so interesting to see the seeds of Homestuck^2 laden within Detective Pony- because the meta angle that and the epilogues take is also represented in said fanfiction. While the nature of canon is a facet of the work, the idea of authors and narrators fighting for control of a story, different ideas in mind for the characters, one being more personally connected to them than the other, it’s all there. When I wrote about Fallout 4 in the past, I mentioned being worried that Bethesda took the wrong lessons from Skyrim- seeing something successful and trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle. I think Homestuck^2 is an extreme example of this- the writers of the comic saw Sonnetstuck’s masterwork and thought, yeah that’s great, we can do that. But they just can’t. And with the comic crashed and burning, the probably won’t ever get a chance to. Dirk is forever stuck as this amalgamation of himself that looks nothing like any individual version of him ever did.

At least we will still have Detective Pony, and many other excellent fanworks, for actually good Dirk content. I admittedly haven’t looked into much fanfic written during/post-epilogues, and I’m kind of afraid of what I’ll see- I can only hope the fanbase didn’t take the same wrong lessons as the official team did.

[swimfuel]

okay humanstuck thoughts under the cut

i owe a lot of this to @/rhythmic-idealist's kankri/vantasposting bc holy shit theyve got such a big brain (ill link to their individual posts when im on desktop since im using this to keep all my thoughts straight and i agree with most of what they say wholeheartedly)

general status quo stuff:

signless works in an extremely demanding career involving helping others (i'm leaning towards an attorney who works with organizations and does pro bono work), and is also extensively involved in social justice work outside of his job... he is very rarely home

he loves and cares for his children deeply and tries to express it whenever they're face to face, but the couch in his cramped and messy office has seen far too much use over the years for him to have been able to say it enough

his habits of working himself to the point of exhaustion are handily passed down to his kids btw

the kids had to grow up quickly because signless was out of the house so often and so consistently—kankri, who was already pretty high-strung, has to learn to take care of himself and karkat

they grow up near ms firuzeh maryam, who's their pseudoaunt/grandma (she took in a nine year old kavana vantas when she was about twenty), but they just call her ms rosa

they spent a lot of time in the maryam house growing up, with miss rosa's two nieces. porrim is a year older than kankri, while kanaya and karkat are the same age

kankri grows kinda sensitive to people trying to mother him since it rubs against the notion that he's the "adult of the house" and that he can take care of himself and karkat just fine

(and it also kinda underlines the fact that kankri has no idea what he's doing at the best of times)

and ironically enough, kankri becomes overbearing and naggy towards karkat in his own right, which forestalls them becoming close in any brotherly sort of way

they grow up really just... unable to communicate with one another clearly

karkat develops his ornery exterior in response to kankri's constant stream of opinions and frantic attempts at making up for the presence of a guardian in the house

i think there would actually be some really interesting parallels with rose in this au.. maybe i'm drawing from my own experiences as well but i think he'd begin to assume that every time his brother opens his mouth, he's going to criticize karkat

but instead of reacting like rose with the "making yourself more of a puzzle"/passive aggressive stuff, he gets a more defensive/hackles raised/"argue with you before you can argue with me" approach

and the thing is that they do love each other and would take a bullet for the other etc etc etc.. but they don't know how to express it because they've fallen into these shitty patterns

and it really doesn't help that kankri has grown somewhat resentful of signless over the years... that mix of resentment and fear and love gets more extreme and more polar every time signless gets injured during a political demonstration

i think kankri and signless would also be slightly closer than karkat and signless, as signless' job really only started to ramp up when karkat was less than years old and kankri was in his early double digits

kankri autistic btw its word of god (i am god)

karkat has a pet crab. its name is also karkat. he vents his frustrations to it.

i feel like the vantases exemplify both the best and worst parts of their aspects with one another as well... the strength of their bonds keeps them together and grounded, but TOO grounded. [insert Blood rant here]

the Blood rant:

i define Blood as bonds, responsibility, and the "core". if Life is the fertile soil and everything living on a planet's surface, then Blood is the gravitational core of the planet keeping everything together

i also think Blood, Heart, & Mind work in tandem to define a person just as blood serves to connect the pieces of the human body... Heart is the soul and the self, Mind is the application of one's self through active choices (agency), while Blood defines both the self and the choices one makes in greater detail [and, as an aside, Life provides the physical spark of life needed to keep the heart pumping blood]

OKAY wow that got tangential anyways

SO BASICALLY! too much Blood makes you stagnate, so for example:

kankri is split between staying home with karkat or going to college across the country and being truly unbound for the first time in years

another crisis of Blood: signless is caught between his empathy and responsibility to the whole world and his responsibility to his own children

okay so here's more status quo stuff:

the maryam and vantas kids grow up together and its hilarious because you'll see them all together and its just like (girlboss) (girlboss) (physical manlet) (emotional manlet)

the maryam girls are actually miss rosa's nieces but she took them in when they were both pretty young

the pyropes know the vantases well enough considering pyrope senior and sign have known one another from their respective legal practices for years, but they live on the other side of town

the leijons lived in town when kankri and meulin were very young, but they moved and travelled for a long time before coming back and reestablishing their roots

the captors (psii being one of sign's oldest and closest friends) move into town with the peixes family pretty early on though

the condesce is.. a horrible spouse and guardian, to put it plainly. she's very emotionally manipulative and isn't averse to smacking people around, including her own family. she moves herself and her perfect little family into town so she can properly oversee a new business venture close by

feferi is one of the best young swimmers in the country and has a pretty good shot of getting onto the olympic team.. a lot of this drive to be perfect and to be better results from the condesce's unrelenting pressure and thinly veiled resentment throughout her whole life

so yeah psii, )(ic, feferi, and sollux all live together and it's really not great for anyone involved. (meenah ran away years ago, and crashed on aranea's couch for a pretty long while—mituna moved out with latula for college before psii and the condesce got married)

it gets bad to the point of sollux staying with the maryams for two months while the adults try to sort out that absolute clusterfuck and get the divorce proceedings going (meenah finally convinces feferi to get out and come stay with her and aranea for the duration as well)

in terms of relationships i think latula and porrim were really really close in high school, and probably had some kind of unacknowledged thing going on for a while that never actually turned into anything because latula and mituna were going steady

kankri has had a crush on latula for years but never acted on it for similar reasons

meenah still carries a lot of that give no fucks attitude (it's developed moreso as a defense mechanism here) and can't understand why feferi refuses to leave the condesce with her

okay back to VANTAS MANPAIN i also think that karkat feels the weight of a lot of expectations on his shoulders as well

he feels responsible to live up to the example his dad and his brother set, even if it's to his own detriment—and kankri's oblivious rambling about his grades and his teachers and all his clubs certainly aren't helping the matter

kankri is one of those overinvolved kids taking a million AP's while simultaneously shitting on the collegeboard at every single step

hes this super overachiever anal retentive perfectionist type dude and (just as karkat preemptively criticizes others to forestall their criticisms of him only to harshly criticize himself) kankri subconsciously holds the people around him to the same expectations he holds for himself

so karkat also develops this sense of lacking which, in combination with everything else, culminates in self loathing and thinking he has to solve everyone else's problems and getting horribly mad at himself for every little mistake

GOD i have a lot more but lemme post this before i accidentally close out of the app and lose it all

more little details:

vriska's mom and terezi's mom HATE each other like HATE HATE HATE one another it's so bad

karkat wrote a ten page review of my immortal in middle school

jade is one of nepeta's best online friends

sollux can't raise one eyebrow at a time.. karkat gives him so much grief about it

the vantases eat a lot of shitty renditions of persian dishes until karkat learns to cook because literally the only person in the world with a CHANCE of getting KANKRI VANTAS to make an EDIBLE DISH is miss rosa

kanaya is really good at persian dance too but is VERY VERY embarassed to perform in front of people.. however porrim definitely is not

karkat has insomnia while kankri just stays up stupidly late for assignments that really shouldnt be taken that seriously.. but they both have the same rumination/sleep anxiety thing where your brain goes insane with horrible and depressing scenarios as you try to sleep

and more ideas that i thought were interesting but idk how to fit in the context of this au:

signless and disciple getting married pretty late in life after having been in love for years, the vantases move in with the leijons and karkat suddenly has two sisters

nepeta and karkat are both juniors at this point, meulin is probably in her third year at a local college nearby while kankri is about to start his second year at a university pretty far away

the kids in general honestly but ill figure it out

more random hcs this time with kids:

kanaya and rose get into a flame war online that gradually settles into elaborate courtship rituals

also nepeta + jade online besties

also bec can inexplicably still teleport

the first sbahj movie comes out and the next six months of dave strider junior's high school career are absolute hell

actually hc that dave senior goes by d strider professionally. the d stands for a lot of things

aradia and dave frequent a lot of the same forums but never end up really interacting

meanwhile karkat and john frequent a lot of the same forums and DEFINITELY end up interacting. this turns into grudging (at least on karkat's part) friendship after they find themselves fighting for their lives defending an objectively shitty movie together on the same thread

[29pageshomestuckeveryday]

Homestuck, page 2,221

Equius: Talk to friend/enemy.

Author commentary:

One funny thing about this conversation, judging by the ease and familiarity with which Equius slides right into his pattern of vicious rebuke toward this dumb clown, is that it kind of reads as a form of erotic roleplay both are willingly participating in, but neither of them realize that's what's going on. There's some irony that Equius engages in a sort of daily roleplay routine with Gamzee while admonishing Nepeta for her attempts to get him to roleplay with her in a more "frivolous" way. She probably doesn't have the slightest idea he does this every day.

Equius thrashes between ordering people what to do, and then when they do it, becoming dissatisfied and realizing that he really wants them to be doing what he wants them to do under their own volition, and also for them to tell HIM what to do, whether they're of a higher or lower caste. This is a mess, and is probably why these two talk so much. It's an endlessly circular fetish, and it never resolves itself. Timeline-wise, this conversation locates them after Gamzee has entered the game. The red team has a good jump on the blue team, already three players deep while the first blue (Equius) hasn't entered yet. Not a super important detail, but it's worth tracking this stuff in the background somewhat, because the order of entry tells us certain things, like who had to work with (or put up with) whom as a server player. Karkat deals with Terezi (we saw how that went), Terezi deals with Gamzee (notable when you know their long-range arc), Gamzee deals with Tavros (thank god for offscreen conversations, let's just leave it at that), Tavros deals with Vriska (Oh No), and Vriska deals with Kanaya (mom to the rescue).

Maybe this is the first conversation they've ever had where they openly acknowledge that what they're doing is roleplaying? Let's call it a breakthrough. It's also telling that in Gamzee's honest attempt to RP, he goes straight for the goatdaddy issues. A bit sad really. Is this conversation over yet? Oh, there's one more page.

Equius has a quirk with a fair amount to consider. As the Sagittarius, and therefore centaur-themed troll, the "cent" part of centaur makes 100 his magic number and percent signs his favored symbol. He replaces the phoneme "loo" in words with "100," even when the original word isn't spelled that way, like "b100." And he swaps in % signs for x's, but more confusingly, also for x phonemes, so "bricks" becomes "bri%." He does this even for sounds that are just close to x, like "distinction" becoming "distin%ion." And sometimes he replaces an entire word semantically related to the % symbol, like "cross." I ended up really milking this quirk, mostly because I knew that only swapping instances of x would not yield a lot of changes and so would feel kind of insubstantial.

[mmmmalo]

@overtrolled-liveblog‘s recent post on Gamzee made me realize that Gamzee’s first interaction with Terezi (Terezi attempting to hurt Gamzee and being angry when he doesn’t react) is also the basic dynamic of Terezi’s ill-fated attempt to “avenge” herself upon Gamzee around Game Over. I never understood why Terezi’s was manifesting for Gamzee in that interaction, but the repetition seems like a good lead. So here’s an attempt:

Aranea’s mind control is being juxtaposed with whatever allowed Gamzee to maintain his composure in Act 5. Sopor is an obvious candidate, as is his general early interest in avoiding conflict, but there might be something else to it...

2018. When Gamzee remarks (in the narration) that "it is dangerous to leave unarmed", the commentary has this to say: "It's probably not actually that dangerous to leave unarmed. This was probably something his goat dad told him a long time ago. But only to scare him, and make sure he stayed inside so no one would ever see him, because he was so embarrassed by him. Goatdad is probably one of the most sympathetic characters in the story. If Gamzee was your son, wouldn't you abandon him too?" Glib dismissal, veering sharply into needless cruelty. But it nonetheless draws attention to the narration's unreliability, moored as it is to Gamzee's POV.

2017. Speaking of unreliable: "You aren't supposed to eat that slime. It does funny things to a troll's head. // But you were never taught that on account of a lousy upbringing. Your custodian was always out to sea." Gamzee is evidently thinking the very thing he was never taught, but he attributes that thought to a higher power (the narrator) and thereby pleads ignorance of it? Or it could be read as an expression of shame: as Gamzee eats his pie, he imagines a stern voice admonishing him from over his shoulder. OR you might more literally parse the contradiction as the voice of two separate Gamzees sharing the brain space in some kind of daze...or you could call it simple memory loss. These are inclusive ors, btw.

2019. Anyway, Gamzee reaches the beach and we get this line: "You leave your hive and head out to the beach. There is no sign of your custodian. // You should not stay out here very long. The SEA DWELLERS are quite hostile." Commentary on his custodian's absence, followed by a voice of authoritative behavioral cautioning, as though a guardian were living in Gamzee's head. Immediately following this, Terezi manifests for Gamzee, though he doesn't answer immediately... so I suspect Terezi's manifestation will be an elaboration this internal division?

2020: "You're always down for shooting the wicked shit with anyone that who'll put up with you." Man... Act 5 is misery. The Miracle Modus is a picture of Gamzee's brain being fried to a point of being nearly inaccessible. Vivid flashing colors (like Jade's rich scents) are a mark of unfiltered EXPERIENCE sans language/reason (which is probably why Lord English's eyes are flashing), but here that means disorientation -- difficulty organizing sense experience...

2022: Gamzee says a prayer and Faygo gets launched out of his sylladex... is the Faygo the prayer? Jane launched wishes into the sky with the balloons on LOCAH -- but the balloon shape was inverted and transformed into Gamzee's bottles of "potion"... that association seems to be expressed more concisely here. Jane's case was also related to decapitation motifs, which I don't really see with Gamzee here... (aside from Terezi's general association with going for the neck) But at any rate, what is he wishing for?

2023. Gamzee standing in front of his sylladex is getting to me, even more so that his reaching into the sylladex. You are not SUPPOSED to be on that layer of the image. What are you doing. Is that safe? Are you okay?

2024. The conversation itself...continues to evade summarization. I'm going to just describe it piece-by-piece and see if I get anywhere.

Terezi deliberately misspells Gamzee's name in service of a joke: from 'gamzeez' to 'gamezez', highlighting its phonetic proximity to 'games'. Though I wonder if this disguises another sort of exchange: Gamzee goes down to the beach to find his dad, but instead finds Terezi. I'm humoring the idea that she is effectively functioning as the fatherly authority in Goatdad's place. But as the preceding panels indicates, that very notion of authority occupies a place in Gamzee's head that he remains somewhat...detached from? If Terezi gives voice to this aspect of Gamzee, the word blurring could obfuscate that she is saying "Gamzee" /twice/, such that her invitation to play games is an offer for Gamzee to pilot himself? (Which in the parent:child::head:body paradigm is not entirely ridiculous?)

Come to think of it, this is the second time Terezi has harassed someone on a waterfront (hi, Rose) and even then main subjects were a) haha your guardian abandoned you because you're terrible and b) a sense of hearing imploring voices in your head...

Terezi implies that she doesn't like Gamzee and is only inviting him in service of a joke. Gamzee ignores the ulterior message and accepts the given reason as justifiable... after which Terezi gets angry. But she doesn't seem angry that the implication was misunderstood (and her disdain ignored) but is rather angry that the arbitrariness of his selection wasn't itself objectionable -- /after/ which she confirms her own disdain by saying "no wonder Vantas can't stand you". The motivation for the joke became the effect of the joke...

"BUT WHO C4R3S 4BOUT H1M, W3R3 GO1NG TO H4V3 SOM3 MOTH3RFUCK1NG SH1TTY B1TCH3S PL4Y1NG TOG3TH3R!" as Rose said, "Still not sure if I'm being courted or trolled here." Terezi is making fun of how Gamzee talks but nonetheless seems to be attempting to bond with him here...?

With "keeping an eye out" and "you know how it is with family" back-to-back with Terezi's aggression, it kind of feels like Gamzee is likewise (successfully) attempting to bother Terezi... but his defense is his forgetfulness, like a taboo subject just slipped... the same is true of Gamzee's claim that he was never taught that sopor is dangerous, the legitimacy of which depends on Gamzee forgetting?

"The Bard of... fuck, i forgot" is literally a joke on Gamzee "forgetting" his way around anger and aggression, by way of the omission of Rage? Also, it's a generic phrase but John uses 'fuck i forgot' when reminded of his birthday in the Epilogues... topic of birthdays is significant since Gamzee parses his state of mind as 'spacing out' and 'losing track of time' -- a birthday is, in that context, a reminder of time's progression.

Twice in Gamzee's conversation he asks Terezi for a little bit more time before he plays the game with her. This again reminds us of Rose's procrastination -- which among other things represents a deferral of encounter with the Truth, again bringing us to forgetting. 

2028. But interestingly enough, the motif of procrastination continues in the section with Karkat that follows: Karkat expresses apprehension about meeting his guardian before the narrative segues to Terezi, which is structurally resonant with Gamzee going to the beach for his guardian, only to find Terezi? Which again associates her with unseen authority figures... 

Oh shoot, and the panel cuts from Karkat looking down through the hole in his floor to a low-angle shot of Terezi's skylight? As though she were below like crabdad. That seals it for me.

2030. Actually, I mentioned how Gamzee's flashing modus is related to the unmediated sensory bouquet that Lord English sees ALL THE TIME by having flashing eyes, but Terezi's room? Is set up to be exactly that sensory bouquet, all the time, with loud colors plastered and mixed haphazardly. I've mostly focused on Terezi's relation to English by way of their shared association with the Law (x)(x) but this is a fresh angle...

And since it becomes apparent that the scenes that /follow/ Gamzee's conversation inform the way it should be read, I would be remiss to exclude the Karkat/Sollux conversation between the Gamzee and Terezi sections... in which the ~ATH (til death) code is brought up, which proves central to Lord English's creation.

2026. "later on you would run this code in a fit of stupidity." Creepy! I always assume the narration to be bound to the present tense, like the character's POV, so this sudden interruption from the future is really unnerving. How does Karkat know this? Is that just a miserable self-assessment, like he knows he'll harm himself when he gets worked up? Is this Karkat planning to curse everyone, but renouncing his decision as a product of fate? I feel like this confusion nicely complements the paradoxical ~ATH code on screen (Sollux's double reacharound virus)

2027. "Speak of the devil" Sollux has manifested for Karkat... yeah I still can't make sense of this as far as manifestation goes. BUT I think the fact that chatlogs are likewise two-colored might mean that Sollux and Karkat's conversation is in some sense analogous to the code...? The architecture of the conversation is... accusing eachother of self-loathing and then agreeing upon mutual self-destruction (of the conversational log), which at least superficially resembles a program that exists to destroy itself and the medium in which it resides? Maybe...

Shot in the dark: the (much procrastinated) march unto Truth is a march unto Judgement, which means both God and Death. Thus Gamzee (the procrastinator who avoids truth) transitions to Karkat/Sollux (vaguely suicidal gesture in their conversation) transitions to Terezi (judge and executioner, associated with ultimate authority and thus God). That's my best assessment of the proceedings thus far.