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dingodad · 10 months ago

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I know your tags said that the lil cal & Gamzee stuff isn’t worth discussing, but I think a lot of people could actually use someone articulating the problem with assuming that the puppet is what triggered the breakdown/“mind controlled” gamzee. If you’re really to speak on it, I’d love to hear it

to preface: i'm not unsympathetic to the desire to see a more sympathetic interpretation of Gamzee given how his arc speaks to certain racialised themes within the comic. but this is what's in the text as i see it.

ultimately it comes down to the exact same arguments that apply to Dave's bro. Gamzee is part of Lil Cal, so if Lil Cal were whispering in Gamzee's ear the whole time he was also undergoing all these stresses related to faith and substance, those whispers are Gamzee's own thoughts being reflected back at him. if puppet-Gamzee suggests to man-Gamzee that he kill people and man-Gamzee concedes, all that's really happened is that Gamzee has given in to his own desire to do that. this is what Homestuck does when it pits alternate timeline versions of characters against each other; it simply manifests interactions going on within that character's own self.

more specifically to Gamzee, this is a character who manifests Homestuck's feminist themes very explicitly, especially in regards to how they are portrayed via Alternia's caste system as a member of the patriarchal purple class. it is true and worth mentioning of course that Lil Cal is not just Gamzee, but is also Caliborn, Gamzee's patriarchal god! but then it was Gamzee who raised Caliborn to have those patriarchal principles; because in Homestuck the patriarchy isn't something you're somehow influenced or tricked into participating in, it's something you choose to perpetuate, just as Caliborn chose to perpetuate it in becoming Alternia's patriarch... and so on ad infinitum.

the "tragedy" of a time loop isn't that fate is somehow forcing you to adhere to a course of events that you don't want to adhere to; tragedy is when the person that you are makes it inevitable that you will walk down that same violent path every time. and Homestuck is all about that person that you are; it's a story by and large disinterested with any scenario where a character's actions do not offer insight into their personalities. a Homestuck character has a certain nature, and while on occasion they are offered psychic stimuli, how they react to that psychic stimulus is according to their nature.

there is of course a physical rather-than-metaphysical approach to Gamzee's backstory, which I'm sure is more along the lines of what you were looking for lol, and while analysis of that is not so much my area I feel that the physical approach basically points toward the same kind of conclusions as the metaphysical one. Gamzee is a character of tragedy, who has been shaped by physical stimuli like religious abuse (from all manner of directions!), parental neglect and substance addiction. and my assessment of that is primarily that... this should be enough? like is that not enough to create a compelling character. even if it were not antithesis to Homestuck's themes I guess it just seems to me like it goes without saying that "this character's actions were the result of someone else's will and not of their own unique circumstances" reduces the character. most certainly yes, there are manipulative forces at work in Homestuck, and their name is Lord English, and yes, Lil Cal is Lord English, but Lord English's power lies in the telling of the narrative; and the narrative that turns Gamzee into a villain is already there! English doesn't need to tell Gamzee to make those malevolent choices, because English already established the circumstances that made those choices inevitable. to make Lil Cal into some literal cursed amulet is to make Lord English into Vriska, and that reduces him, because that's not what he is! he's the god of inevitability!

#homestuck #wrote a lot more here than i was expecting. story of my life.#but i guess it goes without saying basically all of this applies just as equally to dirk just in his own ways

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joey12304 · 3 years ago

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I hate both sides on the DSMP front

I wanted to get this out because i keep getting tik toks from both sides being fucking stupid. But both sides of this shit absolutely suck ass. On one side you have die hard DSMP fans who are unwilling to look at the content creators critically and actively ignore people who have suffered because of the actions of people like Dream, Schlatt or Wilbur. For example the harm Dream has done by encouraging his (mainly young female) audience to participate in the fetishization of MLM relationships through his weird fucked up portrayal of BL in his videos. I’m not gonna get why its bad for girls/women to be into BL relationships as it should speak for itself. Similar on how its bad for men to be into WLW relationships that are just stereotypes of a real thing its wrong for women to be into MLM. Exceptions apply to this rule of course (primally EGGs AKA transmascs who haven’t realized they are transmasc yet) but many people who like specifically that DreamNotFound ship are not. There’s many reasons why the DNF ship is bad, mainly that it’s extremely toxic and not remotely how MLM relationships are when healthy and the fact its a gay ship made for straight people. Another example is Schlatt’s clearly problematic humor. Many fans actively ignore the fact he has made literal racism jokes since the beginning of his channel. People also often push off the evidence when its displayed that he has in fact made racist jokes. Not even mentioning the blatant uncomfortable sexual jokes made towards female streamers he works with. This being said that doesn’t mean Antis are in the clear either. 90% when i see an anti post about something they are just as bad as the members from the DSMP and are just trying to act like they are superior to literally ND kids and teens who are just trying to enjoy something. Not all antis do this but a lot of the rhetoric used by that side are ableist in nature and serve no purpose other than “I’m better than you cause i’m not a dream stan” Which is just poor argumentation when your trying to prove DSMP fans are wrong about something. Their hatred usually just stems from DSMP fans being vocal and a lot of people being interested in them. These people fail to realize why we hear so much about Dream and his gaggle of friends. The simple answer is that the fan base is semi large. The complex answer is that the fandom is semi large because of the content being easily digestible to people like me who are ND and will pour their whole soul into something like that.

Another example for a fandom like this is Homestuck. There’s no denying that Homestuck has it’s issues, from the creator being a bigoted person to the overall poor and confusing plot.

Homestuck too was like the DSMP fandom. In the public eye as something to be cringed at and people to be ashamed for if they dared to be fans of it. Without acknowledging how it became popular with the group it did. Now people regard Homestuck as this cursed fandom thats kinda dead but also not. The same will happen to the DSMP, but the real issue is the way we go about problematic content. Im gonna make this clear for other people to understand but shaming people is not how you get people to be critical of a thing they like. Shaming people is only how you get people to cling on it even harder than they were before which isn’t healthy for either party. The way Antis and DSMP fans go about arguing is childish and pointless and just leads people to be angry at each other instead of doing what they need to do which is be mindful of the short comings of a creator. The antis also really need to be aware that the way they speak about DSMP fans is not good and is just harmful to ND people in general.

#rant #dsmp

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bladekindeyewear · 5 years ago

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Book Commentary on Inversion Theory

Alright, as a follow-up to this post, it looks like there’s an actual full bit of Homestuck book commentary (around the pages nearing Rose’s grimdark transformation, Book 6 pg 115, HS pg 3305, thanks @ramiedersedreamer and @zandraxofnebulon) about how Inversion Theory (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) isn’t what we thought. Quoting and reading it first (not the whole reddit post but that portion at least), then discussion under the cut:

"Rose is a Light player, but her blackout effects result from arguably the nadir of her role as such a hero--that is, when she succumbs to Scratch's manipulations and other eldritch persuasions, and goes grimdark. This truth would appear to lend credence to a line of classpect thinking known as "inversion theory," which really isn't without its merits. This note has just gone to the bother of describing one of its merits, in fact. However, it is possible to get carried away with this line of thinking and use it to evaluate everything that happens in Homestuck. For instance, you could say "Well, Karkat is a Blood hero, and here's where he stops being as Karkatty as usual, so that means he's being the opposite of his aspect. Which means he's being Breathy instead of Bloody. So that means a bunch of other stuff, ipso facto, Homestuck has been EXPLAINED." That's not really the way all this works. Aspect lore runs deep, but it isn't the Rosetta Stone to the story. When in doubt, it's better to remember this: rather than an underlying mystical logic where all classpect roads lead to Deep Answers, HS is a comprehensive nexus of many themes, and all roads lead to the basic idea that this is a tale about kids who are trapped in the universal struggle associated with growing up."

I... hm. Dammit. Is that all he wrote?? This slippery author is a master of giving us tantalizing and insightful details without committing to any hard yes-or-no whatsoever. >:T

I’d been building myself up to reading this all throughout yesterday with gut-wrenching dread that at this late, late, late hour he’d finally given us a definitive “NO” on Inversion. Instead we get this quite interesting but more vague “eh, there’s merits, but don’t go too far with it”. Which is......

...about as potentially-optimistic as I put it in the previous post, if not moreso?

Andrew’s being careful to lavish odd praise on inversion theory, too. Which some people are going to interpret as (Option 1) “Nice try, but dead wrong”, like the anon who put a snippet in my inbox initially, and others will interpret as (Option 2) “The big ones are RIGHT, nudge nudge, but stop applying it everywhere cause the fans who say every line of the comic means ‘ghosting inversion’ are looking at the story wrong and annoying everyone”.

As someone guilty of being one of those fans described in the latter half on occasion, I can CERTAINLY agree with THAT last part. Andrew made it really clear with the ending of Homestuck proper -- “this side shit didn’t matter as much as you thought it did”. I was so enamored with the classpect system that I thought almost everything was being shown to us through those lenses, at one point -- but even though perhaps more than the random reader might have thought is there, like he says, it ain’t supposed to be no Rosetta Stone. Even when I WAS overapplying classpect everywhere, the people who did it too often in places I felt clearly un-merited REALLY pissed me off! I can’t imagine how much more that might’ve been magnified in the shoes of someone who happened to apply the correct, lower amount of classpect and had to put up with me babbling and slathering it everywhere, much less the author’s shoes.

But there is still a big hole in his criticism, one he intentionally seems to have left there to me. By saying “don’t look for it everywhere”, but ALSO that “there’s more than some merit to it”... I don’t think it’s a stretch to think the truth might not only be somewhere in between Options 1 and 2, but perhaps even closer to Option 2.

Aaaand HERE’s where if you’re someone who HUNGERED for me to admit wrongdoing by sticking with this theory for so long, you’re no doubt angry. Looking at me as making excuses in the face of this long-awaited OBJECTIVE PROOF OF TOTAL THEORY DISMISSAL... WHY won’t the deluded bastard FINALLY succumb to REASON? ANDREW HIMSELF spoke up on the issue, IS THIS NOT ENOUGH?!???

And, well... you’re right to be angry. To be honest, I’m a fair bit pissed off too -- I could’ve used a solid “NO”, traumatizing as it would’ve been to me!

But that’s not what we got, because... *rolls eyes @ author* ...that’s not how Andrew works nowadays. And as irritating as it is, I also have to respect it a bit.

Andrew has become pretty committed to not full-on table-flipping fan interpretations and fanworks, avoiding forcing one “correct” interpretation (see: central struggle of HS^2 and the villains labeling divergence from canon at all as “bad”) because both interpretations should be rewarded. If something is REALLY wrong and hurts objective appreciation of the lessons he wanted to portray in his comic, like people plastering Classpect everywhere to the exclusion of the story’s central canon-escaping themes, he’s willing to shut them down... but when it comes to effective-sounding interpretations of the comic that he possibly never intended but “could” have been what he intended? He’s REALLY careful not to step on them! Or even sometimes DISTINGUISH them from the ones that he DID intend, sometimes, to keep as many fan interpretations alive in our imaginations as possible.

Which, as someone who pins Inversion’s entire existence on the assertion that “Andrew deliberately intended this and it’s our DELUSION otherwise”, really pisses me off at times like this. This is a theory hinged on the idea that Andrew had been deliberately hiding INCREDIBLY clever evidence throughout the comic for these intense thematic moves. All the SYMBOLISM we thought was pointing to inversion would lose an incredible amount of its meaning if it were all an accident. What about all that cool imagery in the Breath and Blood post? Did any of THAT really mean what we thought it was there for, like between WV and PM? Was any of it REAL? Will we ever even get an ANSWER? The answer is “no, we won’t”, because Andrew persists in this method of keeping his cards close to his chest even if he has to take them to the damn grave, cause he knows we’ll have more “fun” not knowing ‘em. That considerate son of a bitch. >:(

I’m serious -- it really does make me more than a little angry. I really do wish he’d said more to show us where we’re off-course.

But HS^2 has brought us Terezi telling us that Mind and Heart are indeed opposites. He MIGHT be holding onto the info because we may get it later in canon itself...

Meh. I’ll try not to hope too hard. And I’d better clarify what I actually believe, here:

My TL;DR thoughts on Andrew’s commentary up above are that when it comes to Inversion Theory (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), he’s leaving room for some of the BIG events to have been right or almost right -- say, #1, maybe #2, and only POSSIBLY #3 or #4 -- while telling us to back off and cast SERIOUS DOUBT on stuff that could have more character-driven explanations, especially #5.

If there’s a seriously FUNDAMENTAL transformation in a character that isn’t fully explained by their character journey alone (as kids growing up), involves significant outside interference, and is reflected by countless visual cues, THEN we should want to see if Inversion Theory “has merit” in that sort of case -- while laying it up against other competing theories that account for external interference of a non-Inversion-related nature in their actions too. Things like pre- and post-ascension Aradia or pre- and post-dreamdeath Jade seeming almost completely different characters? Or Rose seemingly taken over by the Horrorterrors... only to do nothing to benefit them but throw her mainself at Jack and get killed so she’d be forced to ascend on the moon mission rather than God-tier-die? I’d say Inversion is worth consideration and -- daresay -- worth believing in, in such cases.

And it still might all be wrong. There are legitimate ways to read Andrew’s commentary above that would have people screaming that Inversion has been disproven, that the “merits” mentioned were just a nod of respect to the losing side that I’m completely overblowing. But those seem to me like carefully ambiguous words from a carefully ambiguous man, and if there’s anyone to blame for their ambiguity, it’s Andrew. Trust me; I don’t like it either. He’s had plenty of practice saying things in a way that we CAN’T really draw many assumptions from.

Heck, even the Redditor transcribing this summarized their thoughts in a way that draws some assumptions I don’t believe are there:

Mostly I think it's just interesting that he's actually addressing Inversion Theory, and the gist is basically "it's a cool idea and has some merits, but the classpect system and story are not quite that formulaic." Sorry BKEW. At least we know Hussie has been paying attention to our wild theorizing.

--which is a rebuke drawn on the common interpretation that Inversion describes too “formulaic” a classpect system, especially with specific-class inversion like Seer <-> Witch and such. But IS that what Andrew is saying? Andrew criticizes the overapplication of aspect theory in describing everyone’s actions page to page, but does that mean a quote-unquote “rigid” system (I’m not going to play out the old “specific-class-inversion-is-too-rigid” vs “youre missing the flexible potential a fixed system gives” arguments again) is ITSELF an overapplication of classpect to people’s actions and personalities? Is he perhaps hinting that only Aspect stuff mattered in Inversion cases and the Witchy Rose class stuff was just a separate thematic thing that fits by coincidence?? What does it mean? WE DON’T KNOW! AND IT’S PISSING ME OFF AAAARGH

...I think I’ve said all I can think to say for now.

I mean, I’m glad Inversion Theory wasn’t outright disproven. I think it’s neat. I have a lot of emotional investment behind it, and being told it was all a worthless goose chase would have made me vomitously sick! But as I struggled with at the end of Homestuck proper, constant ambiguity shows a fair bit of disregard of its own, and both ending AND epiloguing Homestuck not only without a “yes” on this but without even a clear “NO” has caused me more gutache and poor feelings across MONTHS than either answer ever would have given me. I thought we’d earned that by getting through it, that we wouldn’t have to wait for YEARS and then STILL get cockteased like this. And I wonder how much I’m going to regret, later, that this wasn’t just a clear, simple “NO”.

I’m being told there’s an upd8 just now and I should read it. I’ll get on that. Cy’all.

#Homestuck #Homestuck Liveblog #Homestuck Commentary #Aspect Duality #Theory Policy #Andrew Hussie #Breath and Blood #hs2 #Homestuck^2 #bladekindeyewear #blastyoboots

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lettersofsky · 5 years ago

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DistantPastZine - The Handmaid - Time is a River

Last piece I wrote for the @distantpastzine

Rating:Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning:No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom:Homestuck Character:The Handmaid (Homestuck) Language:English

Time is a winding river and your existence is bullshit. So you deal with it.

Time is a winding river.

It has many little offshoots and creeks that will eventually dry up and fade away into nothing, not even worth considering when the main body of the river continues to flow as it always does; ever onwards towards its predisposed destination.

You think that’s bullshit.

You let everyone around you know just how bullshit you think that is.

Which means you let the Cueball that is “raising” you know exactly what you think of his attitude and opinion towards time and the continuum of it all. He, of course, mocks you for your “childish” thoughts in comparison to his boundless knowledge but that doesn’t stop you from thinking that each and every time he stars spewing words about destiny and pre-decided upon paths that he’s just pulling a load of bullshit from the depths of his empty, white head.

You know time. You know it better than he does.

You know time. You have to know it to break it, shatter it, make it do what you want of it in ways no one else had ever thought possible. It’s what you do, it’s what you were created to do.

And that gall of him to think you’ll just lay down and fall into whatever set of decisions and paths he and his “Lord” want of you is beyond laughable, it’s disgusting.

So you ignore him. At basically every occasion.

And it annoys him to no end.

And they can’t kill you for it. Killing you would be a blessing, a relief, it’s what you want so they can’t threaten you with that when you misbehave and ignore orders and suggestions.

Which you do often by taking time into your own hands like you’re supposed to and instead of contributing to the main body of the river, you ignore the ever-flowing continuum for something infinitely more appealing and enjoyable to experience. Even if you can only experience it yourself from the side lines.

That’s enough for you.

Well it isn’t but there’s no point being upset or angry about it when you’re on your own. No, it’s best to direct those emotions to someone deserving of being on the receiving end of them instead of keeping them trapped inside your own head with no outlet to project them at.

Keeping anger to yourself is just stupid. Being angry on your own is just stupid.

You’re not stupid. You’re not doing that.

What you are doing, is watching one of the creeks you’d decided to intervene in.

You’ve set this one into motion and now you’re going to sit back and watch it play out.

The main body of the river did not have a very kind outcome for the trolls you’ve been observing on and off through its flow of time, which was both rude and awful so you were going to ignore it as long as you could. Which, considering that you could ignore the rules of time however you wished by breaking them in new ways and the fact that you had a limitless life span to figure out new and interesting ways to do so, was a very, very long time.

You had so much empty time to fill however you wanted to.

And what you wanted right now was to watch the lives of this band of outcasts and rebellion sowers go about their lives together now that Really Red Tiny One wasn’t going to be strung up and executed by some unhappy Religious Clown asshole.

Well, actually they’re being a bit boring right now what with their quadrant-blurring antics and the like, right now so you might just skip ahead into the future a bit to see if you can find a more interesting viewpoint and everything is on fire.

You promptly say ‘fuck that’ to that conclusion and tear yourself a way into a time somewhere between the disgustingly affectionate quadrant-blurring antics and the firey doom of something having gone wrong and find yourself somewhere much more interesting.

Your favourites have somehow gotten themselves to survive long enough to meet up with Winged Pretty Boy, and it looks like this time around he’s gotten himself a collar made out of clown teeth scars, which certainly is something you’ve never seen before. Probably because you tend to pass Winged Pretty Boy over for the more interesting figures that are Spider Pirate and… the other one… whatever he was, it’s unimportant. The point is that your favourites have met up with him and there looks to be an argument breaking out between then and Winged Pretty Boy and fuck yes. You have chosen a great place to pop back in on the timeline.

Sparky is shouting at Winged Pretty Boy, Winged Pretty Boy is shouting back, Really Red Tiny One is trying to calm them both down, Predator Big Cat is looking between the three of them like she’s as ready for a fight to break out as you are, though for different reasons of course, and Caregiver looks to be sporting the beginning of a headache.

You hope a fight does break out, that would be so much fun to watch.

It probably won’t because you’re sure that Sparky is more arguing with Winged Pretty Boy because Really Red Tiny One can’t quite look at the other mutant without his eyes stalling on the ring of hideous looking scars around his throat. Also you know for a fact that Sparky agrees somewhat with Winged Pretty Boy; shared experiences giving them similar mindsets and all but fuck.

You would really like to see a fight break out though. Just think of how dramatic that would be!

You’re starting to wish that you had something to munch on while you watch all this drama unfold before your eyes when your whole mood takes a urn for the worst as Cueball makes an appearance.

Asshole can’t even let you enjoy the unfolding drama the way you want to without coming in to check that you’re going to do what he wants, which is bullshit because neither you nor he would exist if you hadn’t done what he wanted at some point in your future so why can��t he just leave you be to experience the closest thing you have to an actual existence?

Fucking asshole Cueball. What does he want now?

“You can’t possibly be at this again, can you?”

Yes? So what if you are? It’s not as if any time you waste actually means anything does it? Not when you can just tear your way into whenever the hell you want to. Or does his limitless knowledge gloss over that little glaring detail?

“It’s foolish to see these timelines past where they diverge from the main timeline,” and he’s fucking ignoring you again. Even though you both know for a fact that he can hear every single, tiny thing you’ve ever thought to yourself. Asshole Cueball. “Even more so when you further them past the point where they should have collapsed in on themselves from their lacking relevance.”

Again… so what if you are? What’s he going to do about it? Is he going to kill you? Is he going to lock you in your room like a child refusing to do her chores before she goes out to play? Is he going to lock your powers away? Tell Big Bad Skull Man on you like a little snitch?

You’d like to see him try.

“I don’t need to do any of that. For you’ve already lost your interest in these pathetic lower life forms and whatever nonsense they get up to with their fleeting lives.”

… Fuck.

“The timeline is already starting to fall apart without your attention on it, isn’t it? It isn’t stable enough to support itself this far away from the main timeline.”

Fuck.

“Even if you wanted to put it back together and hold onto it longer, which we both know you don’t, you’ll just be acting as the voyeur once again. Always watching from the sideline, never able to interact in ways that would be anything that even ghosted as satisfactory, aren’t you?”

Maybe you like being the voyeur? Had he never thought of that? Fucking asshole Cueball coming in and ruining a whole timeline, a whole new scenario and situation with so many off-branching possibilities, for you.

“I believe we both know the answer there.”

… Fucker.

“I will see you after you sow the Seer’s death into the Clown’s primitive scripture, you have another assignment waiting for you afterwards.”

Of course you do, you have nothing but assignments, task after task after task with nothing in between and you’re alone again.

Fucking Cueball just leaving like that, fuck him.

And the timeline you were watching is gone too; collapsed in on itself before it got to the juicy part like they always do. Enough to catch your interest by never enough for you to really enjoy it like you want to.

This is also bullshit.

Your whole existence is bullshit.

…

You suppose you should get to work then, not like you have anything better to do then ensure the river of time flowed like it was supposed to.

#distantpastzine #The Handmaid #Handmaid #Homestuck #Fanfic

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homespork-review · 5 years ago

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Homespork Act 1: The Note Dawdling Tension Plays (Part 1)

A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, 2009, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

CHEL: Here we see the first page, and are introduced to our protagonist, ZOOSMELL POOPLORD! Sorry, I mean John Egbert. The joke names used as a running gag, and also the actual names which end up applied to the characters, were the suggestions of the players of the original forum game.

BRIGHT: Homestuck does start out strongly in several ways. It immediately establishes the protagonist and location. It sets the tone it will use, one based heavily on a text adventure computer game. It introduces the reader to the inventory system...

And here the first feature of Homestuck becomes apparent: although a hugely popular and widely known webcomic, it is very slow to get going. The new reader who arrives on the recommendation of others ends up scratching their head and wondering if they’re in the right place.

TIER: In ancient times (so somewhere in 2014/15) I actually attempted to read Homestuck to see what the occasional weird noises the name caused were going on about. I'm very certain that I didn't even make it to meeting any of the other kids I was so bored.

CHEL: Same here. It took me two or three attempts to get to that point. The problem is that the intro is left over from its days as a forum game, in which no one was expecting it to lead into the epic story it became. It worked great for that format, but less well now. And here we start on our first counts.

GET ON WITH IT!: 1 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 2

How Not to Write a Novel lists multiple errors which could be said to apply here:

The Waiting Room - wherein the story is too long delayed Here the writer churns out endless scenes establishing background information with no main story in sight. On chapter 3, the reader still has no idea why it’s important to know about [the background info, in this case how badly John fails at using technology]. By chapter 7, the reader would be having strong suspicions that it isn’t important, were a reader ever to make it as far as chapter 7. Zeno’s Manuscript - in which irrelevant detail delays narrative momentum Any scene can be killed by description of every meaningless component of whatever action the character undertakes. As in Zeno’s Paradox, in which an arrow never reaches its target because it must always travel half the remaining distance, the reader begins to feel as if the end is further and further away.

A comic about a kid failing to master a video game inventory system is mildly amusing once, but not when it drags on this long, and it’s not particularly fitting for an epic adventure involving the fate of universes. Well, that’s not quite fair; introduction to mundane life and slow revelation of the magical goings-on works fine for books like the Harry Potter series. But, to take Philosopher’s Stone as an example, multiple different odd things happen over the course of Uncle Vernon’s regular boring day, increasing in scale until it’s very clear something strange is going on, and establishing multiple aspects of the wizarding world, e.g. owls, their fashion, the existence and disappearance of a mysterious villain, the fact that the wizarding world is supposed to be secret.

John fucking about with his sylladex and putting up movie posters for page after page doesn’t tell us anything new. Failing to use the sylladex once would be enough to get the point that magical video game inventories are a thing in this world and John’s not very good at using them across, and then we really ought to move on, and we can already see the posters on his walls so we don’t need to see him hanging more. Possibly we could have needed the latter in a purely text format where we couldn’t see the walls, or in a comic without text description at the bottom where attention would need to be drawn to them on-panel. Admittedly, it does establish him picking up the hammer, which becomes relevant, but we don’t need a full page each for both the action of him picking up the hammer and the action of him hanging the poster.

… Who hangs a poster with nails, anyway? His walls must be in a hell of a state.

For that matter, that’s another HNTWAN entry or two:

The Second Argument in the Laundromat - a scene which occurs twice NEVER use two scenes to establish the same thing. We do not, under any circumstances, want a series of scenes in which the hero goes to job interviews but fails to get the job, or has a series of unsuccessful dates to illustrate bad luck in love. This works in the movies, where three scenes can pass in thirty seconds, but not in a novel. The Redundant Tautology - wherein the author repeats himself If you have made a point in one way, resist the temptation to reinforce it by making it again. Do not reexpress it in more flowery terms, and do not have the character reaffirm it in dialogue […] This point is worth repeating; don’t reiterate. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 4

Additionally, people with a lower tolerance for “lovable clumsy dork” characters are going to come to hate John before the comic’s even started, though it’s probably best that people who are going to hate the main character learn that quickly so they can leave. I can understand not wanting to lose the forum game which originally spawned the comic, the other people involved would probably not be pleased, but perhaps it would be better saved as a side story and trimmed down when the comic proper was released. At least they could be compressed down by showing multiple failures and multiple poster-hanging actions on single pages.

One other minor gripe might be the neologisms, such as “sylladex” meaning inventory. I found it fairly easy to pick up and it does make the tone and narration nicely distinctive, but it’s a level of extra complication. How Not to Write a Novel has a couple points on excessively baroque wordplay - do you guys think it’s worth giving it a point for that?

BRIGHT: Possibly not in this case - wordplay is a feature of HS and this one is at least made fairly clear. There are plenty of offenders later on as I recall though...

CHEL: Okay, seems fair. In this case it is more of a feature than a bug. It does establish the narrative voice and add to the video game theme. However, the movie posters also bring up an addition to our third count.

Plus, a black president? Now you’ve seen everything! WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 1

A reference to the song “White Suburb Impressionism”, by IAMX…

"IAMX - 'White Suburb Impressionism" (Watch on YouTube)

… this count goes up whenever characters behave in a way which suggests they’re, well, white and suburban (or wealthier), despite any attempts to present them otherwise. This would have passed without comment, but Hussie later tried to claim he’d always intended the kids to be “aracial”, so any reader could project themselves or their preferred headcanons onto the kids. As we’ll show you, we don’t believe him, or at least don’t believe he succeeded. That would probably be difficult to pull off, anyway. Race affects a lot more than features on a stylised sprite.

FAILURE ARTIST: Now, I can’t quite put my finger on it but John’s and Dave’s opinion on black presidents in movies (that it’s a gimmick ruined by Obama’s election) feels like something that would only come out of a white mouth i.e. Andrew Hussie’s. Not the most egregious case of implied whiteness but still worth noting.

CHEL: The point of the joke here is not 100% clear, and that’ll be a thing which comes up later as well. See, I agree that’s Dave’s opinion, but I thought the point was that John genuinely didn’t know there was a black president at the time of writing because he’s already been established to be not exactly a genius and so far he’s been focused on movies and video games instead of real life. Maybe I’m underestimating him, though, since admittedly not very much of him has been shown at this point and it’s been a while since I read the whole thing. I’m not going to start using the ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY count here, though, because here Hussie clearly was trying to be funny. It just isn’t clear to me what about it was supposed to be funny. That’s probably my autism talking, though. Jokes are hard. I agree that it sounds like a white kid’s opinion either way - even the dimmest black American kid would know Obama existed, and so most likely would non-black people of colour.

Anyway! Things pick up a bit when John, under the username ectoBiologist, starts chatting to the second character to be introduced, currently known as turntechGodhead, though the second topic of conversation is a reference to a 1989 movie which, as time goes on, will be familiar to fewer and fewer readers. Luckily, the writer realises this, and the content of the conversation makes the reference sufficiently clear without falling into As You Know dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: Namely, their conversation is about a scene where - pardon me for being gross but it’s in the comic - a character accidentally ingests urine instead of apple juice. John and TG are surprised the character knew it was urine but I find it weird that someone with working smell would not know what it is. Urine has a distinct odor.

CHEL: Well, be fair. According to the drawings, the characters in question don’t have noses!

FAILURE ARTIST: On a more pertinent note, this conversation is an edited version of one Hussie and a friend had. Perhaps Hussie was TG? TG is practically an Author Avatar for Hussie. Sure, Hussie literally appears in the comic later, but TG seems to fit his true personality better. We’ll see how that affects things for better or for worse.

BRIGHT: This is also the reader’s introduction to the Pesterlog. This is one of those things that seems like it should be out of place in a webcomic - it’s just a page of two people talking to each other in chatlog format, with no other information - but the Pesterlogs actually work surprisingly well.

FAILURE ARTIST: When I first read Homestuck, I didn’t know you had to click on the Pesterlog to open it. I just sat around wondering what amazing conversations they were having. I’m not the only one I think who made that mistake.

CHEL: Yeah, I think I briefly had the same problem, but I don’t remember for sure. Possibly more attention could be drawn to the button.

TIER: I would've probably ended up in the same boat if the friends that recommended I read Homestuck didn't specifically tell me not to accidentally overlook them!

CHEL: That’s not exactly a writing error, so I’m not sure it falls under our jurisdiction, but it’s a point that ought to be brought up. The Pesterlogs do work well once the reader actually sees them, anyway. It’s actually pretty interesting to see how much information can be conveyed in a conversation without falling into As You Know Bob. Let’s check what points are introduced in this first one, for example:

- John really loves what he got for his birthday, a Little Monsters poster. From this we know he’s not spoiled (this is how you do it, Meyer) and easily entertained, and likely has a good home life, as he’s so happy and grateful about a gift from his dad.

-turntechGodhead has apple juice in his closet. This establishes his odd home life, and gets explained in more detail later.

- Some things about the personalities of both kids. John is enthusiastic and a joker, TG is mellower, sarcastic, rambles a bit, and at least plays at being cool.

- John really wants to play the SBURB Beta, a game mentioned earlier which is late being released. TG is less keen, again trying to be cool about it.

- Said game got “slammed” by critics, despite the fact that we learned earlier from John’s SBURB-logo calendar that this game has been hyped to hell and back and must be popular, with merchandise and reviews being released before even the beta version of the game is out. Something weird is going on; someone really wants a lot of people to play this game.

Not bad considering a total lack of body language reference or narration. Das Sporking’s seen authors using traditional narration do worse!

FAILURE ARTIST: The (adult) critics of Game Bro get into shenanigans that prevent them from playing the game they reviewed. Perhaps there’s something in the game that prevents itself from being played by adults, just like how adults can’t pilot Evangelions in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.

CHEL: Not sure. Doesn’t one of Dad’s online friends play it, or at least get caught up in it, later on? Though that part’s obviously supposed to be a joke… Maybe instead it’s a built-in way to stop anyone who might be listened to warning others what it does?

As established earlier, said beta is late; this is a reference to the originally planned launch date of the comic, three days before it actually ended up being released. Also, there’s a pun you may have missed in the background. The programming files on John’s desktop include the phrase “^CAKE”. The ^ symbol is called a carot. Get used to noticing those. It’s pretty amazing how many references, self-references, puns, and recurring themes are worked in, and people such as revolutionaryduelist have made semi-careers picking them all out. We won’t bother with all of them or we’ll be here all century, but we’ll pick up on any obvious ones.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie majored in computer science so there’s lot of computer science in-jokes in the beginning.

BRIGHT: Something I just noticed: One of the other files on John’s desktop is ‘TYPHEUS’. It even has a Denizen icon! Probably something that has been brought up plenty of times before, but still nifty on a reread.

CHEL: Typheus and Denizens will come up later in the comic.

TIER: When he feels like it, Hussie is immensely good at foreshadowing later events in pretty subtle but solid ways. It's stuff like this that makes times when he does fumble look worse than they probably are in comparison.

#homestuck #review #let's read #reread #literary critique #sporking #homespork #homestuck meta

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weaselandfriends · 6 years ago

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Hymnstoke XIV

Like Act 2, Act 4 opens with a walkaround game.

I didn't comment much on the game at the beginning of Act 2, despite it being one of those much-discussed multimedia elements that make Homestuck so distinctive. In Act 2, the movement from linear story to game serves several purposes. First, it demonstrates an increase in scope, both in terms of Homestuck's story and in relation to Hussie's previous effort, Problem Sleuth. While Act 1 incorporated a couple of new elements not seen in other MSPA comics, such as protagonists capable of speech and a handful of simple videos, the Act 2 walkaround is the first dramatic increase in what readers could have reasonably expected from the comic at the time.

Secondly, the novel concept of incorporating a game into the story corresponds to and emphasizes the novel concept of SBURB within the narrative of Homestuck. Just as the world in which John now finds himself is completely new and unexpected, so too are the readers introduced to this world through a new and unexpected medium. This world is even called the "Medium"—and surrounding a space (Skaia) described as a crucible of pure creation. I previously discussed the significance of SBURB's geography in regards to Gnosticism, but one could also interpret it as a statement on Homestuck as a creative enterprise. A crucible of pure creation through which a new world, or a new mode of expression, will be built. Like how John and friends attempt to create a new world from the fragments of the old, Hussie creates a new kind of story from the fragments of all types of storytelling that came before it. Image, text, video, sound, game—Homestuck strings together these disparate modes of expression into an original creation. In short, the method by which Homestuck is presented mirrors its explicit thematic content.

Wikipedia defines phenomenology as "the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness." Remember how I mentioned that the modernists were often concerned with the conscious and subconscious, and how many attempted to reach truth by depicting the subconscious? Similar concept here.

I was introduced to the term "phenomenology" in relation to art history. In particular, my professor applied the term to modernist painting and sculpture that was designed so that the act of experiencing it changes its meaning. Let's take the following sculpture:

"Sculpture?" you may ask. Yes, I know. It looks more like a misshapen industrial structure. The problem with this sculpture is that no single photograph can truly depict it. Here's the same sculpture from a different vantage:

Another:

Still another:

Top down:

Is this sculpture broader at the bottom or at the top? What shape is it, exactly? You can find this sculpture at the University of California, Los Angeles, and you can even go inside it through the opening visible in some of the photographs. Inside, it takes on a completely different appearance, although unfortunately I couldn't find any good pictures of the inside that didn't have a gigantic Getty Images watermark on them.

In art, this phenomenological experience often boils down to optical illusion or a similar technical trick that appears novel at first but lacks much substance beyond its presentation. What meaning can we derive from this experiment or others like it?

I believe that the phenomenological creations of the modernists eventually reached an apotheosis in a more contemporary form of creative expression: Video games.

The way the player perceives a video game, even a video game you might consider simplistic or linear, is directly affected by how the player plays the game. Take, say, Super Mario Bros. (1985) for the Nintendo Entertainment System. In this game, the player moves Mario left to right to reach a fixed goal. But even this game is affected immensely by the innumerable choices each player makes in playing the game. For an extreme example, compare how a speed run of Super Mario Bros. looks compared to any casual experience of the game. Some elements of the speed run even involve elements assuredly not intended by the game's creator (glitches, for instance). But even at a less extreme level, every player's experience of Super Mario Bros. will differ depending on the routes they take to reach the end, the strategies they employ to evade obstacles, or even the amount of times they die before finally succeeding.

Why do I bring this up? The concept of phenomenology ties into Homestuck's "reader participation" elements, both via the prompt suggestions early on and the more psychological effect the fandom has on Homestuck's development in its back half. Of these two "reader participation" elements, the latter is the one that is probably better described as "phenomenological," in that it is the readership's perspective of Homestuck that eventually drives its trajectory (as opposed to the prompt suggestions, from which Hussie could pick and choose at will). In the back half of Homestuck, the narrative plays more and more on the author's interpretation of the readership's interpretation of the narrative, becoming a perspectival mobius double reach-around where the true driver of the narrative's creation becomes increasingly unclear.

But more specifically, I want to discuss this walkaround game at the beginning of Act 4 in particular. Compared to the one at the beginning of Act 2, this walkaround is not increasing Homestuck's scope. John is entering a new location, but the experience is less novel than entering the Medium in Act 2, both in terms of John's perspective and the reader's. While the Act 4 walkaround features mechanical improvements (inventory, combat) over the Act 2 walkaround, it is still essentially the same thing: a video game. The reader has seen this before in Homestuck. It's not new.

I cannot speak for the experience of every reader, but each time I read Homestuck I am tempted to skip this walkaround entirely. The combat mechanics are banal, the camera is zoomed too close to John to allow for satisfying exploration of an unfamiliar world. In Act 2, the walkaround takes place in an area with which the reader is already geographically acquainted (John's house), so the camera issues are less apparent. But trying to navigate this twisting maze of blue paths, surrounded on all sides by nondescript rocks and mushrooms, can become frustrating. Even if I consult the supplementary map image, I find it somewhat difficult to figure out where I am and where I'm supposed to go.

Which is just the thing. The reader is not supposed to go anywhere. There is no real resolution to this walkaround. The same, in fact, can be said for every walkaround, and we will continue to get amazingly nonessential walkarounds in the acts to come. What does the reader miss if they skip this Act 4 walkaround? Some tedious exposition on the nature of John's planet, its consorts, its customs. Superfluous W O R L D B U I L D I N G that the Homestuck narrative is quick to forget from henceforth on.

It kind of makes me want to, shall we say, skip to the end.

In Act 5, Vriska and Tavros will discuss how the way one plays a game affects the way the game is perceived. Hardcore speed runner Vriska will take my side of the argument and skip what she can; Tavros, more in line with readers inclined to learn as much about SBURB's lore as possible, will argue instead for assiduously completing every task. This conflict—between speed and lore, content and fluff, meat and candy if you will—eventually becomes the core and final dichotomy of Homestuck. But in Homestuck's later stages, the characters and narrative will apply this dichotomy not to how we experience video games, but how we experience all art—and how we experience our actual lives. I intend to trace that development, and this walkaround serves as a fine introduction.

In a few years, Flash will be deprecated and you'll only be able to experience this walkaround through this series of images. I don't know who created these images, or whether laziness or incompetency made them so shitty and SBaHJ-esque. But I give that person props for maintaining that sense of "God this sucks, can I just skip it?" Good job, intern.

You switch to PICTIONARY, a choice based on a strong whim from the mysterious ethers of democracy.

Another one of those traps, like the suggestion prompts. Wow! The readers get to pick Jade's fetch modus! What an amazing display of reader/author interaction! Except Jade's fetch modus doesn't matter. In fact, as we transition into this next phase of the story, nobody's fetch modus will matter. The fact that all of Jade's possible fetch modii are total jokes only emphasizes the point.

I mentioned in the previous Hymnstoke that we're entering what I'm calling the "clockwork" part of Homestuck. In this part, Homestuck's audience has the least amount of control over its progression. While the suggestion prompts were mostly irrelevant because Hussie could pick whatever prompt he wanted, they occasionally paved actual story or character developments ("Become the mayor of Can Town") or formed memetic jokes that would mutate over the course of Homestuck into part of its mythos. And in Act 6, the immensity of the Homestuck fandom and its increasingly vocal demands will lead to a more subtle transition in what Homestuck becomes—the mobius double reach-around I mentioned previously. But here, in the clockwork part of the story, it's more Hussie than anywhere else. Of course it would be. It's Dirk, Hussie's analogue (connected via a series of motifs like horses and robotics), that comes to represent the Meat side of storytelling, that describes the way a story should be told as a perfect machine. An unfocused, nebulous gaggle of "readers" cannot hope to coordinate among themselves to create something so precise and efficient. Their strengths lie in different directions.

Ok, have at it! If you're at a loss, click the controller button up there.

This may or may not mean anything to you depending on your current perspective.

As it turns out, the story retreads everything that happens in the Act 4 walkaround anyway, making it even less relevant. Even Crumplehat and the Salamander Wizard appear as the walkaround's events are depicted from PM's perspective. This recap is actually pretty extensive, similar to the shitty SBaHJified image walkthrough that got put up in anticipation of Flash's deprecation.

I wonder if Hussie was self-conscious about people's patience for the walkaround? Or maybe he already anticipated Flash would not last forever? Perhaps he added this recap for accessibility reasons, in case of visually-impaired readers? Maybe he felt some new insight would come from seeing the same events replicated from a different character's viewpoint? Or maybe he simply wanted to reveal that the person speaking to John during the walkaround was PM instead of WV?

I'm doing exactly what I said I wouldn't do and trying to delve into Hussie's psyche. As it stands, the addition of this recap makes certain elements of the walkaround mandatory experiences for the reader to progress, as opposed to the walkaround itself which can be ended without experiencing anything. I'll leave the discussion by reiterating the second part of the quoted text:

This may or may not mean anything to you depending on your current perspective.

And I think it's safe to say our "current perspective" is much different than those who read this first.

#homestuck #hymnstoke

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hootpoop12 · 6 years ago

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Theory time

Alright, so we all know through the context of this being written in a fanfiction/a03 format that this is all a play about canon VS fanon. What is a little hard to decipher is what are the things that are plays off fanon and which qualities are the true aspects of the characters(canon)? ANYWAY here are just a few of the things I am ASSUMING are plays off fanon based on my years in the fandom and sheer obsession of consuming this shit (trigger warning for everything taken place in the epilogue FYI):

-Dave: I think some of the main aspects of fanon influencing his epilogue version is intertwined with “woobifying”, “Slow burn”, and even possibly even “sexuality”.

-Woobifying is a fandom concept of reducing a character to “a cinnamon roll too pure for this world” someone you wanna baby (often applied to trans guy characters whether canon or headcanoned). This one is a bit of reach I’ll admit because it DOES makes sense that after years of living with Karkat the dude would soften up but there were times in the epilogue even Dave admits he’s gotten softer and the dude just plain out was very passive. In my time I’ve seen tons of depictions of Dave as a lot more emotional than shown in the comic or a lot more woobified in fics (like in meteor fics where he often has very dramatic emotional outbursts) By the way this is NOT me shitting on you if you like viewing Dave in that way because a lot people with trauma relate to him and use him for “cathartic release”(me fucking too lol). It’s more a guess/observation of maybe why he’s developed in this way due to the comic now being a strange sponge absorbing all fanon, good and bad, into it weird ass grasp.

-Slow burn is likely the trope that plays into why the hell it took so fucking long for him AND Karkat to admit their feelings. If you have literally ever consumed Davekat content I’m sorry but 99% of it is slow burn lmao every meteor fic is pining, every coffee shop AU is the budding of a lifelong partnership, and every Harry potter furry inflation pwp crossover WHATEVER fic is 10k words building of sexual tension like......To bring their other relationships in canon into this we can see that Dave was able to flirt with Jade and Terezi and entered a relationship with them at a pretty normal rate WHICH can totally be attributed to the fact he views them as girls and himself as heterosexual so was much more comfortable making a move- sure. Looking at Karkat, however, and you see the dude is a little shy about romance sure but he was still able to flirt with Terezi and make awkward moves on John so like......I can’t help but to feel like something outside (us?) was influencing them?

-Sexuality is another sort of reach but I think it’s something to consider. In terms of the comic....when exactly DID canon end? You could argue at the end of act 7.......or the moment John used his retcon powers to create a new timeline. Fandom Dave (on the tumblr side at least) was usually consider queer and a lot people shipped Dave with another dude. Perhaps John going back and rewriting canon helped bring our influence over Dave’s sexuality into the comic? I remember finding out Davekat was canon and confirming my “Dave is bisexual” headcanon and just thinking in wonder how it felt like Hussie was plucking my desires straight from my head and incorporating them. Which made me HAPPY by the way. If this is anywhere even near truth it’s not like he didn’t do a fantastical and natural job of incorporating it into the comic which shows how “incorporated fanon” is not a totally horrendous thing. The comics always done it with fandom memes and such.

-Rose Lalonde. Not too sure what fanon influenes were brought onto her to be honest? In candy she was almost like a creepy stepford wife which is. Bizarre to me. Rose is the most contrary and rebellious character so seeing her settle down like that (OR FUCKING DOING SOME GUYS LAUNDRY) is a little strange. In meat she insists that she is an individual despite being married but that could have EASILY been Dirk’s influence? Also her biggest fandom stereotypes off the top of my head is Know-it-all smug meddler, alcoholic, and elegant. Really none of that was applied so still need to consider her more. The most damning thing however is where is all the piss?? If you look at the amount of piss kink rose fanfiction one has to wonder......and I can’t even continue this joke.

-Jade Harley: Gonna keep it real with ya’ll. I feel like this epilogue gave Jade Harley way more character. She wasn’t given much in canon except for lonely silly girl so it makes sense to me why she’d grow up desperate for physical bonds and inserting herself into relationships. I liked her telling John that she wasn’t some princess in a tower anymore cause it shows she KNOWS how everyone has always viewed her and that’s a little sad. As for tropes around her character.....yep people pleaser, silly girl, hippie, shoved aside for literally any other character......Need to think about her more, too.

-Jake fucking English. What even is there to say? He more than anyone was influenced by fanon and it doesn’t take too much thought to see how. In a lot of fandom jokes and in fanfiction he is basically treated as a stupid piece of meat. I genuinely don’t read much fanfiction about him except from a trust few fans who I know care about him and will write him in a full rounded way. In any case we see a single moment in which Jake has this oppressive narrative taken away from him and it was when he was talking to Dave and Karkat during their election conversation. If that wasn’t already hard enough to read we can look back at the implied rape that took place with him in the beginning of Jane’s relationship with him or over the course of it. John, the one person supposedly not influenced by fanon as he’s still tied to the comic via retcon powers, is even the one to tell people that Jake is basically being raped. So yeah. Good times. I’ll get to Dirk in terms of Jake in a moment L M A O. Imagine that being the saddest lmao you ever just read.

-Jane Crocker: Welp hope you weren't a Jane fan lmao. What can I say except it FEELS like all the subliminal messaging really got to her and she’s like......warped by the condesce? I think if in the comic they showed more of her political takes then maybe this wouldn’t have come as such a shock. Like, I flat out am disgusted by her character now? She’s a facist, abusive, rapist(that was hint, unfortunately)? WOW good take homestuck writting staff?? I mean I know one of you used to write like incest pedo rape porn but aight??????????? Anyways in fanon Jane is treated as the girl who gets in the way of dirkjake so kinda that early 2000s bitchy yaoi girl brand, boring person in the background, or the hottie. They obviously kept saying she was “easy on the eyes” so there’s the hottie trope but that’s about it.

-Roxy Lalonde: Out of ALL the Alphas they fucking escaped with their goddamn dignity PFFT. So in terms of tropes: trans Roxy, alcoholic, and flirty “boy obsessed”.

-So with trans Roxy this is like Dave’s sexuality thing I discussed where a widely celebrated headcanon influenced canon and that not necessarily a BAD thing. Like I said, this theory is that canon is just absorbing fanon for better and for worse. I saw people were bummed they weren’t a trans girl but I am actually down with this for two reasons. 1) being all those memes “what’s your gender?” “the void” and 2) a part being friends with someone who’s trans is.....not being used to seeing them as the gender they actually are but taking the time to learn these new unfamiliar pronouns- and get the fuck over it. It’s their choice and you just gotta accept it despite your feelings.

-alcoholic Roxy was not at all incorporated which is the biggest fanon about her (not as much in recent years thankfully) so honestly? Kinda diminishes my argument. It’s not like the writers were worried that tossing out their progress as person was bad writing lol look at Dirk.

-Flirty Rox. In candy they were SUPER fast moving in their relationship with John and despite towards the end they said that Dirk dying made them wanna do something with their life I just....don’t buy it? Mainly because john who is uninfluenced by the fanon tropes even noticed how fast they were moving and how stepford agreeable wife she’d become.

-Dirk Strider. Aight. So. Here we go. fandom tropes are controlling puppet master, abusive, and cold/uncaring.

-Dirk is a naturally controlling man, yes. Every version of himself struggles with this, yes. Even if we work on issues does not mean old flaws will never leak out, yes. However, after in the comic itself we see conversations with some of his closest companions and the effort he was making and ready to continue making was completely obliterated. Dirk is someone who takes his projects a little too seriously so why would he toss out this one- the most important one in his life? ANYWAY........Dirk in canon is shown that he’s also not great at multi-tasking or really anything that he really makes himself out to be AMAZING at. Don’t get me wrong I actually view Dirk as a complement dude cause he did get all the alphas into the session in a smoothish fashion (yes hal is him so it still counts) but, like, even when Dirk sounds like an AWESOME engineer to Jake he even admits that he basically had the future’s technology to help and it wasn’t that impressive. So now he’s claiming he’s the BEST? Wack.

-Abusive Dirk......The sheer amount of people in the fandom who still misconstrue his character as heartless and the sheer amount of fanfiction of sociopathic Dirk might’ve done something. If he is truly becoming his “ultimate self” and he is heart aspect.....all these fanfiction splinters are getting applied to him as well, ya’ll. INCLUDING one of the epilogues writers who literally used to write fanfiction depicting Dirk as a brutally abusive and manipulative version of himself. With the similarities between their big fic and the homestuck epilogue I can’t help but to wonder if they’re subtly trying to incorporate that? After all Alt Calliope goes into detail about how the writer/narrator is IMPORTANT and when one is someone who enjoys viewing dirk as such....well who’s to say pfft Everything about how Dirk treated Jake was some of the most shocking to me. How did you get the guy taking most of the blame for a relationship gone wrong to a man who in a very rapey way makes someone obsessed with him, stupid, and unable to ever receive respect? Horrifying stuff to read, lads. It makes much more sense to me if you look at this fandom’s perceptions on DirkJake. My god there are some bad takes and there’s a whole section of the fandom who was hellbent on making the ship out to be the most problematic ship to ever occur. So whereas in the comic you have Dave pointing out that both sides had issues and everyone was willing to talk things out you had half the fandom insist that it was all Dirk’s fault and he just COMPLETLY forced himself on an unwanting Jake. Yep, sound familiar?

-cold uncaring. yep tons of depictions of Dirk being cruel to his friends and family and sorry but go reread Homestuck I don’t even know what to tell you if you actually believe that. There’s literally nothing here I could write to help you. As if the whole thing about his character isn’t about how the people around him helped prevent him becoming like that and he hasn’t said in a dozen different ways how much he loves them and wants to treat them better. Get out of here with that shit lmao

I guess all can be said about Dirk at this point is either 1) the absorption of the vast amount of terrible Dirk depictions from ascending to his ult self has warped him 2) he’s playing a villain just because Homestuck being over means not existing which TERRIFIES him and existing is a higher priority than treating the people around him right or 3) caliborn influence

1) For the ascending I’m pretty sure this is the theory that’s gonna be right

2) playing the villain is probably not what it is because on twitter all of the writers are saying the transphobia is literally just him and they’re boosting a lot of theories say “this is a story about friends you love disappointing you and you moving on” So. Yeah. Take that depressing nugget of information. (I literally will be fucking dead inside if that really is where this story is taken. No joke I will probably quit this fandom lol don’t know if any of you really know how big that is for me to say

3) Caliborn? eh maybe who the fuck knows after typing that last bullet point out I’m too bummed to continue this hah

#Homestuck #Homestuck epilogue #upd8 #dirk strider #personal #fyi I love people who tell me when they disagree so if this seems like utter bullshit do not hold back

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ghostlybearmilkshake · 6 years ago

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In which I follow a master degree level seminary on the Iliad and what I take out of it is some Homestuck bullshit.

“Lo and behold everyone as I, in typical homestuck-fandom fashion apply homestuck lore to things that have nothing to do with it and theorize upon the great Achilles classpect. But before that let me tell you about something this seminary brought to our attention regarding Achilles: book I when Achiles argue with Agamemnon who is taking Briseis away from him, he goes to attack him only to be held down by Athena who grabs him by his long hair. However, Adult soldiers cut their hair which means Achiles was still young which makes sense given that in this war, Achiles is the only one who is allowed to call his mom (litteraly crying) repeatedly and his mother come! of course to do some divine intervention stuff but also to console him and reassure him. So Achiles is young. but how young ? well, given the fact that the events of the Iliad take place in the tenth and year of the trojan war, war which orginitaed from an argument which occured during the wedding of Thetis and Peleus (they did not date each other before), the parents of Achilles, assuming Thetis got down to business right away, so in 9 month after the wedding Achilles is born, so for Paris to take Helen he has to be invited by Melenas, let’s say it didn’t happen next morning after the wedding but let’s say 4 mounth after. so the travel from troy to sparta (Lacedemon) was probably a matter of mounths then Paris’ courtship (hopefully) then travel back to Troy let’s say we are around the time Achilles has been born give or take two mounths. Now let’s imagine that Menelaus doens’t immediately convoque an army there has to be convincing, threatening Paris, the all Iphigenia problem and great kings going from all over greece to troy which according to the Odyssey isn’t exactly next door (but nowhere near Ulysse’s ten year travel) and we add another year and a half at which point Achilles is, well 1 year and a half so at the moment of the Iliad, Achilles is in his twelvth year

I am not sorry. (yes he probably had a skirt. probably not a hoodie though)

Now that that’s been said I’m sure you all wonder “but ghostly, what IS Achilles’ classpect I have always wondered” as you should ! and my answer to this is: Prince of Space

To understand why Space, let’s look first at Achilles’ role into the narative structure of the Iliad because space is the only aspect for which we have info regarding story structure: alt!calliope tells Jade Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5 page 7889

Which absolutely applies to Achilles : in book I, following his argument with Agamemnon, Achilles decides to pout fall back from the battle and for 18 book Achiles, greatest of the greeks, will remain a spectator. It is only in book XIX (out of XXIV so only 5 books remaining) that Achiles goes to battle after Patroclus’ death. But in those few remaining books he absolutely compensate. Achilles does not fight the trojans, he massacres them after 18 books of innactivity the Greatest of the Greeks finally shows how he earned this title (somebody said twelve year old with godlike abilitie fighting hordes of minions on a Battlefield ?).

Now space have attributes of course and the one we know of (aside from the green sun which is a bit hard to find in the Iliad/Odyssey. But maybe not impossible who knows). After meeting with Echidna Kanaya says to Karkat:

So Space is related to life on a large scale (unlike the Life aspect which is related to life on the individual scale see resurection presented individually/theft of someone’s specific ability...) “but ghostly” I hear you cry “I do not Achiles to be a caretaker of any sort.” And you are right! he absolutely isn’t. that’s our cue to bring in: the class !

Princes are the destroyers of their aspect so in the case of space, a destroyer of Life in a large scale and as I stated earlier, what Achiles does on the battlefield isn’t a fight, it’s a massacre, that man is cuts trojans like a fucking lawnmawer which would perfectly fit his prince class. But that is not all. Princes tend to be the cause of, let’s say tensions in their group and often cause it to fall aport or sabotage it, even unwillingly. How does that apply for Achilles: fight with the commandant of the army and leave battle while being the strongest fighter: check. Leaving Patroclus fight alone (whith his amor) causing him to die, check. dragging around the corpse of hector, bringing the wrath of Zeus upon the greeks. Check. And after his death, chosing to pass his armor down to the “greatest of greeks” causing fights of egos (a bit like a certain apple) and leading to the suicide of Ajax, second only to Achilles, motherfucking check.

Now there is just one thing left regarding the aspect: though we touched about a big attribute of space we forgot one which is.. well, space. The Iliad isn’t so hot on demonstration of supernatural powers aside from the god’s so teleportation or size manipulation isn’t really Achilles’ strength. However one thing that is his strength is speed. Achillles’ main epithet is “quick-footed Achiles” (which is weird because we never see Achilles run or at least not that fast or it isn’t mentioned) and speed is definitely linked to space. Now the correlation being fast-footed=reducing the distance=destroying space is a bit of a stretch.... which I am willing to make! And there you have it folks: Achilles, Prince of Space

ps: I hesitated between space and rage (probably an heir in this case), epecially since the professor who did the seminary describe the Iliad as the story of Achilles’ wrath which is undeniably a huge part of the character however narration-wise, even though rage players do follow the same shine bright-fall back as space player, their fall back isn’t as radical, they tend to act in the shadow not fall into passivity and even though their “shine” moment are impressive they are not as important as space player who go from “I am doing absolutely nothing” to total game changer

#homestuck #iliad #achilles #classpect #prince of space #theory #space aspect #prince class #long post

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girl-in-the-library · 6 years ago

Text

Thoughts on Fandom

Lurking in the Deltarune tag, I see the Undertale fandom coming back to life. Some people are celebrating and some people are groaning, others are still fearful that the fandom might return to the mess and wank it was full of before.

And it just makes me think more about fandom in general. The idea of fandom is endlessly fascinating to me. For some it's a place of fun, or a safe space, or a space of casual interest. For others it's an obsession, or a place to assert themselves, or be important. But it's my philosophy that, as long as you're not hurting others or yourself, it's impossible to do fandom wrong.

This got much longer than I thought so I'm putting it under a cut.

I have run a panel at Anime Boston for the past two years, and I hope to run it again, called "Fandom as Coping" - in it, I discuss some of the positive aspects of fandom, using it as a coping mechanism for a myriad of reasons, but also discuss how it can become maladaptive and do more harm than good. Fandom is a double edged sword like that. But curating your experience in fandom is the best way to keep it as a healthy, positive influence in your life. When it comes to causing harm to yourself, be cautious of using fandom in an obsessive way. I know what it’s like for fandom to be literally the only thing getting you through the day. In January 2018, and again in August 2018, if I didn’t have Yuri on Ice to come home to, I might literally be dead. It was the only thing getting me through the day. And while that’s a more positive coping skill than say, self-harm, if I continued that way and hadn’t gotten the help I needed (partial and full hospitalizations, in January and August respectively), using fandom to ignore my problems and try to keep going when I obviously couldn’t would have been to my detriment. The people who you interact with in fandom can also be a big part of this.

Fandom communities can be wonderful and uplifting, but they can also be an echo chamber of toxicity. If you interact with friends you know irl, or make friends on a one to one level, it’s easier to find the positives. That’s not to say that larger groups or communities can’t be supportive. But if you find yourself in a place where people are constantly putting you down, or if everyone is stuck in a spiral of depression, it might not be the healthiest place for getting better. Of course, you may need a place to vent, a place to feel like you belong, or a place to escape. Fandom can do all of those things. But you need to be careful. If you get stuck in a community that is not healthy, it can be hard to escape, especially if you feel like it’s the only place where people understand you. If you are having trouble irl, and trouble online, it’s likely that you need to seek professional help. If you are having trouble in only one of these places it’s still likely you need to seek professional help. Therapy is not a weakness.

Though fandom ISN’T just a negative place. You can find very supportive communities, and make long lasting friendships. And even if they’re only temporary friendships, they might be what you need at the time, and that is still positive! In fandom, you can find people who share your interests, people who will help you cope, help distract you, and a place to belong. You just need to be able to judge whether or not you’re in a healthy space, which can be hard to do.

For me, fandom has almost always been positive, and that's largely due to the way I interact with fandom. When I have bordered on using it maladaptively, that was more due to my mental illness causing obsessive and compulsive tendencies than because I was interacting with anything or anyone in fandom in a toxic way, so that's a little more personal. But fandom can be maladaptive as a coping mechanism OR just generally a bad influence in your life, if that’s how you’re using it. If you get stuck in a negativity spiral, it can be hard to get out of it. Sometimes you just need to take a step back, and sometimes you need to start over.

This is all on an individual level, and based largely in creating communities. But fandom is also a collective, and the works involved (fanfiction, fanart, cosplay, meta, et cetera) play a big role in how fandom works, and often create drama and wank.

My fandom experience has been largely defined by interaction on an individual level with specific people, getting lost in the crowd at conventions, and sometimes cosplaying or writing fanfiction. Because of this, I have avoided a lot of wank and drama that seems typical in many fandoms. Though I have gotten into an ill-advised argument on a forum once or twice, my fandom experience has been largely positive because of this way that I interact.

Now, I know that not everyone can choose to simply interact like I do. Big Name Fans, for example, get involved in drama whether they want to or not, simply because they wrote or drew or cosplayed or meta'd something popular. They become voices for the fandom, and people love them for it and hate them for it. But still, BNFs and other popular fans are still just fans. They're people who have opinions about the works they love, but get embroiled in controversy because they happen to be popular. Of course, there are fandom famous, or fandom infamous people who are toxic, who do hurt others, and who deliberately stir shit. These are not the people I'm talking about. You'll find people like that in any fandom, in any part of life if we're being realistic, and the best thing to do in those situations is to just not interact. It's hard to walk away sometimes, I know, but shit-stirrers need an audience, they need people to preach to and get riled up. Without that, they'll (hopefully) fade away. But for those famous fans who are here to have a good time and share what they love - share with them! It's okay to admire them, to strive to be a better writer or artist or what have you, but they're still people who just want to interact with their favorite media.

Now, I'm not anywhere near a BNF, I'm a mediocre writer and cosplayer, and I just do it for fun, so I've never been put in a position where I've been forced to interact with a negative side of fandom. I know it's not easy to ignore in those cases. I guess my point there, in general, is don't be an asshole to anyone, and be excellent to each other.

The other biggest complicating factor that I see is the age disparity in fandom. I'm not even going to talk about something like My Little Pony right now, because that's more than I can tackle, but I'm thinking, for example, of when I was in the Homestuck fandom.

I was 18 when I started in the Homestuck fandom, and it was about 2 or 3 years old at that point. If I had started reading at the beginning of when it came out, I would have been about 15. I don't know what the audience of Problem Sleuth was like, but my first year in the fandom seemed to me like it was primarily people in my age range who were the most involved. Of course, I can't know that for certain, and I'm not even sure what I'm defining as my age range here (15-25???) But the thing about Homestuck is that it got bigger very quickly. The older fans were getting older and new fans were coming in younger and younger.

The Homestuck fandom had one of the widest age ranges I had ever seen, and that made it difficult, it many ways, to interact. The best thing for adults in fandom to do is tag their content, and do whatever they can to keep kids from getting to what may be inappropriate. But it's not the stranger's responsibility if a kid seeks out vore inflation a/b/o or whatever the kids are seeking, as long as it's tagged appropriately. That's the parent's responsibility. And to an extent, the kid's as well. If a kid wants to see boobs on the internet, almost any kid these days knows how to find boobs on the internet. Depending on the kid's age, it's up to the parents to put up parental blocks or monitor a kid's usage. With safe search as the default on Google nowadays, it isn't like the "olden times" where a quick search for a whoopie pie recipe brings up nothing but porn. But if you type in "boobs" you still get boobs.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that kids aren't 100% responsible for their own fandom interaction because, depending on their age, they might not know any better yet. Now, there's a difference between a 16 year old and a 9 year old. A 16 year old knows what they're doing, and if they want a/b/o inflation porn, they're going to find it, and they might even get mad once they do because it's adult content and they're still kids, who want to be treated as adults. At that point, they're likely curating their own internet experience, and that's a gray area that's still being worked out. A 16 year old is still a minor, but when it comes to the internet, at least, they’re generally minors who are left to their own devices. Teenagers at that age are also notoriously contrary and rebellious, so if you put tags and say, “Minors do not interact!” they’re quite possible going to say, “Fuck you” and interact anyway. You can’t control them. You can only control yourself, so that’s what you need to do. Don’t interact with them, if you can avoid it. If they start confrontation, walk away. And it’s true, you can’t always tell a 16 year old from a 9 year old from a 40 year old on the internet, or any age from any other age, but my advice is still the same. Avoid interacting with negativity, hate, and confrontation in fandom. Just walk away.

(There are some situations where this doesn’t apply, of course, but I think that in fandom, where the primary purposes are to have fun and interact with other fans of things that you like because you like the same things, walking away from confrontation is a good idea. When it comes to things like politics, for example, I think you need to avoid the trolls, but standing up for yourself and others, even if it means confrontation, is a different story. But this isn’t about politics, this is about fandom, and not all places on the internet are created equal. Politics is of course relevant in fandom, but if it’s JUST about fandom, you don’t need to start flame wars or ship wars, or even fight in them. You CAN just walk away, even if people yell at you or make fun of you for it. Just keep ignoring them. But I digress.)

9 year olds, on the other hand, need help on the internet. You can't control what they do either, but again, it's not the stranger's job to curate the kid's experience, but the parents. Just make sure you tag your stuff so if a parent is looking for something appropriate for their kid, they don't unknowingly give them something inappropriate. A 9 year old, especially in this day and age, knows how to use the internet. And if they’re looking for boobs, they’re probably going to find boobs. But just because they’re looking for boobs doesn’t mean they need to find a/b/o inflation vore porn. If they click on it anyway, it’s highly likely they won’t know what half that stuff means, but they still might be disturbed by it. Again, it’s not that stranger’s responsibility, as long as it was marked and tagged appropriately. 9 year olds still need to be supervised, both in general, and on the internet. Just because they’re tech-savvy doesn’t mean Stranger Danger rules don’t apply. Parents in this day and age should be teaching their kids safe internet skills, too.

My experience with fandom, and my ability to create the experience I want with it probably stems from the fact that my parents did curate my online presence when I was young. I was only allowed on sites like Nickelodeon.com and Disney.com until I was 10 or so. When I first got on fanfiction.net, I was 13, I think. And of course at that point I started sneaking around and reading "M" rated fics, but that was my choice. I was old enough to know better, and if something made me uncomfortable, I would click out of it. At that point, I read so voraciously as a kid and a young teen, that I was reading books with erotic content, and I could find the same thing online. My parents never censored what I read when I was old enough to choose for myself what I could read, but they made sure they knew what I was reading. Only once did they ever consider taking a book away from me, and that was when I was 12 reading Dan Simmons “Olympus” - I liked science fiction, and mythology, and wanted to read harder books so that seemed like a good choice. But like any story tangentially related to Greek Gods, there was A LOT of sex. Very, very descriptive, pornographic, literotic, sex. I told my parents about it and we talked about it. They asked if it made me uncomfortable, if I thought that they should read it first before I continued and judge whether or not I could handle it. I said I was okay, we talked about it a little more, and that was that. Even though I may not have been old enough for the content, I was old enough to know what was going on, and to make the choice. The same thing applies to the internet and fanfiction. Tag your fics, tag your art, make your blog 18+ if you are going to primarily post adult content, but parents need to talk with their kids.

A side note, but I once got a CD from my parents for my birthday. It was a Green Day CD, I was maybe turning 11 or 12? And I had expressed interest in Green Day because my friend in middle school played me one of their songs and I liked it. The CD my parents bought me was "Dookie," even though the newest album that had just come out was "American Idiot" - because “American Idiot” had a parental advisory sticker on it and “Dookie” did not. The reason for that was “Dookie: was released before it was necessary to put parental advisory stickers on albums. Thus, they had no idea what they were getting into when they handed their daughter a CD with a secret song titled F.O.D. Tags are important, but they don’t always function properly.

Green Day is still my favorite band.

Regardless, with all the rambling and digressions, my point is CURATE YOUR FANDOM EXPERIENCE. There are situations that make it hard, because you can't always choose who interacts with your content, but what you CAN always choose is the content you interact with. And when it comes to people interacting with YOUR content in a negative way, walk away when you can. (If you think a minor is negatively interacting with your 18+ content, I don’t necessarily know what to do, but my only thought is to block them so they can’t see your content anymore.) Interact with others in a positive way, and for the most part, I find, others will do the same with you.

Fandoms can be great places. They can also be toxic cesspools, because there are bad and toxic people in the world. But if you can, choose your own adventure.

I had a great experience with Homestuck, even amidst all the disaster and misbehavior at the height of Homestuck popularity because of the way I treat fandom.

One of my favorite people is big into Hetalia, and still is! It's one of, if not her number one, favorite fandom. And there's always been a lot going on there, but because of the way she interacts, it's been a great, healthy place for her.

And if Deltarune is giving you feels like it's giving me feels, then by all means, jump back into the Undertale/Deltarune fandom! And don't let hate scare you away.

There will always be bad places on the internet, and sometimes, you can't avoid them. But do your best, and try to create an online fandom experience that will bring you joy, not one that will cause pain to yourself or other people.

#oh the inanity!#fandom #fandom meta #long post #no matter what fandom i'm in now #I will always be a part of fandom culture #and while I'll probably never be a BNF or anything like that #I will do my best to make fandom a pleasant experience for myself and others

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othercat2 · 3 years ago

Text

I posted 2,352 times in 2021

177 posts created (8%)

2175 posts reblogged (92%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 12.3 posts.

I added 423 tags in 2021

#homestuck - 97 posts

#writing - 69 posts

#untamed - 64 posts

#murderbot - 58 posts

#fan fic - 36 posts

#svsss - 23 posts

#mo dao zu shi - 21 posts

#pfff - 19 posts

#scum villain self saving system - 18 posts

#the untamed - 18 posts

Longest Tag: 107 characters

#also the chicken noises that don't quite hide the fact the singer is singing 'fuck it he kicked the bucket'

My Top Posts in 2021

I Gotcher Black Company Memes Right Here

I has been decades since I read the Black Company books, so all I really remember is Croaker/The Lady. I am going to tag @jumpingjacktrash in this because of reasons. This was inspired because of my horrifying crossover bunny of Locked Tomb/The Black Company.

23 notes • Posted 2021-03-28 21:10:17 GMT

Chapters: 19/? Fandom: Homestuck Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider/Grand Highblood, Dave's Bro| Beta Dirk Strider & The Handmaid, The Handmaid & Grand Highblood Characters: Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider, Grand Highblood, The Handmaid (Homestuck), Dirk's Bro | Alpha Dave Strider, The Psiioniic | The Helmsman, The Disciple (Homestuck), Beforus Karkat Vantas, Neophyte Redglare, Beforus Terezi Pyrope, Beforus Nepeta Leijon, The Dolorosa (Homestuck), Roxy's Mom | Alpha Rose Lalonde, Darkleer (Homestuck) Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Post-Canon, Godstuck, Assholes being assholes together, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Neuro divergent Bro Strider, Mildly Dubious Consent, Grand Highblood is Kind of Horrible, The Handmaid Orchestrated Most of the Horrible Things GHB Did, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Bro Strider is a Trashfire, Mild Gore, Bro Strider did everything wrong, Alpha Dave is disapprove, Disciple's Mom is Best Mom, Dolorosa is Best Lusus, Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs Summary:

In which Bro has an existential crisis, the Grand Highblood is in the middle of having a Crisis of Faith and the Demoness is going to cut the next bitch who calls her “Handmaid.”

In this there is an argument, and several animal disaster movies.

26 notes • Posted 2021-11-10 00:30:16 GMT

TFW you realize the depths of Murderbot's spite

For some reason I didn't realize that Murderbot really does replace "the company" or "company" with the name of the company that leased him. Not just in verbal documents, but in the actual narrative. Somehow I did not notice that, even with the very large hint in the one interlude.

It becomes super obvious with this bit:

Arada was too nervous to remember what I had told her say if someone asked that. She said, "The company."

...

Leonide's expression tightened. "Company units have a reputation for being dangerous."

There our murderbot is, stabbing from hell's heart in the most passive aggressive, spiteful manner possible. Absolutely refusing to give the company that created it any indicator beyond "the company." It is truly a scholar and a gentlebeing.

31 notes • Posted 2021-03-25 17:19:06 GMT

Fic: Operational Security: Papermen=/= Drones

One of A'Ying's papermen was desperately flagging down one of my drones. The drone dipped down and the paperman jumped onto it, and rode it to the rooms we rented. (At some point, he decided he wanted his own drones. Watching him figure out how to turn what had been a toy into a more or less workable tool had been interesting.) Important cultivator. Says he knew my parents. Going to inn on west side of the markets. The paperman reports.

A'Ying had also been wanting to do his own "investigations" so I'd been giving him jobs like watching the market and being sent to listen or ask questions. Apparently that was a little too much freedom, because he went and forgot the very important rule of "do not go off with adult strangers and if you are approached/apprehended, run. (Yes even if they're a cultivator.)"

Of course if it was an "important cultivator," chances were good that the cultivator had people with him, and A'Ying hadn't found an opening to run. (Also, anyone who said they knew his parents would someone he'd want to interrogate.) "Stay in the main dining area if you can manage it," you say to the paperman. It does a little salute, and I send it off with three drones while once again wishing this dirtball's technology wasn't so low, and that they had feeds.

I arm myself and head out to the inn. The drones, not impeded by traffic, get there first, and immediately do recon. The "important cultivator," is Jiang Fengmian, the Sect Leader of Jiang Yunmeng. He's accompanied by six other disciples, watching A'Ying in full "street urchin" mode talk and stuff his face with rice at the same time with a fond expression. (The concept of "do one or the other not both" has managed to fly right over A'Ying's head.)

The Sect Leader is selling the idea of joining the Jiang sect, mostly based on the concept: IF Wei Changse (father) served the Jiang THEN Wei Ying (son) should also. This is a very common logic string for this culture. A'Ying meanwhile wants to know everything about his parents, and asks questions about joining the Sect, a few of which appear to baffle the Sect Leader. Wei Ying having heard me negotiate security contracts is trying to do the same. It seems at least 25% percent in earnest, with the rest being a distraction tactic. He's nervous at first until he gets your message. No one notices the little paperman skittering under the table to get to A'Ying. (No one notices the drones either.)

(I am not sure whether A'Ying is being offered a disciple position or a servant position, or some other relationship because Jiang Fengmian talks a lot about his two offspring.)

When I get to the inn, A'Ying is still being humored by the Sect Leader. You step up to the table, and A'Ying immediately jumps up. "Teacher Rin!" he says. "Jiang Zhongzu, this is my teacher, Rin."

I bow. "I'm honored to make your acquaintance, Sect Leader Jiang," I say. "I'd like it if you didn't try to steal my apprentice though." This causes some outrage with the cultivator's disciples. I wasn't even close to polite enough for this culture.

"A'Ying is the son of one of my former disciples," Sect Leader Jiang says. "I have been looking for him for a long time, since I heard his parents...were gone. I am only concerned for his welfare. For an apprentice, he does not appear well cared for."

A'Ying huffs. "It's a disguise," he says. "I didn't get a chance to talk to Fen-jie about the guy she saw." he continues. "There were dogs, and then Sect Leader Jiang rescued me from the dogs."

I nodded. The "guy" in questions was possibly a friend of her former pimp. The pimp himself was no longer in the picture, after dying of infected stab wounds. (Specifically of wounds created with a shiv made from hair accessories and a pair of chopsticks.) The friend was either looking for revenge, or going into the business or some combination of the two. Zhao Fen liked being independent, and at the same time did not want her daughter in the business if she didn't have or want to be.

A'Ying's assignment this time around had been to hang around the market near the teahouse where Zhao Fen and her daughter Zhao Lei worked. (Zhao Fen had an entertainment contract with the owner, and the owner was training the daughter to take over the teahouse.) He was also supposed to get descriptions of the pimp's friend, and a name.

"It's okay, we can go there later." Hopefully I wouldn't have to pretend to eat. I sent A'Ying because as a small juvenile human, he mostly needed all the food he could get, and Zhao Fen could be guaranteed to stuff A'Ying to his eyeballs. (I don't eat, which I'd rather as few people know as possible. I have to set reminders so that A'Ying will feed himself, because he forgets when he gets distracted.) "Thank you for rescuing my apprentice," I say with another bow.

Wei Ying goes over to you, giving Sect Leader Jiang a look that's equal parts interest and wariness. "Jiang Zhongzu said I could become a disciple," he says.

"Specifically he wants you to serve his Sect," I say. "That's not the same thing."

Jiang Fengmian's people are insulted by this statement. "Being offered a chance to serve the Jiang is an honor!" one of the cultivators says. "Wei Changse's son belongs to the Jiang!"

I let my face show how unimpressed I am with this statement.

"Wei Ying has a strong core," the Sect Leader says. "And at such a young age. Don't you think he should be allowed to become a cultivator?"

"'Cultivator' maybe," I say. "I'm not sure about Jiang. It would depend on why Wei Changse left." I hand him one of my business tokens. "I do security consultations and investigation. Any contract negotiations should be with me, not my apprentice."

I and Wei Ying leave the inn. "Mama said it was because of a mean spider yao," he says after a while. "I think she was being silly though. If there was a spider yao she would have killed it."

"What did your dad say?" I asked.

"I don't remember," Wei Ying says with a frown. "Laughed maybe? I think he laughed." He nods to himself.

"I'll do some investigating about spider yao," I say. (I didn't have to do any investigation. Sect Leader Fengmian's wife is known as the Violet Spider. It seemed likely from A'Ying's story that his parents had left the sect because of some argument with Yu Ziyuan.

42 notes • Posted 2021-07-11 01:32:11 GMT

OH MY FUCKING GOD

I have run into someone requestion "proper" ship names so as to indicate who is on the "top" or "bottom." For example, they want Top Keith Bottom Lance to ONLY be in the Klance tag. Yes, they did seem to be indicating that bottom=automatically submissive top=automatically dominant in the relationship. It was totally okay if you liked the other configuration, but you had to make a new ship tag for it.

CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY YOU GODDAMN DOORKNOB THAT YOUR PROPOSITION IS FUCKING MORONIC. DO I NEED TO COME UP WITH A DIFFERENT SHIP NAME IF NEITHER OF THEM LIKE ANAL IN THE FIC?

46 notes • Posted 2021-10-26 23:30:13 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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dahniwitchoflight · 7 years ago

Note

how did you come to the conclusion about the remaining active/passive class pairings on your blogs? like the witch/heir, maid/sylph, mage/seer, and knight/page?

this got long, under a readmore it goes!

well Maid/Sylph was the easiest

first we had a clear description of their opposites, there are two Destruction and Male oriented Classes in an active passive pair together, and whether or not you agree with Calliope’s distinction that they are Male only instead of just Male associated, this info did come from Calliope, who is a cherub and who is all about things opposing in nature (which I mean, the rest of the Class and Aspect system is already about anyway)

so regardless of anything else, a Pair of Female Associated Creation Oriented Classes must exist

then, quite similar but sort of distinct from revolutionaryduelist’s associations, I do also also each active/passive pair with a fairytale story archtype/mixed with rpg job class kind of association

and that is for the fact that Women/Fairies/Children all get tied into eachother symbolically a lot in fairytale myths

Fairies are often women only, Women are often called terms associated with Fairies, Women are often infantilized and called girls or only appear as girl children, Women trading their firstborns to a magical creature, or getting them stolen and getting a changeling fairy baby in return (and then of course the stereotypical RPG Job Class role they both share is a Healer, so there’s that mixed in as well)

and the creation roles and creation in general in Homestuck often gets tied to a Mothering Role in homestuck, The Maryams are all different Mary Mother of Jesus Aspects (as well as being all Space Players AND Maid/Sylphs), the Space Aspect Players as in charge of Frog Breeding Duties, Space itself being associated with Creation, Rebirth, New Life etc as well as thematically associated with Mother Goddess archtypes in general, Like Echidna Mother of all Monsters/Denizens

regardless to say there is a lot of Strong Thematic Connections pushing Maid/Sylph together as the Female Associated Creation Role Classes in Homestuck, that, rather importantly, no other pair of classes has even close. and I haven’t even gone into the actions of the individual Maids and Sylphs in comic yet! To say that Maid and Sylph WOULDN’T be the Pair of Creation classes to me, is a bolder statement than saying that they are, in order for me to believe you, You’d have to show me the pair of two classes that are more strongly associated with femininity and creation than Maid and Sylph are

really the only arguments I’m most open to here is which is Active and which is Passive, but there are such strong leanings for Maid being Active to me that that is the decision I’ve settled on

Mage/Seer is the next obvious ones, they are clearly the fairytale archtype of the Prophetic Wizard/Magus mixed in with the RPG Job Class of Mage, their connecting Function in Homestuck is Understanding/Information, like how Maid/Sylphs is creation, there’s not a lot to say here, as their roles are very distinct from the rest of the classes, dealing with things that have to do with information and whatnot rather than a different type of action like the others, I would say nobody argues that these two are clearly not a pair, as if you remove one the Understanding Function, it has no where else to go, and no other class deals with understanding and information as its core component (Aranea herself calls Sylph a Healer in nature mind you, her information and knowledge comes from her Light Aspect)

next most obvious one for reasons you’ll soon completely understand is Knight/Page, and while the function that I see them as excelling in more than others as Application, other people mostly don’t agree, that’s fair

however, when it comes to fairytale myths, oh boy, guys you don’t understand These are the Horse Classes. The whole point of Knighthood in medieval times was never about warrior or fighting skills, young boys didn’t get sent off to knight boot camp in their youths to learn weaponry oh no, they got sent to learn everything about horses. How to ride them, how to care for them, how to manage, probably how to breed them, how to joust for entertainment everything. Because 99% of people in those days main occupation were Farmers, people didn’t become warriors and take up arms unless a war was actually happening, and besides, everyone knew how to fight and kill things, even at least with a bow and arrow, that’s part of hunting to eat, part of survival. These young boys who trained with Knights but were not yet Knights were called Squires and Pages. Heck, Tavros’s whole thing was Jousting! The Knight piece in Chess is a horsehead, this is Hussie were talking about guys, it’s almost laughable to say he wouldn’t intentionally pair the Horse Classes together, especially when they are already an actual pair in history. (and not just associated in imagery like all the other pairs)

(Anyway back to our common images of Knights in Shining Armor for a sec, those guys were specifically Noble Knights, not Knights who were good people, Noble Knights were simply not common folk like farmers, they were Nobility, who did wear expensive metal armor, who were only good in war time, and who did laze about and do nothing but drink and become menaces when they weren’t jousting.) Just like our Knights who could only think of Noble Knights as swordfighty warriors which caused them to disconnect with the idea of their classes, and not the common Knight as the person with a variable skillset they both were

now finally, I’ll admit out of every other class, the connections between Witch/Heir for me are the least obvious out of all the rest of them

but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything of course

their fairytale/mythological association is the idea of naive inheritors to fortune being manipulated by magical beings/wizard advisors and etc for the sake of swindling them out of what they got, even just the idea of the naive person being swindled out of what they got by some deft handed stage magician is a common enough trope in storytelling, and it’s especially more potent in stories about Heir’s to a Throne or a large fortune

and there is also that they they do have the strongest actual connection powers wise in Homestuck, they are changers, manipulators of their Aspect

I do have another old post which basically answers this same question too but focusing on slightly different things, so you can read that here as well:

http://dahniwitchoflight.tumblr.com/post/101883445742

the only about that post is that its old, I use the word Exploit to mean the Knight/Page function instead of Apply, but the usage of what I mean/the function itself is identical

#Homestuck #SBURB #Anonymous

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utopianparadoxist · 8 years ago

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Knights and Pages - Serving, Service and Ownage

[Author’s Note: This is a repost of Love, Faith and Fantasy--my piece on Jake and Dirk’s character arcs and the relevance of Knights and Pages in understanding them. I thought breaking it up into chunks would make the content more accessible, and give me room to flesh out each argument. Thus there will be some updates to the content. Hopefully this will mean more people can easily approach it!] [Pt. 2 - Faith and Fear] [Pt. 3 - Fearful Heart] [Pt. 4 - Noble] [Pt. 5 - As You Wish]

In my last post, I advanced the idea that Pages are an Active class and Knights are Passive. In so doing, I made the mistake of implying Pages are all secretely hyperintelligent supergeniuses who use everyone knowingly. That wasn’t exactly my intent, but that’s fine--sloppy execution on my part. My bad.

What I didn’t do is discuss the potential key verbs Knights and Pages might operate under--because I honestly didn’t have one I felt confident in. In the wake of discussing the piece with @theworstpersonintheworld (misleadingly named), he made a suggestion that struck me deeply, and once I started thinking about the story in those terms everything truly fell into place.

I think it will be useful in explaining the dynamic between Jake and Dirk as I see it, so I’d like to make the case for it here before we move forward.

The key verb for both Knights and Pages is ‘Serve’. This puts them in direct thematic opposition to Rogues and Thieves, who ‘Steal’, which lines up with those dual systems Sburb loves so much--after all, if Princes and Bards are ‘Destroy’ classes, it’s reasonable to assume there is also a ‘Create’ set, right?

Knights Serve their Aspect to others. Pages use their Aspect to Serve themselves. To establish this and contrast against Jake’s actions later, let’s see how this model applies to Dave, Karkat and Tavros. First, the Knights, and an outline of the different executions the Serve verb can take.

Serve can mean:

1. To provide, or give (a counterpoint to Take)

2. To provide service for

3. To own or defeat, in literal or rhetorical battle (in the colloquial ‘You Got Served’ sense).

From the outset, Dave has a reputation for providing his friends with his Time, serving them long rambling diatribes to consume and enjoy.--often far exceeding the time they’re willing to spend on the conversation.

Karkat does the same thing--often offering Pacts and Bonds to friends that he likes while simultaneously offering his services in helping them figure out relationship problems.

Davesprite comes back from the future and literally empowers not just Dave, but John by providing him Time in the form of a Hammer with Time powers.

Dave’s primary contribution to the Beta session is to run loops around the session, constantly gathering all relevant resources possible so that his friends don’t need to worry at all about limitations like money or access to weapons and can do whatever they feel like.

Essentially, Dave takes care of the minutiae. He provides a service to his friends--putting them in the best position possible to act out their own wills.

Karkat’s ultimate contribution to his session is similar--ultimately, Karkat’s main role was to maintain the bonds between all his friends. LIke Dave’s, Karkat’s nature affects every single other player, keeping them bound towards a common goal and thus bettering their odds of winning the game. (it’s worth noting I think Vriska’s view of Sburb is wrong here.)

This predisposition to giving service to others is also likely why Knights seem to end up helping out with Frog Breeding duties so often. This is essentially the most important game objective, and so helping the Space player in completing it is also helping every other player in step.

And then there’s this. There’s a colloquial definition of Serve that derives it’s use from the term “Get Served”, which Urban Dictionary defines as: To be completely owned or shown up by someone. Kinda like Dave does to us here--which Karkat also does, by the way, before going on a rant outlined by his ambitions and silhouetted with Blood colors.

When Karkat wants to make something bite, he ends a relationship. Refuses to continue offering his Aspect, basically. This is also something Dave does repeatedly--he overwhelms Tavros with a time-consuming and epically sassy document, and makes Time-based power plays against Karkat as a gesture of antagonism.

To serve someone in this sense essentially means to defeat them in rhetorical or literal battle, explaining why Aradia describes Knights as a powerful Warrior class--one of the definitions this wordplay allows for is a class that uses its Aspect to deal devastating, embarrassing defeats.

Dave obviously uses Time powers to fight, thus enabling him to Own/Serve his enemies in this sense, but Karkat is much more interesting here. Karkat also seems to fill the second stipulation Calliope puts onto Passive classes--that is, that they tend to function with less awareness of their Aspect, their Aspect working through them rather than under their direct control, as if through “The Will of the Aspect”.

Every time Karkat wins a confrontation in Homestuck, he does so by establishing a connection. You can argue Karkat’s aware he does this with Gamzee, but he doesn’t really parse it as doing a Knight of Blood thing. But with Clover he doesn’t realize what he’s doing at all! He thinks he just beat this green elf dude, but what actually happens is Clover wanted to enter a relationship with him.

What goes ignored is how unlikely a win this is--because Clover is so lucky, he straight up could not be defeated normally. Clover loses this fight not because he’s overpowered, but because he benefits even more than Karkat does. Clover is a horndog, and in his view there’s no better outcome to this fight than Getting Lucky. Karkat wins unawares, as if through the Will of Blood.

Contrast this with Jake’s win. Jake beats the felt, shocking Crowbar--but Crowbar doesn’t benefit from this at all. Jake does. Jake is the one who wants to be seen as an impressive adventuring hero, and by exposing Crowbar to an unforeseen possibility, he achieves that.

I’d like to posit a corollary attribute that I believe holds true for all Classes, as well. This one is not explicitly advanced textually, but I believe I can back it up. It takes place along a different axis. I posit that just as the classes affect their Aspect, so too they are affected BY their Aspect.

So in addition to the Active/Passive distinction, we could read both Knights and Pages as ones who are Served by their Aspect.

This is true of Dave, as he gets owned by his Bro in an explicitly time-consuming fight. And the trend continues as he then gets saved by his future selves over and over again throughout the session--being served in both senses:

In this sense, Dave also operates “As if through the Will of the Aspect”, even as he’s in control of his actual powers. He’s presented with stable time loops that he has to obey, and it’s kind of a loaded question whether any given Present Dave would have taken the same path had he not already been given the path to follow from his future selves.

Now, to contrast before we move on to the rest of this series, a few notes on Tavros:

Tavros’ main psychic abilities correspond to his Classpect--he’s able to move animals to serve his will, providing them direction. The reading that Pages inspire their Aspect in others isn’t totally off, in my view. What it misses is that Pages seem to inspire in others a desire to serve or help them. To benefit themselves somehow.

Vriska clearly perceives her actions towards Tavros a kind of twisted service, and while I don’t want to put the picture here, Tavros certainly ends up getting Served through Flight--a Breath concept. Tavros also gets the ability to fly early on, like John does--and Tavros gets it directly through Vriska’s service, one of the few times her efforts are actually helpful.

This doesn’t extend to just Vriska, though. Tavros inspires Kanaya and even Equius--who ordinarily wouldn’t help on account of the Hemospectrum--to provide him with robot legs, extending his freedom of motion, again a concept linked to Breath. This again benefits no one except Tavros.

Perhaps more telling is this visual language, which suggests Tavros was about to actually Do the Windy Thing--when he was acting under his own will and directing it for a goal he had in mind. Possibly healing? Who knows, we never find out, because this is Vriska. Needless to say, when asked to do things HER way and the way she would most benefit from....Tavros can’t do it. It’s not what comes naturally to him.

And of course, this reading puts a whole new spin on Tavros’ final act in the story. If we’re reading Pages as intrinsically kind of selfish and self-motivated, then Tavros’ motivation here isn’t to provide a useful service to Vriska. It’s to do something so useful she can’t possibly deny it, so he can have the pleasure of owning her.

This is Vriska getting Served. This is an immutable fact that is being stated for the record. That it is genuinely helpful does not mean that Vriska getting fucking wrecked isn’t what is taking place here. Notably, Tavros immediately gives power over the army to Meenah, because he doesn’t give a shit about responsibility. Tavros had a goal, and the ghosts helped him achieve it.

A final note:

If this reading of Knights and Pages happens to bother you because it means that the Beta session has an uneven distribution of Active/Passive classes, consider the dynamics of both sessions:

In the beta session, Rose essentially takes and follows orders from the Horrorterrors and Doc Scratch, whilst also distributing orders to Dave and John (who each take further orders from troll girls and Jade).

All of this is ultimately in support of the plan Jade commits to herself, plans herself, and executes herself--taking Active control of the entire session in one fell swoop at the last instant.

In the Alpha session, all three Active players flounder and stifle themselves and each other with nothing meaningful to do and no way to receive substantial benefit.

Ultimately, it is the Passive player--Roxy--who rises above the constraints of her session and achieves more or less competence at understanding her role and powerset by the end of the session.

In the session that requires constant action and change, there’s Three passives to one Active. In the session that requires patience, introspection, and connecting with each other, the inverse is true. The incentives and natural skills of the players are set at odds in both cases, stacking the cards against them.

In fact, @arrghus makes an insightful point about these unbalanced sessions:

Namely, that this puts the kids in the exact same position as the Trolls’ Red and Blue teams--which ALSO have an uneven distribution of Passive/Active classes under this reading, only reaching equilibrium when added together.

This segment covered, we can move on to Jake, and how this reading of Pages reflects on him.

This series has been a passion project, but also a side project to my youtube series aimed at welcoming and explaining Homestuck to new, incoming Hiveswap fans. If you find yourself trying to make it easier for a Hiveswap fan to understand what Homestuck is about and how it connects to the game, I hope you think of me.

If you like my writing and have a buck to spare, you could also really help me out by enabling me to focus on putting more of this content out there through pledging on Patreon. Doing so will also give you access to my private community of enthusiasts trying to advance new and interesting readings of this wonderful property.

See you again soon, everyone. Until then,

Keep rising.

#Homestuck #Dave Strider #Classpects #Tavros Nitram #Karkat Vantas #Knight/Page #My MSPA Analysis

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heero-yuy · 8 years ago

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Your interpretation of lance and keith is interesting, but the reason I don't really buy it is that the factual evidence your are basing it upon is not that reliable (it's obvious for the maze one, the others are more ambiguous). I mean it in a totally non-offensive way, but maybe instead of focusing on the characters and their actions as if they were real people, it would be interesting to take a step back, and rather think about the choices made by the writers and animators of the series? 1/

Of course as I said this is just a pov, I really enjoy reading your scene and character analyses! But if you consider the creators, well, maybe in that first scene Keith didn't punch Lance because, 1st what would he have done about Shiro, & 2nd, because it would have taken more screentime to resolve the situation?(+maybe other reasons?)This applies to other situations as well, such as in s2e1, with the fire(it bring meaning to the scene?) or their body language on the poster(a q° of balance?)2/2

Well Keith could have kicked him I guess, his legs are totally free, told him to step back.. lot’s of stuff really. The point was that it’s kinda out of character for Keith to trust these 3 so fast considering he knows nothing about either of them.

And yeah, you can say the writers just needed to get them all together real fast and didn’t care how out of character they made this, but I’d like to think they know what they are doing and that there are reasons behinds stuff. Not behind everything ofcourse, but most things.

Like, a way better introduction would be having Keith’s “Leeroy Jenkinsplan” fail somehow, and Lance, Hunk and Pidge coming to his rescue and in that way showing him they are trustworthy and on his side. And then it wouldn’t seem so odd he lets them come with him. That dun have to take any more screen time, just make one of em knock a doctor on the head while they got a hold on Keith or somethin... Because like think about it, they really didn’t do anything but being in the way and putting Keith and Shiro in risk during that escape. And yeah, I’d like a better explanation than “Destiny”, cause Keith should have been “good bye suckers” once he’d gotten Shiro on that hovercraft, by all logic. He really didn’t need 3 people to carry Shiro.. Should have left all that non essential weight exactly where he found it.

And the fire was obviously there because they wanted to create an intimate atmosphere, like it’s a touching meaningful moment and it just wouldn’t look the same if it happened in the lion’s cockpit. I am well aware of this. I think I also mentioned that in my post. But it’s still fun to fill in the gaps they leave for us. Like this is where you get your canon compliant fan fics and arts.. (And Keith and Shiro have alot of those “ofscreen potentially really meaningful scenes”..)

And you do say the fire brings meaning to a scene.. But I guess you just disagree about the meaning I suggested? (is this about shipping?)

I dunno, I look at everything from a writers point of view first, and I feel like I usually know what stuff are like “cartoon logic” with nothing behind it (usually, because all those years of being a homestuck are making me overthink absolutely everything haha), you don’t see me complaining and making theories about how it doesn’t makes sense Aliens speak english, and how Kerberos doesn’t look like that, and how Slav is full of BS because that is not how parallel realities work (actually maybe I will rant about this one sometime, this and Kaltenecker, cuz ALIENS DUN JUST TAKE COWS, THEY DO CATTLE MUTILATIONS DAMMIT) or maybe even about how Shiro doesn’t recognize Pidge right away even when seeing a picture of her and Matt... There’s LOTS of stuff that dun make sense that I dun dig into too much..

I’d still point these stuff out, because I just can’t help but notice patterns, details and inconsistencies. And sometimes they will have something behind them, and sometimes not.

And if the writers didn’t put much thought into a certain something, fans will usually do the work for them, and come up with amazing creative stories and explain it in their own ways. Like that’s one of the fun parts about fandom.

(like lets say the “lion slippers”, they were obviously there to sell a product or as a joke I dunno, but you can like make so many stories about why all the paladins get slippers and bathing suits and other items in their color I guess, like maybe one of the original paladins was like a really sweet person and made like welcome packages for everyone or something... Hand sewed the slippers for everyone as a gift.. and then no one wore them.. Maybe even it was Zarkon’s idea or doing... Maybe that's why he had a fight with Alfor.. Or maybe Alfor made them and Zarkon just refused to wear them and that’s why they had a fight. lot’s of fun stories you can come up with)

And unless you’re like actually one of the Voltron writers on anon just going "But we had to make Keith out of character!!! You don’t know what we are going through and how stingy dreamworks are with the budget!!!” then I will really have to disagree with the “but maybe instead of focusing on the characters and their actions as if they were real people, it would be interesting to take a step back, and rather think about the choices made by the writers and animators of the series?”

Because If you’re a good writer, you will think about these characters as real people, you will think about what they feel, what they think, why they do the things they do, and you will write accordingly, considering all the production limitations. Because that’s what makes characters feel real. And I think the Voltron team did an amazing job with that! I really wouldn't be spending time analyzing scenes and relationships if Voltron didn’t prove to me there’s hidden depths to things(not to everything, but to most things) and the characters are really really well developed and thought through. (and fans do it with shows that have like zero depth behind anything all the time even, cuz it’s fun and people want depth.)

Like it’s so nicely done even the silly stuff kinda you know, dun seem out of character...

Like lets say with that random fire, it really wouldn’t be odd if Keith like suggested “Well, if we make a fire maybe they’ll see it and find us” and Shiro just shrugged and said “worth's a try”. Because they already did something just as stupid with the pyramid when trying to form Voltron.

Like these character are silly and do silly random stuff like real people do, and are aware of the absurdity of the situations they are in..

And I’m not sure what you mean exactly about the body language..

Actually, you’re being very vague and not making any concrete points on what exactly you’re not agreeing with me about, but if you really wanna argue with me about somethin then you’re welcome to like reblog that post with all your points and receipts.

I don’t get offended when people disagree with me, and I’m glad if someone points out something I missed or forgot. (as long as it’s not one of those my headcanon is better than your headcanon arguments, cuz I dun have alot of patience for that, headcanons and canon theories are two different things, so these kind of arguments are pointless)

And like no one has to agree with my interpretations (sometimes i dun even agree with them haha) but like if you don’t and you wanna debate or argue then bring it on! I love arguing! But you really gotta be less vague than that..

#replies #it does take me a long time to reply to stuff people say tho #i dun usually check my notifications and i dun have much time #but i usually have ALOT more to say about a subject than i do #Anonymous

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roxilalonde · 8 years ago

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[S]:Collapse

mayhaps im just repeating what someone else has already said and said better but [S]:Collide needed to be way smarter than it was

like. i genuinely think hussie wrote the scene and its prior framing around the striders, terezi, vriska, and john and/or roxy, and then tossed in the rest w/o regard to what could reasonably be deemed a satisfying ending to their arcs.

here’s what could have been tighter:

jake and karkat

so we get jake and karkat in what is ostensibly the most disappointing of all possible ends to their character arcs as people who idolize & emulate their cultures’ respective cults of war - neither a) recognizing that said cult is bullshit, a la the infamous Dave vs. Heteronormativity pesterlog, or b) fulfilling the ideal, i.e., actually doing something heroic requiring combative/physical strength. they take out the Felt. which, ok, sure, but there’s a narrative misstep in pitting your two characters with most aspirations to prove themselves in the field of battle against your weakest enemy for their final portrayed conflict.

put it this way: when karkat talks to meenah he’s clearly still putting a lot of onus on being The One, the guy who fights the big bad, so he can justify his own existence to himself. this is a big problem for karkat - he perceives himself as weak, because of alternia’s unreasonable standards of strength and bravery, so to face LE is to prove his dead planet wrong. he makes a point of it. and then, right before he’s supposed to - nope! he’s fighting a bratty green smuppet. or jake: built up as ultimate superclasspect, in the game-over timeline the big powerhouse in the session: also fighting a bunch of green smuppets!

and yeah, you could blame it on vriska, but her rant was never narratively treated as bad strategy. even though your most powerful classpect is hitting your least powerful enemy.

vriska

first of all, see previous: vriska isn’t a good strategist. she puts her weak players (which is vriska. vriska is a weak player, compared to the other people on the battlefield) against the strongest enemies, and her strongest players against the weakest. her arrogance gets in the way of critical thinking. nobody has a problem with this.

she and terezi don’t get a resolution. vriska isn’t held accountable for the shit that she’s done to the other members of her party. she’s not held accountable for her relationship with terezi (how did that evolve? what changed about them? is she less reactionary? the wonders of a retcon that makes defunct three years of character development) the only place she gets closure is in a dream bubble, and even then, that’s (vriska).

finally: vriska deploying the weapon against lord english is interesting. it fits her, as the person who’s always trying to shove herself into plot developments headfirst. on the other hand: vriska shouldn’t have succeeded. it validates her previous efforts to shove herself into the action - it’s like the narrative is saying, “yes, vriska is so good at this, look at how successful she is when she tries to be the protagonist.” ignoring that a critical part of vriska’s character is that whenever she tries to do something like that, people get hurt. because vriska’s mistake is assuming her importance comes prior to others’ safety. throughout the story we’ve been told “vriska should under no circumstances be allowed to play protag,” and here she is, successfully playing protag.

jane

i would probably have written some pretty scathing analysis here if there was anything involving jane to fucking critique

in all seriousness: jane is sidelined (big surprise) and gets a brief, decent moment with Nannasprite about her issues adjudicating how passive/active to be in her own life. it’s a good moment for the Jane Collective.

but she doesn’t kill the condesce. i can see why - she’s needed to run around healing people. but if nannasprite can do the exact same thing, there’s no reason that jane, who has the best reason to resent the condesce, shouldn’t be the one to fight her. and yet here we are. jane is the “main” of the alpha session. why is her “big moment” having another version of herself telling her how much cooler she is and then going off to be a passive aid? shouldn’t jane’s conclusion be, “wow, I should involve myself in battles that have personal value to me,” and go off to fight up the condesce?

then dad comes back. which, for a story about growing up - the point is that the kids are learning to live without their parents. there are a lot of allusions in homestuck to the game accelerating maturity: forcing them to “parent” a new world, develop extraordinary skills, growing as a person in accordance with the demands of their classpect. dad coming back alleviates jane of the need to do that: every other parent in homestuck dies. let that sink in. jane’s dad is the only parent who survives, and it’s not clear why. jane should be allowed to mature with the rest of her friends. it’s a feel-good moment, of course, but it’s a regression. what’s driving jane is no longer her dad’s welfare (we should hope); it’s the fate of the new universe. jane’s father should not be her reward. jane’s reward should be her friends’ safety, and the ability to progress as a person - i.e., leave the game.

kanaya

the thing about strife animations is that we don’t have much time to actually see what’s going on. so for all i know, kanaya and rose were really critical to that battle. and it was really lucky they were there. but for the most part, they were side characters in an animation that concluded with roxy’s triumph.

kanaya is interesting because the bounds of her mortality are not established. she survives eridan’s blast to the torso but not an incinerating laserbeam, so where does that line fall? pitting her against the condesce is on the one hand, a good decision, narratively (condesce comes from kanaya’s planet, kanaya’s problem; also, it’s clearly established that the condesce is capable of killing kanaya, raising the stakes); on the other hand, it’s hampered by the format. the GO timeline was told mostly in panels. that way, we felt the emotional impact. in [S]:Collide, kanaya could have come close to dying multiple times! as could rose have! our only definitive moments are her pausing in the middle of a battle to apply lipstick or read a book. which is, y’know, pretty funny, i admit! but also not conclusive.

meh, but not critical flaws:

rose: rose’s main power has always been as a strategist, informant, and manipulator of outcomes, and even though she’s formidable in battle, her time to shine should’ve been negotiating how things worked out. which is why i’m baffled that of everyone on that meteor, neither of the seers was the one managing strategy. amazing

terezi: her one-sided pesterlog with vriska was good in the same way the striders’ was good, but unlike the striders’, it’s never resolved, because it’s one-sided. the subject of her idealization is not there to disconfirm her idealizations. she also should have taken over strategy, she is far better than vriska at it

jade: i wish jade had a better-built arc. i’m not saying jade is unlikable or even a bad character it’s just that she does not have notable internal conflict or any struggle against societal norms to motivate her. her main problem is loneliness. but does she discuss that? does she get a resolution?? does she have personal problems derived from loneliness as a child that make her struggle to interact with people in person??? who knows, not the reader

here’s what did work:

roxy vs. the condesce. the condesce is the one who screwed up roxy’s planet; the condesce fucked with roxy’s friends in the GO universe, which only roxy remembers; the condesce subsequently killed rose, right before roxy’s eyes. roxy has reason to be in this fight. we establish early on in her story that roxy and the condesce are direct antagonists to each other and here we close that arc. good writing!

the striders. their chatlog was a detailed and satisfying ending to the strider brothers’ struggle with heteronormativity and flawed role models. “fuck being too cool for that” is a beautiful line in the context of their stories and their affirmation of being awesome without being ‘cool’ is fantastic. the way they work together in the last battle is touching and nice to watch. good writing! could have used more of it.

john. john’s role all along has been to be a friendleader, not a warrior. his minor role in the fighting coupled with his (debatably successful) speech prior makes for a decent finale. (later then we get john ft. Depression in the credits, but i’m not tackling the credits). i have no objections, but maybe that’s because the audience is never supposed to care about john’s development in the same way we care about the strilondes’ and the patron trolls’.

does it matter?

there’s an answer to all this that goes along the lines of “homestuck always defies convention, that’s why it’s lovable,” and while i can see the argument, a) this is really just me outlining why i, personally, am annoyed as fuck, which is to say that i, personally, do not always find it lovable, and b) convention exists for a reason. “convention” isn’t always an antiquated set of constraints aiming to to weigh down fresh creative thinkers; it can be a useful framework for building a good story. and if you reject that framework without maintaining some of the fundamental parts, you get a sloppy narrative. parallels, story cycles, foreshadowing: all of these things should be used conjunctively to set the stage for your conclusion. the stage was not properly set for [S]:Collide. i’m all for subverting obvious foreshadowing, but there’s a difference between “maybe this character will do X in the future, the text alludes to that possibility” and “it would make logical sense, given this character’s current development, for them to do X in the future.” subverting the former is fine. subverting the latter is messy.

and:

claiming dramatic realism does not alleviate you from the restraints of narrative structure and general good writing you shit

then the writer tries to subvert/avoid critique by giving dave’s spiel on “we aren’t characters, rose, we’re people, we don’t have arcs.” but. i’m sorry, but yes, they are characters. yes, they do have arcs. dave’s declaration of “we’re people” is made obsolete by the blatant falsity of what he’s saying - it’s more darkly funny than a legitimate response to criticism. so, yes, the author has a responsibility to tell a coherent narrative within the confines of his chosen medium. which means that yeah, maybe it’s “realistic” to leave their development dangling somewhere in the middle of Act 6, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.

#my meta #homestuck meta #alpha kids #beta kids #karkat vantas #kanaya maryam #vriska serket #terezi pyrope #hs critical

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