#this started out as a rant on IN MEDIA RES

[emptymanuscript]

W. Somerset Maugham wrote one of my favorite quotes about writing:

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Part of why I love it is because I love thinking about what they would be. Sometimes I am even pretty sure that I DO know them. The problem is simply that they're not terribly satisfying. At three, it's almost the level of 'get good.' It's big enough that it's just kinda: yeah, duh.

Be clear

In general you should write a novel so that the intended audience understands at least all of what you want them to understand. Mysteries and weirdness is fine but the reader shouldn't think the character is in a cellar when you need them to know they're under the open sky. If the character's hand bursts into a swarm of horse flies for no known reason, yet, the audience needs to know that is what happened instead of asking, "huh?" because they have no clue what happened to the hand so they don't know they have to solve that mystery.

Be believable

You should use the details that will get that audience to believe what is happening in the story within the context of the story as you set it up while avoiding details that will make them disbelieve. If the story is about Superman, he can fly because the audience knows that Superman can fly. You can't just have some rando fly 3/4s of the way through a novel about a washed up golfer getting one last chance to make it big. Context does matter. But within the context, the audience has to be willing to buy what you're selling as legit.

Be interesting

And none of that will work unless you know why the audience is going to care about what is happening. Because you're going to need to sell that to them to get them to invest enough energy to try and understand and believe your writing when they can do something else easier and more fun. There is a particular thing your audience is interested in and you have to give that to them to keep them.

Bonus rule 4: don't take the concept of rules too seriously. Every "rule" exists for reasons but they're not holy writ. In fact, you should just assume that every other "rule" is more a guideline for the purposes of selling your work rather than an actual rule of how to write. They may help. They may not. It depends on what your audience will find interesting and believable. If it helps, great. If it doesn't help... well, there's also a reason that there are only three rules and they're so obnoxiously large scale. The creative art of making story is a vast and ancient space overflowing with untapped potentials. Novel publishing in English in the USA is an extremely teeny-tiny window flitting over a tiny section of that space that a few companies "know" is profitable. It's comparing the universe to a municipal water source. Both are real, true things. They're simply so vastly different that saying something about one isn't a good indication about the other.

[salmalin]

My sincerest apologies and warmest welcome to my rant about FF7: Crisis Core. Or, as I like to call it,

Propaganda: The Video Game

I say this with the utmost affection. Crisis Core ranks really high up there in my favorite Final Fantasy 7 installments. I played it when it first came out, borrowing it from a friend to play on a borrowed PSP. And, the more I learn about the game and the more I replay it, the more everything lines up.

This game is not about Zack Fair.

This game is about how Capitalistic Propaganda can sink into every aspect of life to the point where it is entirely indistinguishable from reality. And it’s very overt about it. So…

Here we go.

My treatise on Propaganda’s starring role in Crisis Core.

Part One: The Timeline

Something that a lot of people gloss over due to decades of Child Heroes in media—Japanese Shonen and Shoujo series in particular—is how young these protagonists are. We’ll hand-wave a lot of stuff in non-live-action series with just a little bit of suspension of disbelief. And that’s honestly just accepted these days. But here’s the thing about those hand-waves.

Final Fantasy 7 doesn’t do that.

Now, FF7 hand-waves a lot of stuff. For example, how far you can travel in a day by foot, the distance a man weighing approximately 165lbs can jump after being genetically fused with what might as well be a cocaine demon (Jenova), and how much hairspray one can reasonably carry on a cross-country journey while on the run from the feds.

Age is not one of them.

Exhibit A: Yuffie Kisaragi.

Do I really need to say more? She acts her age. So does Zack. And Aerith, even. Most of the characters in the original lineup were over twenty for a good reason. We see several kids in the series, and they all act their age, too—both the OG and the remake. Age is not a thing that FF7 really grapples with. It’s something they take relatively seriously.

Now, to the point.

Zack is 16 when Crisis Core starts…

… and he was 13 when he ran away from home without his parents’ knowledge to join the military.

Which accepted him.

At 13.

Without a parental permission slip.

Think about that for a second.

… Or for the next several parts of this breakdown.

Part Two: The Main Character

As I mentioned in the introduction, Zack is not the main character of the events of Crisis Core. Instead, he is the focal point of the second person POV. This is not the first time Square has done this. It was done most notably with FF9, FF10, and FF12. (I’m not going to go on an Akira Kurosawa rant right now, but please check out his film “The Hidden Fortress”. FF12 and Star Wars episodes 4-6 borrow heavily from this film.) The purpose and position of this character is such that they might best witness the effects the other characters make on the world as their stories unfold, usually in the role of a love interest. For Akira Kurosawa, it may have been told this way because these people are most effected by the decisions being made.

“Well, then, Sal,” you may be asking, “who would you say is the main character? Would that be Aerith, since she’s the love interest, like in the other games?”

No, actually.

It’s the antagonist.

And by that, I mean Genesis.

Hear me out. I used to hate Genesis, for I was once young, full of judgement for flamboyancy (thanks, internalized homophobia), and was led by the narrative to believe he was mean to his friends. Then I met my Lovely beta who loved him, so I wrote a fic for her as a gift. So for that I kinda just… read stuff. Because that’s the thing about Propaganda—you gotta read stuff to navigate it. I read the in-game emails. I re-watched all the scenes I could get my hands on with him. I read his wiki and tried to track down more information about him. Then I watched the scenes in Japanese and gained a better understanding of not just Genesis, but Sephiroth’s character. And I realized that Genesis was put on this road from the start. In fact, a big part of the fact that he’s seen the way he is in Canon—only at his most hostile and lowest points—is because the story is told through Zack’s point of view.

So before we get into the breakdown, here’s the hard facts about Genesis.

1. He was a test tube baby who may or may not technically be Angeal’s fraternal twin brother, which we are not going to unpack right now.

2. He was adopted by a relatively rich family.

3. He was a child genius (which requires not only resources, but drive to achieve), and at a tender young age of like… ten or something? He decided to mess around and literally invented pasteurization. Which is incredible, and really speaks to his knowledge of the world and ability to grasp complex concepts even at a young age. But, again, this is not the time or place to unpack that.

4. He was best friends with Angeal, who might as well have been the sweetest, kindest boy to ever walk the Planet. (I’m biased. I love him.)

5. As a teenager, he became fixated on Sephiroth, who had gained national acclaim as a SOLDIER despite them being the same age. (Please see part 1 and think about that for a second.) He then goes to join SOLDIER and brings Angeal with him. And Angeal brings his step-father’s puritanical “hard work is honorable” mindset with him. (On that note, Angeal and his father’s arc really are a wonderfully scathing letter to companies that overwork their employees and how toxic/unhealthy that line of thinking is. But. Again. We are not unpacking that right now.)

6. At one point he became consumed with LOVELESS, a series of poems with heavy prose and symbolism thicker than syrup. It got to the point where he was so well known for it that there was an entire fanclub dedicated to both him and analyzing the text.

7. While he was in SOLDIER, he repeatedly had his achievements publicly accredited… to Sephiroth.

Over and over and over again.

Everyone did, really. They mention it in the beginning of the game. Sephiroth even got public credit for Zack’s raid on the castle when he wasn’t even there. How much of his legacy is real? How much of it is made up? How much of it was faked? We don’t know. No one knows. But he keeps getting credit, anyways. And when Genesis confronts him about it, Sephiroth doesn’t care. In the Japanese version of their fight scene, you could even say he indirectly implies that he wants Genesis to take his place as the “hero”. In the English, Sephiroth’s line is, “Come and try.” But in the Japanese the line is closer to, “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Which, depending on how you take his tone, can mean wildly different things—from mocking, to earnest, or even admiration—which is especially to tell because he might be annoyed with Genesis at the moment.

Fun Fact: In Ever Crisis, Sephiroth explicitly says they are making up his achievements in the press to target boys his age for recruitment. (Thus why they accepted Zack at age 13.)

My theory on this line is that he is being cynical; that Genesis doesn't understand just how harrowing and even humiliating his experience has been. This only enforces my theory that the "come and try" translation in the English not only does a disservice to a line as wonderfully heavy as, "Wouldn't that be nice?", but fundamentally misunderstands Sephiroth as a character.

8. Genesis then took the fight to Shin-Ra. Inspiring a good chunk of their staff to leave the company, he then staged multiple attacks on facilities, staff, and the main building—which also spilled out into the city of Midgar. He murdered his parents, buried them, killed everyone in town, and… Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. A lot of innocent people died simply because they were vaguely associated with Shin-Ra. These are the actions of a villain. What’s more, this is clearly a sign that he has been acclimatized to death and violence by Shin-Ra to the point where he doesn’t even consider taking hostages.

Except.

Except the entire town was a Shin-Ra town.

Banora, canonically, was a Shin-Ra built town, which means everyone there was basically an employee of the company. No one was safe. Everyone was a threat. And that…

That was how he was raised. And he finally knew the truth—that every moment of his life was touched, controlled by Shin-Ra, all the way down to his very conception. He has never known freedom. He has never known his own identity. And now that very cage was killing him, slowly and painfully, and turning him into something that couldn’t even be recognized as human. He was watching himself rot in the mirror, and it was all because of Shin-Ra’s greed. And as he searched for salvation, he sunk into LOVELESS as he always had, hinging his entire life on Minerva’s Gift because he knew he was dying and that was all he had.

9. And then he died…

10. … but then it turned out LOVELESS was actually kind of a blueprint, and he did meet the Goddess, and he did get reborn without his degradation so he was rewarded for his journey in the end.

So why wasn’t Genesis the main character of the game?

Simple.

His actions challenge the status quo without being about the status quo. It’s a story about revenge. It’s a story about retribution. It’s a story about answering mass violence with mass violence and ultimately being rewarded by it. And while, yes, the series is an action-based violence simulator, the violence in the original FF7 was a guided, tactical effort. (For all that the characters aren’t the brightest bulbs in the sun lamps.) But the biggest, most obvious shift in the narrative happened when they realized their role as terrorists—bringing mass violence to the company via bombing and open aggression—was just resulting in increasing levels of retaliation against uninvolved people. They might as well have been a child beating the ankles of a giant. The goals and themes of the game fundamentally change when they realize that answering mass-scale societal violence with mass-scale physical violence was not only unsustainable, but also wasn’t going to solve their problem.

FF7 is about change and learning when violence—and what kind of violence—is appropriate in the face of different threats.

Genesis’ arc undermines all of that, and making him the main character would contradict the very heart of the OG game.

So, instead, we are positioned as Zack, connected to him through a mutual friend. From there we see all the damage and horror this vengeance brings to those living under the status quo.

But also, that plotline’s a major downer in a lot of ways, so they needed to lighten things up a bit to keep audience involved. And that’s why Zack is, well…

Part Three: Zack is a Himbo

Please, for the love of all that is holy, keep in mind that everything I say here is with the utmost affection.

Zack is dumb as a rock.

He is a charismatic, enthusiastic sixteen year old jock who ran away from home at thirteen years old to join the military. Which, please know, why I say “military” I mean “private security guard force with a standard-issue Death Baton and a license to kill”. The first scene in the game is him being excited that he gets to murder a bunch of people in a simulation, which he is immediately scolded for by his mentor. He is a glorified, souped up private security guard who is canonically only in it for the glory at first. He wants to be a “hero”, but doesn’t seem to fundamentally know what that means. And, over the course of the story, the definition of that clearly changes for him.

Which tracks, because the story takes place over a period of time with high stress.

Occasionally I see people saying they wish that Zack had more complexity to him, and honestly? The game. Would be. SO. BAD.

Full Disclosure: I am not the biggest fan of Zack specifically because he lacks a lot of nuance. I wish he was a bit more complex, too. But I also know that would break the game. What’s worse, if he was still on Shin-Ra’s side because he understood Shin-Ra’s mission… Well… That would make him a villain, or a cog at best. That’s not main character material. It would make the ending more messed up, though.

Anywho, Zack was thirteen when he left home. He had no formal education. He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing. He even joined without a permission slip from his parents. This means that Shin-Ra was accepting thirteen, possibly fourteen year olds into the military. (Some people will say this tracks because you can get a job at fourteen in many parts of Japan. But, and this is important, you aren’t allowed to be a security guard until you’re quite a bit older, and you need a specific license for it, much like in the US.) Clearly they didn’t teach this boy critical thinking skills. Not because he’s a himbo, but because having their Super-Powered Private Security Force With A License To Kill think independently would explicitly go against their interests. (EX: Genesis.)

Shin-Ra needs SOLDIERs to follow orders or the company would no longer be able to function. Seconds and Thirds aren’t even allowed to reject missions. (One could argue that sending certain someone on back-to-back missions would be a good way for them to eliminate undesirables within the ranks by sending them to their deaths, which… would make an incredible fic idea, actually.) We already know that First, Second, and Third Class rank assignments do not actually reflect the power of the SOLDIER. This is canon. I would instead argue that those who make the rank of First Class aren’t necessarily the most powerful, but are instead the most visible in the media, thus the easiest to market, and/or the easiest to manipulate and control. (For a great example of this, see The Umbrella Academy.)

The point is, Zack may have been elevated to his position as a first specifically because he is malleable and single-minded. Even after all he saw with Genesis, he stuck by the company to the very end, with the exception of the time Sephiroth was literally guiding him to fail a mission. Zack allowed himself to take Shin-Ra’s side every time, taking down their enemies and following their orders, preserving his “honor as SOLDIER” as he had been taught. The only thing that made him stop…

… was literally getting put in a jar.

It was when he was no longer a SOLDIER.

Part Four: Honor

There is no such thing as SOLDIER Honor.

I repeat: There is no such thing as SOLDIER Honor.

It is a fictional thing that is borne of an ideology based around hard work. It only has power because it is believed in. It is an intangible social construct similar to the law, mathematical order of operations, and gender roles. So why are Angeal and Zack obsessed with it?

Pretty simple.

Angeal’s step-father followed it.

Now, we know three things about Angeal’s step-father.

1. He was chill with the fact that Gillian was already pregnant when they started dating.

2. He was a very good father.

3. He worked himself to death trying to pay off the sword he bought Angeal.

This, of course, says a lot about Angeal considering he rarely uses the sword. He essentially sees that sword as the symbol of his step-father’s life. Everything he uses it for, he sees as more important than his step-father’s life. That thing is usually Zack.

Zack, who is the child who joined the military based on stories of heroes.

Zack, who rises against Angeal in the name of his own step-father’s ideology and tries to talk him down, even at the very end. But Zack fails because he fundamentally doesn’t understand what’s going on, partially because “Soldier Honor” is just one more aspect of this narrative he was given. It is a narrative that Angeal has had to step away from, even though he doesn’t want to leave the memory of his step-father behind. He was a good man. He was a good, hardworking man.

And that is why he died.

Corporations will use you up until there is nothing left, then honor your memory/sacrifice. Shin-Ra was doing the exact same thing the company his step-father worked for did; using up SOLDIERs until they outlived their usefulness. And Angeal was horrified to realize that his “SOLDIER Honor” wasn’t honor at all.

It was willingly submitting to control.

But, unlike Angeal, over time, this meaning changed for Zack. Partially because he didn't understand it fully in the first place. It became about acting with integrity. It became about helping people. It became about not lying down and watching the abuse Shin-Ra handed out in exchange for literal money; for maintaining the status quo.

At the very end, Zack understood what it meant to be a hero.

Part Five: The Conclusion

To sum up, Zack believed in and idolized the propaganda spread by Shin-Ra at such a young age, and was so convinced by it, that he ran away from home at thirteen to join the military.

He was their target demographic, so they happily took him into their ranks. What’s more, people think this is normal enough that we see no one opposing this, because the only people who oppose Shin-Ra are “extremists” or “violent terrorists”.

Zack then became their loyal puppy, groomed to fill his role as super-powered attack dog to sick on anyone they deemed appropriate, and he filled the role. He believed he was doing good. He didn’t think they were invading another country, because that’s not what he was told.

He went after Genesis, because that’s what he was told, and he wouldn’t let Genesis’ actions shake his faith in the company.

Then he went after Angeal, hoping to get answers, only to become more confused. Angeal taught him about SOLDIER honor. He taught him about a higher calling. He was the one who made Zack truly loyal to the company. This challenged everything Zack knew.

He went with Sephiroth, planning a small rebellion of their own (a white lie on paperwork) to get answers, only to find things he wasn’t ready for and couldn’t fully understand.

Zack is shaken by each of these events. Horribly. At times, we even watch him grieve. But time and time again, he doesn’t leave the company. He sees the damage they do first hand, and he doesn’t leave the company. The company isn’t the problem, to him. He reads their emails, does their dirty work, and “maintains his SOLDIER honor”.

Zack swallows what they give him right up until what they give him is torture.

Zack swallows what they give him until he becomes their victim.

Every step of the way, Zack is fed a story of how the world is. He was raised on it. He lived it. He became part of it. He was paid peanuts to enforce the status quo Shin-Ra installed in the world by force, and he was proud of it because it was, to him, something to be proud of.

Zack believes the propaganda whole-sale, and we get to watch, from the point of view of an outsider, as it slowly destroys his life before killing him.

Propaganda has the power to make suffering normal. Propaganda has the power to make murder righteous. Propaganda has the power to take a thirteen year old boy out of his home so they can give him a sword, and when they point him in the direction of their enemies he charges of his own volition, because they made him believe in their cause. And he believes in their cause because he believes that it makes life better for everyone.

But that’s not what’s actually happening.

That’s just what he was told.

Crisis Core is about propaganda, and the depths to which it can affect our lives. It changes our belief systems. It changes our perceptions of reality. And when it’s torn down around our eyes, it can make us go insane. It can make us violent and unreasonable as we realize just how much violence is being forced upon us—violence other people just plain do not see. It's just a a piece of paper. It's just a law. It's just a job.

It's just a war.

Final Fantasy 7 was about Fascism.

Crisis Core is about the propaganda that built it. It is told from the point of view of a boy, then a man, steeped in it. He watches until the people suffering around him—Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal—are twisted into villains by the truths and lies around them. Genesis and Angeal are tortured by truths, Sephiroth is transformed by lies, and Zack is subsequently hunted down to conceal them.

Crisis Core is Propaganda: The Video Game.

[saeun]

"suguru, shoko... it's been nice knowing you guys. i always loved you both. please, tell y/n i loved her too, yeah?"

it's a tense moment. after satoru received your social medias, he did some snooping around and found the harsh truth — or so he calls it. comparing himself to what he found did nothing but install a depressing, hallow sadness into his system.

"satoru, get the fuck down from that chair," shoko's having none of it. the moment she glimpsed group-chat's notification she practically teleported to satoru's. her heart dropped, palms got sweaty, throat dry at the thought of satoru ending his life. when she arrived, suguru was already there, weeping for his dear friend's life.

it must've been serious, right? it wasn't.

what came into her vision was a grown, silver-headed man standing on his desk chair. around his neck held one of his ties. now, this is where it got unserious. everything seemed true until shoko's eyes traveled to satoru's neck. his tie was wrapped around it with his very own hand holding the longer piece of the tie.

in short, he's fucking dramatic. suguru doesn't fall far, too. it must be hard on shoko for being the only one with a decent brain... kind of.

"shoko, how can you be so... so mean?! he's dying over there! your own friend!" suguru wipes his tears, furious at his other friend's own indifference to such a sight.

"don't," she begins, walking to satoru's position to kick him off the chair. "don't piss me off."

satoru's now on the floor; laying on his back, body straight, arms clasped on top his stomach. this must signal his final moments. it's peaceful in his mind.

"satoru, i swear to god. get the fuck off that floor." she nudges his body with the front of her shoes, eyes twitching at the foolishness.

it takes a mere minute before satoru's tired of ignoring the obnoxious foot harming his body. so he sits up, hanging his head low.

"i just can't, y'know? it hurts," his voice cracks, radiating sadness throughout the room. his words receive two varying responses.

from suguru: "it's okay, satoru. there are many other fishes in the sea."

from shoko: "this is why you mind your business sometimes."

at shoko's response, he sighs loudly, "it won't kill you to be nice, shoko ieiri."

she sits on his bed, placing a pillow on her lap, fixing her posture, and re-positioning her imaginary glasses. "well then, satoru. tell me what you felt, what you saw, and what you think. you can let it all out to doctor shoko."

suguru stifles a laugh, eyes switching between shoko's new persona and satoru's defeated expression.

"okay, doctor shoko. i felt horrible — no, nauseous. i went through her followings and saw that she follows other men. she knows other men. i'm sick to my stomach," his rant begins. it all started when he decided to go through your profile. this meant snooping through followers, followings, tagged photos, and even comments. you both are in — what the youngsters call it — a talking stage.

there are no labels within this relationship, nor are there any confirmed feelings but this? this betrayal? what do you mean he's not the first man on your profile? this is devilish. all went well until he saw one specific comment that said: "baby you're so sexy ily," to which you replied: "i love you more."

the fiend ( as he calls them ) had the profile photo of a man. when he did the internal math, the unbearable truth was found. he is not the only one you're talking to. he feels hurt.

suguru, too, shares his friend's pain. shoko, however, doesn't. why? it's because the commenter was in fact not a man. had satoru did deeper research, he'd have known that the profile photo is the famous singer the weeknd, and the profile belongs to one of your girls who's a diehard fan of him. well, who's shoko to tell the truth? she'll wait for satoru to come to a realization.

[kei-kinda-writes]

Rainy Days!

TYPE: Headcannons, Rainy days: It's a rainy day! what do you do to pass the time?

CHARACTERS (separate): Shoto Todoroki, Katsuki Bakugo, Denki Kaminari, Eijiro Kirishima, Izuku Midoriya, Hitoshi Shinso, Ochako Uraraka, Tsuyu Asui, Kiyoka Jiro

Can be red as platonic or romantic

SHOTO TODOROKI: Eating favourite food or snacks together

Very chill guy and would sit down with you to enjoy your favourite food together :D

Either you’ll sit in silence or work together on some homework: a good homework helper

No matter what it’d end up pretty quiet because I don’t think he’s very good with small conversations

Once a conversation does get going though he’ll engage and listen very well all you’d have to do is start it

If you end up finishing your food Shoto would end up offering to go get you some more while making himself some more soba

by the end he’s probably smiling a bit while listening to you and nodding along to what your saying

I think Shoto loves hearing stories about you too so if he got you to share some he’d love it

Will tell you a bit about his training since that’s the only thing he’d really know to talk about

KATSUKI BAKUGO: Baking

I know he can cook well but to me it would be the absolute funniest thing if he couldn’t bake if his life depended on it

no matter what this will end up in absolute chaos with a messy kitchen and constant banter and yelling

definitely a time to remember! You would probably be the one to bring up the idea and have to convince him

in the end though you would probably end up with some delicious 5 star deserts

He probably refuses to anything besides cupcakes or chocolate chip cookies though

Will laugh at you if you make a mess and force you to clean it up

Goodluck if you start a flour fight though! :) that’s the start of war and Katsuki won’t stop until he’s won

Took at least half an hour to clean the kitchen though

DENKI KAMINARI: Video games

Firm believer he likes video games and probably anime

Will play any game genre with you however has a preference towards horror or adventure games

If you play dress to impress though he will somehow absolutely destroy you and end up on the podium almost every time

some sort of music or TV show would be playing in the background if you aren’t playing a horror game though

Will scream like a little girl if you play horror games so you gotta prepare for that

Ends in a noise complaint 100%

would willingly try out a bunch of free games with you and rate them together with you

overall it’s an amazing time and I think even if you don’t play he’d still like for you to sit around and watch!

EIJIRO KIRISHIMA: Workout/Training

He likes working out and stuff lots so would invite for you to join him!

Won’t care if you do or don’t participate just enjoys the company and tells some of the best stories

Imagine he’s doing some sort of push ups or sit ups telling you about homework with Katsuki and you’re just sat listening and helping him out

if you do participate though he’ll be your personal cheerleader and always be so helpful and outgoing telling you good job on a constant

Might make a small competition to see who can do more push ups or lift more

Would be open to sparring too for more practice!

Another thing he might do with you on a rainy day is re-dye his hair which would likely end up in chaos and calling Mina in for help

IZUKU MIDORIYA: Movies

Like I’ve said before he probably really likes documentary movies and would invite you to watch one!

Wont mind if you end up choosing a different type of movie though as long as the two of you get to watch something together it makes him happy

Additionally won’t care if you’re doing work or scrolling through social media while watching I think he just likes having your company

If you are watching a documentary movie though be prepared for him to pause and rant about how a fact isn’t correct

So if you don’t like that he might not be the best person to watch a movie with!

If you end up falling asleep at any point though he’d cover you with a blanket or something along the lines of that and turn the volume down slightly so you won’t end up woken up

Will bring out an all might blanket to have whilst watching the movie too as well as some snacks! :D

Likely makes mental note of your favourites and buys some or at the very least grabs whatever you’d like from the dorm kitchen!

HITOSHI SHINSO: Naptime

He’s so sleep deprived and without a doubt takes naps

And when it starts raining? I mean come on we all know that’s perfect napping time

It would take awhile before he invites you to be his napping buddy but once you are it’s the absolute best

He probably has some of the comfiest pillows and blankets and the two of you bring out a small mat he has in his closet for sleepovers and just nap in the same room

Might also put on some sort of show as background noise if you need it or if you just don’t feel like napping

Adding onto that if you don’t wanna take a nap or just don’t feel tired he’d probably just leave you to your own devices and let you do whatever you’d like as long as you’re quiet

Won’t pressure you to nap with him would more like casually offer it on a rainy day to see if you’d like to join

OCHAKO URARAKA: Arts + crafts

Like I’ve said in a previous headcannon I think Uraraka enjoys doing little crafts like making bracelets together or painting stuff like that!

if you aren’t doing a messy craft you’d end up in a pile of pillows and blankets on the floor I think

if you end up making bracelets together I think she’d absolutely adore making matching ones together :))

Or something like switching canvases or papers every couple of minutes!!

I am a firm believer she listens to lofi beats so that would be playing in the background

warm lighting, silly banter and crafts, rain, and calming music, the vibes would be immaculate

After the stuff you two made is either hanging up somewhere in her dorm or she’s proudly wearing it around! :)

if you make little charms or something along those lines she would keep it in her costume for keepsakes much like the all might gift she received around the holidays episode

TSUYU ASUI: Playing in the rain

I know it’s a bit cliché, but from what we know about Tsu liking water I’m a firm believer that she likes the rain

Jumping, dancing, running around anything is on the table

She wouldn’t pressure you into playing with her, she would definitely enjoy it if you did however she’d be fine if you watched from inside or just on some steps under a roof

Building on that she probably is a very flexible person and wouldn’t mind just watching the rain with you if you don’t wanna get wet but still wanna spend time together :))

If you do end up playing in the rain together you’d probably both come back in with soaked clothes and muddy pants!

definitely calls it one of her favourite memories with you and probably asked to take a couple of photos together to remember the occasion

Photos from then were likely her phone background for awhile

KIYOKA JIRO: Learning instruments + listening to music

Jiro loves music we know that from the UA carnival concert ordeal thingy (idk what it’s called man)

I think it’s sorta like a love language of hers to teach music to the people around her

So if you’re open to it and willing to try she’d love to take advantage of the bad weather and teach you how to play an instrument

I’d say she’s pretty understanding if you have noise sensitivities or just aren’t willing to learn anything though

So if you aren’t too keen on it though or maybe you just don’t like loud noises she’s also spend time sharing her music with you :)

You’d be in her room just exchanging songs and such, she wouldn’t pressure to share songs either but would absolutely adore it if you did

After awhile if she ended up with a good knowledge of your music taste she would make a playlist and that’s the one she’d play every rainy day or in general time she spends with you!

Would be willing to paint nails or work on homework whilst listening

Thanks for reading!

Side note: Apologies if there’s any typos, things don’t make sense, or the characters feel as though they aren’t properly done!

[ekkotimesthree]

RE: Homestuck Discourse, Media Literacy, Fandom Entitlement, & The Puppet Theory

an essay by yours truly

content warning: discussions of child abuse, CSA, & child neglect

so many discourses and debates surrounding homestuck boil down to lacking basic media literacy. so instead of making a petulant rant, i’ll attempt writing a productive essay, but forgive me if my annoyance seeps into parts of this post due to the subject matter. let’s start with dave, since he’s one of the most contentious characters (also because he’s my blorbo, sorry not sorry), and move on from there!

i constantly see people say something along the lines of “davekat happening in the retcon timeline makes no sense why would terezi ignore dave and gamzee yada yada yada”, like there’s not a whole scene that explains this! and it’s one of the most plot relevant scenes in the comic!! if you don’t know what the blood scarf even is, your opinion on this irrelevant, since you didn’t read/remember the text. rule number one of media literacy is properly consuming the media.

“dave being abused and the gay stuff came out of nowhere” this is definitively not true. one of the first things we learn about dave is that he has to hide food in his room so he doesn’t starve, and that this is an intentional choice by his brother. oh, and then his brother actually beats the shit out of him on screen, while not letting him abscond, right after we see john and rose strife their parents in a healthy way no less. (take note of bro using cal, and dave trying to abscond from him. more on that later.)

and re: dave’s sexuality, rose immediately points out that dave is probably gay during their first on screen interaction, and it’s her first line of dialogue to him.

TT: In some cultures the persistent refusal of a lady's invitation to play a game with her would be a sign wanton disrespect.

TT: Either that, or flagrant homosexuality.

moving on, later that same day, dave outright admits he loves john:

in these scenes, rose would be considered a mouthpiece! author’s use mouthpieces to get across information to the audience, that the character(s) themsel(ves) don’t know. in this case, that character is dave.

so now let’s address the elephant in the room, you probably thought these messages were just jokes, and that’s okay! that’s for three reasons:

first, your worldviews and perspectives shift the way you perceive the world, and more specifically art in this instance. that’s a fundamental part of the human experience. having your own personal biases based on your life experiences isn’t inherently a bad thing! for example, if you finish my essay, you can learn more about compulsive heterosexuality, or the effects of child abuse, see all of the signs, all without having to deal with it first hand. which is great! that’s the point of art and storytelling.

secondly, you probably still thought dave was straight while reading this narration. that’s because homestuck is written in deep pov, or as you would probably call it, unreliable narration. these are technically two separate things, but i don’t feel like breaking down all of those pedantics. all you need to know is: deep pov is when a character’s worldviews and perspective shift the narrative, rather than a story being told objectively. think junie b jones, the percy jackson series, or uh, catcher in the rye, if you’re into that sort of thing. that means that all the dialogue and narration within homestuck will always have some level of subtext, aka the non-literal explanation for text. homestuck is made by adults for adults, so it’s created on the basis we can analyze the text, and come to our own conclusions, unlike YA and children’s media.

a lot of people assume homestuck is supposed to be YA series, but that’s not the case. homestuck’s themes are about exploring the effects of child abuse and neglect, which you need to be an adult to fully understand. and unlike cinderella, homestuck shows child abuse on screen, and as we’ll discuss later, tackles subject matter about CSA, or child s*x*al *ss*lt. that inherently makes it a 18+ story, no matter the ages of any characters involved. just because most of us read homestuck as kids doesn’t really have any impact on that.

“well there’s no explicitly 18+ content in homestuck!!! they’re all 13!!!!” please take one look at equius’s room, or translate damara’s dialogue, and tell me if you still feel that way. oh, and read the epilogues too. also do you not remember the sheer amount of bloodshed, sex jokes, and cursing shown without a single censor??? even the official homestuck twitter said this:

finally, it’s also worth mentioning the time homestuck was made, because art can’t be removed from it’s historical context. so in 2009, gay representation was still virtually non-existent, especially in children’s and teen media. in the 2000s there was an extremely prevalent trope, “queer people are funny”, where the whole joke is that a character doing something that could be perceived as gay, or transgender, is funny. this problem was especially rampant in media for men. the most infamous example of this is family guy this was s8e18 of family guy, “quagmire’s dad”, where the whole joke is that brian slept with a trans woman, and everyone single joke comes at the expense of the trans woman, who’s relegated to a background role, while the narrative focuses on quagmire and brian’s emotions, the two cis men. so what homestuck is doing is called a deconstruction of this trope! deconstruction is where you break something down to critically analyze the philosophy behind it. we’ll leave a pin in john for now (just you wait), but it’s made extremely clear that dave is struggling with internalized homophobia, thus deconstructing why he makes these jokes in the first place. by the end of homestuck, dave says:

DAVE: but ive had a fuck ton of time on my hands to think about stuff. about stuff ive said and done in the past why i said and did them. a lot of things i once would have insisted were like part of my brand and helped me come across cool and smartassy, but now im not so sure. we used rip on each other all the time for being gay even though we knew we werent which of course is what made it "funny" remember?

with this quote, and the knowledge that dave goes onto date a man, i don’t think anyone is denying the internalized homophobia now, so let’s move onto reading this:

i’m sure all of us are thinking “there’s no heterosexual explanation for this, he doesn’t even like ben stiller!” OR “maybe dave’s just too embarrassed to admit he likes shitty movies? is it really more than that??” either way, that’s because hussie utilitized the rule of three to make you subconsciously notice dave’s obsession with irony! the rule of three is used to set patterns in a story, either to establish a fact, or to subvert the viewer’s expectations. for example, let’s analyze this joke:

notice how terezi’s third response is the funny one?by setting up the pattern, both you and john are expecting her to keep laughing in response, so when terezi flips the script on him, it’s hilarious. that’s called payoff, or in this instance, comedic payoff. now we can compare that to dave’s irony, where it was mentioned three times on one panel. no subversions of expectations here! that’s because hussie wants to establish dave’s obsession with irony, and they did so by creating a pattern you would notice subconsciously. this is how the rule of three works! psychology is cool, right?

so now that we can all agree that the subtext here is related to the irony, we have a new problem: we’ve only gotten dave and rose’s perspectives. we still need one more to complete the rule of three. fuck. thank god i can skip ahead!

using my whimsical ability to read ahead analyze text, i find out what john said to dave, and leave out the unimportant bullshit for everyone’s sake (mostly mine though):

dear dave, happy birthday!!! (…) i got you these. they're totally authentic! they actually touched ben stiller's weird, sort of gaunt face at some point. i'm sure you'll dig them because i know you lolled so hard at that movie. ok so for real, this is sort of a shitty present, but it is an ironic present because i know you wouldn't have it any other way. maybe you can wear them ironically some time. they MIGHT even be more ironic than you and your bro's dumb pointy anime shades.

now we have three characters’ perspectives on dave’s behavior. you’re probably able to put together the pieces i’m putting down, but for those who aren’t getting it: when you compare john’s letter, with dave’s actions, and rose’s messages, you realize that: dave is keeping these glasses because he loves john, not because he likes ben stiller, but he can’t admit that to himself, hence why his narration overcompensates with the usage of irony! it’s worth noting that all of these examples are from dave’s pov, because switching to rose or john’s pov would no longer make them mouthpieces!

“okay but isn’t dave’s perspective not reliable either??” yes! that’s why we’re using his actions as textual evidence, not his statements. the fact dave kept these glasses, and hung up a picture of an actor he doesn’t even like, is the proof he loves john, not him saying outright that he loves him. like i said earlier, this is a comic intended for adults, so characters aren’t going to outright say themes or how they feel. that’s more for peppa pig, hannah montana, and riverdale, you feel me? just like in real life, talk is fucking cheap here.

so now we’re left with a new question: why does dave feel comfortable admitting his love for john to rose, but not john himself? i’m sure the answer is becoming obvious! putting all this together we can gather the following: hussie wants us to know that dave possibly has a crush on john, but definitely loves him.

wait a minute… possibly?!? that’s because we still need textual evidence dave likes men. luckily, like i mentioned earlier, we can skip ahead to the epilogues, where him and karkat get together in the meat timeline, thus proving dave has liked men this whole time. boom! that’s payoff!!!

now we can OFFICIALLY put together that dave had a crush on john. once again, notice how we’re using dave’s actions to prove this, and not just quotes! either way, now we have officially used media analysis to deduce that dave had a childhood crush on john! huzzah! pat yourself on the back my loyal reader.

and for those who still aren’t convinced of dave’s crush on john, this masterpost has way more evidence than i ever could fit in this post.

(trigger warning: csa)

so now with everything we’ve learned about media analysis, i present you with my own analysis: the puppets are a symbolism for abuse, and the sex puppets specifically are an allegory for CSA, or child s*xual ass*ult. symbolism is where you use a certain object to represent ideas or qualities. the best example of this is the iconic green house logo we see throughout the comic. in comparison, an allegory is when a certain object or plot device is used to get a point across, without directly stating the point itself, aka, a hidden meaning. for instance, hussie has said their game “pyscholonials” is an allegory for how they feel about their gender identity!

so now, let’s start finding textual evidence to back up my claims about the puppet allegory, through looking for textual evidence of dave’s symptoms, aka analyzing character psychology:

dave’s anxiety manifests in the way he types. according to healthline “rambling or excessive talking [is a sign of] social anxiety. you fear saying the wrong thing or being judged by others, but you end up talking more (…) in an effort to help make up for your anxiety, and help quiet the worries revolving around what others think of you”. this is basically dave’s whole personality, but more specifically, you can see him doing this around the puppets in this scene, he rambles to himself non stop when returning to his childhood bedroom, and he’s still doing so on the meteor when he can’t find terezi to do “some stuff”. by the end of the comic, dave even acknowledges this himself by saying: “DAVE: yo im hardly one to talk here since i am a goddamn geyser of hilariously self-pulverizing freudian bloopers”. it’s also worth mentioning that, generally speaking, dave also spams his friends a lot until he gets a response, implying he gets anxious when people don’t respond quick enough to him, which is a normal reaction after being neglected as a child. that’s called a trauma response! all of these bullet points are trauma responses that happen to people who had to deal with CSA. in this case, the trauma response would be dave’s anxiety in general, and not him spamming his friends specifically. moving along…

dave’s hypersexuality manifests in a pretty in a pretty straightforward way, hence him constantly making s*xual jokes, and him drawing dicks on stuff on the meteor, much to the annoyance of everyone else. terezi even points this out herself while dave is failing to grieve bro:

TG: im sorry you are so flustered by the mere mention of glittering mythical cryptodick it honestly makes me think youre not ready for the truth

GC: D4V3 YOUR P3RPL3XING 3UPH3MISMS INVOLVING WHAT I PR3SUM3 TO B3 L3WD 4ND VAGU3LY INTRIGUING PORTIONS OF HUMAN 4N4TOMY 1 THINK 4R3 NOT 4S HILARIOUS 4S YOU PROBABLY B3L13V3

his dissociation is also pretty straightforward. he constantly talks about himself in the third person, and treats himself like he’s a character in a story, rather than a person who has wants and needs. for reference, dave immediately pulls meta shenanigans when you meet him, foreshadowing his dissociation. you can tell it’s built up to an already toxic level when we meet him, because on the same day, he has almost no reaction to seeing his own corpse, and immediately disposes of it “for jade’s sake”, rather than his own. and to make matters worse, he immediately “moves on” as if nothing happened. deep pov, remember? he also couldn’t properly process bro’s death. once again, terezi tries to point this out to dave, and he’s still not getting the message. put a pin in this section for now.

near the end of the comic, davepetasprite outright says that davesprite was depressed, regularly talked about how he wanted to off himself, and implies he might of attempted it. this is a grey area since davesprite is technically a separate character, and grieving the death of everyone from his original timeline, but it feels weird to just ignore it. to each their own on this point, but i would assume davepetasprite was referring to dave’s whole life when they talked about him being depressed based on wording, and his terrible childhood, but the s**cidal stuff could go either way. again, the proof here is dave/davesprite’s actions, not davepetasprite’s quote itself.

he displays regressive behavior 24/7 by wearing his shades to avoid eye contact, refusing to participate in common social cues (i.e.: constant dick jokes), and the few times we see him get upset, he shuts down rather than feeling his emotions. not so fun fact, the only time dave cries in all of homestuck is because of onions being cut in front of him. there’s an allegory in this scene, can you find it? (hint: the dragons forced dave into the soup, but he refuses to get out of it) also, in his most emotional scene, he still tries his damndest to not talk about emotional stuff with dirk, and still doesn’t cry when they hug, despite discussing bro’s death, and his thoughts on his own abuse in detail:

the lack of self esteem is pretty apparent. he constantly over compensates at the beginning of the comic, as seen below. he always talks about himself as if he’s a famous important guy, despite that all of his friends know he’s lying, and regularly say it to his face, but he’s still adamant that they’re wrong, or commits to the bit without actually admitting the truth. i wanna note that dave’s humor is always more of a commit to the bit and keep it going sort of thing, for better… or usually worse. not full on sarcasm. this is opposed to rose and john’s teenaged douchebaggery mixed with flagrant sarcasm. also, in the aforementioned scene above, davepetasprite still refers to davesprite as a piece of garbage, showing this is something dave struggles with even while being combined with nepeta. again, we’re using the action of putting himself down, not the quote itself. (also, sorry for the image quality, i’m on mobile)

in the long term, it’s basically impossible for him to form long lasting, fulfilling, and romantic relationships. first, it’s his crush on john, but that’s just kids being kids stuff. there’s also the fact dave and rose had some sort of failed relationship in davesprite’s timeline, due to them not learning they’re siblings. then we see the serious problems arise with terezi, who he dates pre-retcon mostly just cause she’s there, and his weird definitely not gay rivalry with karkat, which leads to her being unfulfilled in their relationship, and starting a kismesistude with gamzee. obviously the jade stuff is a big wooooof (pun NOT intended), both with davesprite, and the candy timeline. ultimately, both times, dave only dates jade because he feels bad for not liking her back, which leads to the relationship falling apart both times. remember the pin in dissociation? that’s what he’s doing here. karkat would be the opposite of jade. dave doesn’t let himself date karkat because dave hates himself, and more specifically, his attraction to men, which i’ll elaborate on later. this is what we call a character foil, aka two characters who have similarities so you can contrast their differences. think naruto and sasuke, or uh, deku and bakugo i guess? how do you do fellow kids? actually yeah! cause jade is green, and karkat is red blooded, which would symbolize how dave sees karkat as the “wrong” choice, while jade is the “right” one. the colors green and red are opposites, but jade and karkat are both of dave’s love interests in the epilogues. see? character foils! symbolism! personally, i refer to this as “star wars logic”, cause the good guys have green lightsabers, and the bad guys have red ones. this is definitely intentional, seeing as homestuck is littered with star wars references, like how HIC is basically just darth vader. meenah is also definitely a reference to darth maul, just look at her double sided weapon, or how they both die before getting to their respective thrones. i could keep going but it’s not really relevant to the discussion.

so right now you might be thinking “well you still didn’t explain how dave got assaulted tho”, and that’s fair. however, i wanna remind you that showing children porn against their will is 100% a form of CSA, same with sex paraphernalia, and especially forcing sex paraphernalia onto them. to do that to a child non-stop, in an environment they can’t escape, would have horrid effects psychologically, and dave displays almost every one of them, as you saw with the textual evidence above. so when dave can’t admit to himself that he he hates bro’s puppets, and more specifically the sex ones, it’s because doing so would force him to admit: a) what bro did to him was wrong & b) that he enjoyed it in some aspect. john even points out how weird bro’s affinity for puppets is weird and definitively not cool, which causes dave to immediately shut him down hardcore (more allegory).

speaking from experience, one of the worst parts of CSA is that you have no clue what’s going on. victims of assault often blame themselves, or feel guilty of what happened, and children lack the ability to tell what’s fully going on in the first place, due to their brains being underdeveloped, thus amplifying the guilt and blame. people often worry so much about the “man tricking kids with candy” because it’s the most pervasive p****ph*le you see in media (god i hate true crime culture), that people forget that 84% of csa happens in the home, 50% of the time it’s someone the child trusts, and 40% of time it’s family members specifically. even if 99% of your experience is terrible, you’ll still find a way to blame yourself for the 1% until you can properly process that you didn’t do anything wrong. this is what’s referred to as the “the myth of the perfect victim”.

i know this is “personal speculation”, but to me, it seems very apparent that dave is gay, and can’t come to terms with it because of his CSA trauma, hence his inability to just admit to himself he has a crush on john. every girl he dates in the main comic is quite literally the ONLY dateable girl in front of him, or usually the only girl in front of him at all, and all three girls have crushes on him/flirt with him WAY before he starts their relationships. and once again, he only dates jade in the epilogues due to his own guilt and dissociation, combined with her doing everything short of forcing herself onto him. compulsive heterosexuality is a major part of homestuck. for instance, hussie has confirmed via author’s notes that rose had a crush on dave when they were kids, and that something happened between them when they never learned they were siblings on davesprite’s timeline, yet hussie has also said that rose is a full on lesbian. that’s comphet, and it’s very intentional!

i also wanna take a moment to acknowledge that dave and rose are 100% nods to luke skywalker and princess leia, who also kiss before finding out they’re related. notice how dave fights with swords, like a lightsaber, and has the same hair as luke. meanwhile, rose’s seer of light powers are basically the same as leia’s force powers, and she uses most of her weapons as blasters, just like leia. i don’t think hussie was trying to be weird or add this stuff in for any unsavory reasons, like some people imply. there’s a reason all of this extremely vague, and not shown on screen. put a pin in that.

so in the same way the katanas in dave’s fridge symbolize bro prioritizing preparing dave for battle over what he actually needs (food and shelter), that’s how the puppets symbolize dave’s CSA. now, if you read dave and rose’s conversation about the sex puppets with that knowledge, it starts to paint the harrowing picture (again, allegory). it’s important to remember that rose had a canonically had a crush on dave at the time during this conversation, so she was probably just negging him the same way she negs her mom. she was upset because she knew that dave liked john, and probably was just gay in general, so he was never going to like her back. she’s definitely projecting her gayness (and love of puppets) onto dave too. again, all of this is definitely comphet lesbian behavior. all that’s to say, i’m not claiming she’s intentionally victim blaming him or anything during this scene. she’s just as much of a child as he is. put a pin in that too! i got sited sources coming, but i can only put so many goddamn words and images in a single post.

so, i see the sentiment shared a lot that hussie just tacked on the abuse stuff at the end, and that the beginning of homestuck “was just a silly comic at the beginning it’s not that deep”. that is an objectively ill informed take, and now you know why! the entirety of homestuck’s themes are exploring the effects of child abuse and neglect, hence the name, home stuck. there’s a reason the protagonist who is able to save everyone, also has a seemingly perfect home life. notably, the only other character who’s a completely well adjusted nice person is nepeta. she’s also the only character who’s able to free roam as she pleases, has a loving lusus, and ironically, is the only character without a home/hive to begin with. once she makes into the game, her land is quite literally her cup of tea as well. these definitely aren’t coincidences. i hope your allegory alarms are going off right now!

the only reason homestuck is sillier in the beginning is solely because it was a fan lead project for the first few acts. back in the day, there were forums dedicated for audience input to decide what happens next in the story. fun fact: this is how a lot the characters names were decided as well! so there’s a reoccurring bit where (insert beta kid) does (something stupid) and then the plot just moves on (i.e. john’s HILARIOUS antics). those were the silly suggestions sent in by the fan community! that was back when the homestuck community was still pretty small, all things considered. this explains the wonky pacing in the first few acts, and the more comedic tone.

moving on, the reason the puppets and the katana fridge are used as symbols, is because yeah, the tone would be way too dark if they played that straight. however, there’s another reason that’s way more important. remember how homestuck is written with a deep pov, aka unreliable narration? (please don’t kill me pedantics police!!!) hussie uses deep pov to display how homestuck chacters see their parents/lusii, in order to convey the themes of the story. stick around a bit longer and i’ll explain the theme of homestuck! just let me explain something real quick, so you get the big picture.

bro is shown in a positive zany light because that’s how dave sees him. to dave, bro is his whacky older brother, and sure he’s a little out there, but ninja battles and puppets are sick as fuck, right? well we as the audience know that’s NOT the case. again, dave is literally starved on screen, and gets the shit beaten out of him, also on screen. this parallels rose’s relationship with her mom, who gives her everything she could ever want and need, but doesn’t fulfill rose’s emotional needs, so rose sees her as a some sort of spiteful cartoon villain. dave even calls this out the second he sees all the wizard stuff rose got from her mom.

meanwhile, you can see rose admit to liking the puppets here, and she says she’s a fan of bro’s pornbot websites as well.

ultimately, they both want what each other has, but aren’t really able to fully grasp why their own parents did what they did, much less each other’s parents, which leads to them both envying the toxic part of each other’s households. i’m sure you’re starting to see the big picture with the puppets now, so to send the point home, remember that image i showed you during dave and bro’s strife? well, bro is attacking dave with a puppet, and dave wants to abscond, but can’t, perfectly paralleling dave’s abuse to a puppet. furthermore, that’s why he’s surrounded by sex puppets specifically, and they’re all throughout his apartment. it’s all symbolism for how dave is trapped in home dealing with CSA.

this is the purpose of allegory, telling you something without directly showing it. i doubt any of us think homestuck would be better if this stuff was depicted literally, for all the obvious reasons. i’ll close out with this dialogue since it shows what i mean better than i ever could myself:

DAVE: why did i get such a raw cut of the asshole deck? and why did it take me so long to figure that out? and like hes dead now so thats that. so all thats left to do is look back and try to put the pieces together of my first 13 years, and all i can think is what the fuck WAS that?!

DAVE: i dont come away with the impression i used to try convincing myself of, that he was like "mysterious" or "stern" or "aloof". the only feeling left is this insane impression that i was raised by somebody who fuckin HATED me, and the whole act of even "raising a child" was some totally fucked up game to him.

DIRK: What… did he do?

DAVE: i dont want to get out the laundry list, but for reference laundry wasnt one of those things. that was just one of the many little domestic things i just had to sort of FIGURE OUT. sorta like i eventually had to learn what the REAL purpose of a refridgerator was from movies.

DIRK: Wait. What???

DAVE: i dunno theres too much to even get into. just- i dont remember the atmosphere ever not being nerve wracking. all havin to sneak around and... ugh my shitty childhood spider senses are tinglin just thinking about it.

DAVE: it was "training" you know?

DAVE: but you know what it really was, it was some vicious shit that was bad and sucked and i hated it

DAVE: it didnt make me stronger

DAVE: it did the opposite

DAVE: it made me never want to fight

DAVE: it made me never want to see blood or be near danger or hear metal sounds

DAVE: it made me hate the idea of being a hero cause he was a hero and he ruined the idea of heroism

(…)

DAVE: i know how it sounds but i am NOT joking and there is NO shred of doubt in my mind that he loved all those puppets more than me

so uh, this essay is already long enough, and you definitely want me to just say the theme by now, so let’s explain the rest of this allegory in optional bullet points that you should definitely still read.

rose liking the puppets is symbolism for how emotionally neglected children often end up subconsciously “wanting” terrible things to them, like abuse or self harm, so they can justify their own unhappiness with their lives, due to them not understanding that their emotional needs aren’t being fufilled. again, the myth of the perfect victim, starting during childhood specifically. rose does this by convincing herself that her mom hates her, rather than seeing that her mom is trying her best to parent, and failing miserably. rose is also unaware of her mother’s alcoholism, which symbolizes how she doesn’t understand that her mother is emotionally neglecting her. this parallels how dave is seemingly caught off guard by dirk’s sexuality, and thus bro’s sexuality, due to dave not processing that his abuse is sexual in nature.

jade’s love of plushies parallels dave’s love, and eventual hatred, for puppets. (once again, notice the red vs green. character foils!) this is because her neglect causes her to become extremely immature. when she’s a kid, this mostly just manifests as her liking children’s toys, and speaking with a childish affectation. however, this immaturity goes unchecked, leading to the epilogues, where she completely ruins dave and karkat’s relationship for her own sexual desires (paraphrasing). you could say the same for her secretly getting rose pregnant in hs^2, knowing kanaya will be upset when she finds out. basically, she has a huge emotional disregard for everyone around her, which stems from her almost complete isolation for most of her childhood. once again, emotional neglect leading to regression, more specifically maturity regression in her case, which makes sense when you remember she grew up raised by an actual dog. and interestingly, dogs have low emotional intelligence compared to other animals. jade herself becomes part dog while going godtier, right as she has to go into further isolation during the three year journey. dogtier symbolism! jadesprite also throws a tantrum when she’s created, right after being combined with a dog. more symbolism!

dirk loving cal is an allegory how he can’t let go of his own self abuse, which becomes extremely literal when he cuts his head off. something something symbolism. this is also foreshadowing his eventual role as the villain of the story once he achieves his ultimate self, and begins thrusting abuse onto others. after going ult, dirk ends up pushing jane into presidency, thus allowing a troll genocide to happen. it’s also worth mentioning jane r*pes jake in the epilogues, and while knowing this, dirk still supports her because he believes “the ends justify the means” during all of this. now he’s officially just as bad as bro at this point. i also wanna point out that this, once again, this makes dirk a huge foil to dave, with both of them helping their respective presidential picks to win the election. i believe this is hinting that dave will eventually be the one to defeat dirk, thus finally not letting his bro have power over him, or anyone else for that matter. remember how dave is a reference to luke skywalker? well the main villain of homestuck^2 is his father figure from another timeline/universe, so at this point, it seems like dave will have to be the one to do the killing blow on dirk, the same way luke did to vader. only time will tell. pun intended bitch. also, dirk’s shade of orange is right in between dave’s, and the yellow bloods, possibly symbolizing how dirk is doomed by the narrative just like sollux, mituna, and the Ψiioniic, combined with his own self abuse.

roxy has seemingly no affinity or hatred for puppets, dolls, or plushes, foreshadowing her failed assassination attempt on the batterwitch, and her short lived alcoholism. however, she does still have a pile of cat and wizard plushes in her room. roxy is probably the third most well adjusted character in all of homestuck, and had a pretty nice childhood all things considered! obviously it wasn’t perfect though, hence the short bout of alcoholism. all that fits into my puppet theory pretty well, implying that roxy made it to the end of her game due to her lack of alcoholism, unlike her alpha self, but just like rose. her shade of pink being the middle ground of dave and rose’s makes sense as well.

on davesprite’s timeline, his sprite prototypes with cal, and one of the birds who never left his apartment, symbolizing how he was unable to escape the trauma of his abuse and homelife. also another easter egg! crows are the smartest bird, and one of the smartest animals in the animal kingdom. this is symbolizing how dave is actually the smartest member of his session, which makes sense due to the sheer amount of math he does for his sylladex, despite bro not bothering with his homeschooling. this is why davesprite’s wings are clipped, to symbolize how his neglect and abuse ultimately made him worse off, rather than “being the air beneath his wings”. actual dave notably fights with a clipped sword, can you guess what that symbolizes? (hint: bro clipped the sword)

john interestingly fits into this as well, due to him receiving a harlequin doll for his birthday, and it later prototyping his kernelsprite. john hates clowns, and is the main character, which interestingly foils gamzee, who loves all things clown, and is relegated to a joke background character. let’s just put another pin in john and gamzee for now! i promise it will pay off.

but most importantly, lord english is the referred to as “the 8ig 8ad” by vriska (not a coincidence! think about spidermom!!!), and lil cal himself is referred to as the “most important character in homestuck”. notably, lord english is also the mind behind lil cal. this symbolizes how abuse is a central theme of homestuck, and the last trial the characters must overcome. that’s why rose stops drinking after the retcon, and why dave starts… doing something with karkat?

so there’s a huge elephant in the room! if we’re discussing davekat, we have to to mention the contentious reveal scene, don’t we? forgive me, but we have to address all the little nuances of this. so uh, remember dave’s anxious speaking habit we’ve established? well he starts blabbering when karkat immediately brings up his old black feelings for john, most likely implying he’s a little jealous/insecure about that. this is pretty normal, cause he’s still teenager at the end of the day. you can see it specifically in these two lines:

DAVE: so are you SURE you still dont have these unreconciled blackrom feelings about john

DAVE: i say we air this out before it ferments into some rank and hella unexamined feeling sauce

see? remember what i said about dave having trauma responses? this is it. he’s just anxious karkat might still like john, thus ruining their relationship, or uh, situationship at the time. he also might be projecting his romantic attraction to john onto karkat as well. then, he rambles a bunch of incoherent bullshit when john asks what his sexuality is. karkat is extremely embarrassed by this part of the conversation, yet he was able to calmly discuss his old crush on john. so this all comes to a head with the following dialogue:

JOHN: did you... like, date any boys?

DAVE: uh

JOHN: but there weren't even that many boys on the meteor? well, there's the clown guy, but i don't really see you and him... that really only leaves... um, were you and karkat... ARE you and karkat, like. hmm.

this makes karkat officially loses it due to embarrassment, but i’ll spare you from that huge wall of text. next dialogue reads:

JOHN: dave, i'm pretty sure we're making karkat uncomfortable now.

DAVE: yeah maybe we should drop this

JOHN: ok.

so lets think. they aren’t dating, but they definitely did something kinda gay. notably, this parallels the “things” dave did with terezi pre-retcon, while still being tastefully vague. the idea that dave did some gay teenager shenanigans actually does make sense for his character arc, because it implies he’s comfortable enough now to try something like that now. though i do wanna emphasize that i’m not try to explicitly say they had sex, i’m just saying dave explored his sexuality. come to the conclusions you’re comfortable with here! hussie goes out of their way to not display or mention characters doing any sex acts while they are minors, and this is the closest we ever get to anything like that. there’s only one instance of making out even happening in homestuck, and it’s just jake making out with his avatar poster. well, unless you wanna count this i guess? considering everything we’ve gone over in this post, this is most definitely intentional.

through john’s retcons, the butterfly effect forces the dave and rose to address their respective childhood traumas, which leads to them being able to beat the game. same with davepetasprite finally giving jade the closure she needed right before she woke up. same with terezi fixing her relationship with vriska. karkat runs for president later, proving he’s got over his leadership trauma as well. that’s how you win sburb. john saving everyone with that retcon shows the central theme of homestuck: you can change at any point, and get through any hard times, as long as you have people in your life to help and support you. the retcon is great because it shows you how a timeline is doomed, so that way you can understand why they won.

EB: well to be honest, i never really believed any of your guys's doom and gloom nonsense. not because i think you are lying... i just feel like there must still be a way to win! (…) also, there is always hope for someone who has good friends to count on!

so when dave and karkat start getting together, and do “stuff” on the meteor, that’s all the tasteful way of saying: dave was able to process things, and become more comfortable with himself. again, this totally could’ve just been making out, come to the conclusions you want. the vagueness is intentional.

notably, vriska, dirk, jake, gamzee, and jane are the only surviving characters to not address their trauma at all by the ending, which leads into their current arcs in homestuck^2 (or lack thereof in gamzee’s case). there’s also one more character, who we’ve carefully left pins in until now….

it’s time to address june egbert. spare the torches and pitchforks please! i’ve done a ridiculous amount of research, and there still doesn’t seem to be a proper explanation for june egbert from either a homestuck fan or a creator behind homestuck, so i’ll bare the cross of this explanation. from here on out, i’ll still say both names interchangeably for pedantic reasons, but that’s solely because this is still in a weird state of schrödinger’s canon, and hs^2 is pretty much it’s own thing in itself. but i’m a trans woman so w/e. once again, spare the pitchforks! please!

the reason why her being trans works is because john/june spent the whole series so focused on saving everyone else, that she never focused on herself, or thought too deeply about anything. that’s kind of her thing, taking everything at face value, and not thinking too deeply about herself (i wonder why… ♾️). this is even pointed out by dave himself during The Davekat Scene™:

DAVE: ok i guess what im saying is… i dont think its all as simple as you think it is, or maybe not like ACTIVELY think it is but continue to assume it is on account of NOT thinkin about it much, due to a lot of junk about the subject that gets shoved into our brains from movies and stuff while we were just dumb kids

JOHN: i,

JOHN: hm.

so you see the set up here right? the character who i was referring to, who still hadn’t processed their childhood? it’s important to realize that june/john has never actually had a character arc herself, because her story is told via the hero’s journey structure, not a typical three act story structure like almost every other character receives in their arcs. ever notice how homestuck is constantly compared to the odyssey or the iliad? that’s why! this all means, june/john is a plot motivated character, rather than a self motivated one, again, like almost the rest of the entire cast. it makes sense for her to have to start self introspection once the game is over, she never really had the chance to while saving everyone else. interestingly, vriska’s arc is told in the format of the hero’s journey as well. dave/davebot’s arc in the epilogues and hs^2 is also told in the format of the hero’s journey. he seems to be in between “woman as the temptress” (aka jade) and the “atonement” stage, which would most definitely be finally seeing karkat again, something hs^2 is still building up to. this makes sense for all three characters, seeing as being a “hero” plays huge parts of all of their respective storylines.

i also wanna bring up the clown stuff again, and more specifically, gamzee. even more specifically, this amazing analysis by @abcq2:

before murderstuck, gamzee has no idea that he is a clown. sure, he anoints his face with greasepaint, rides a unicycle, and juggles, but these are serious religious sacraments to him. and, sure, sometimes he trips on his giant floppy shoes and lands face first in a pie, but that's just being blessed with a miracle, because he was just thinking about pie. and, sure, sometimes his friends say things like "HEY ASSHOLE. CLOWN ASSHOLE. YOU WORSHIP A CLOWN RELIGXON. FOR CLOWNS." to him, but he's too zonked on sopor slime to extract any meaning from it. when gamzee sees the ICP miracles video, he's too sober to dismiss it as a mere coincidence; for once, he gets the joke, and realises that he was the butt of the joke the whole time. he understands that every time he fell face first in a pie, it was the work of an unsen riddler. he grasps that he is, in a cosmic sense, a clown, and hates it. (…) when the murder spree is over, gamzee's beatific grin returns; no longer a look of blank ignorance, but a knowing smirk. he's successfully ruined his character forever - no one wants to see him and no one thinks he's funny. hussie seems to say: jesus you are such a shitty clown. and gamzee's impassive face seems to say: i know. gamzee refuses to clown out of spite, and hussie refuses to remove gamzee from the story out of spite. it's a committed relationship of reciprocal, mutual antagonism. what i'm saying is that hussie and gamzee ar-

once again, all credit for this gamzee analysis goes to @abcq2, please check them out!!!

so i’ll cut straight to the chase, mostly due to me getting close to tumblr’s character limit. the clowns are an allegory/symbol of being transgender. it’s impossible to ignore. remember that game i told you about? psycholonials? if you’ve ever played it, you’d know that clowns and transgenderism are tied up together in one big scene. i won’t spoil the game, it’s really good! check it out! this parallels homestuck, where june has always been associated clowns. not a coincidence. once you fit gamzee into this equation, it’s clear that gamzee’s “clown” dysphoria is a stand in for gender dysphoria. read the analysis above one last time and tell me i’m wrong. hussie themself has only posted themself in clown makeup since 2020, this started exactly half a year before they unofficially came out as non-binary via a homestuck announcement. they also tweeted that they use any pronouns shortly afterwards, on a private (?) twitter account. it’s also worth mentioning that one of the few of photos of hussie that we have, they were in ICP/juggalo stuff just like gamzee, and this photo was taken in october of 2010, mere months after gamzee’s introduction, and possibly a month or less after act 5 act 1 was finished. if you know anything about this image, or tumblr user @dead12234352356456775, please message me! this blog is the earliest place the picture can be tracked to, and i’d love to ask OP if they know anything about this image. hussie has notably referred to themselves “clown gender” as well. it’s unclear to me whether hussie actually likes icp, or if this is one huge coming out ARG, but either way, clowns = trans, got it?

so when john/june have a clown sprite following her around, it’s an allegory for how the trans stuff is literally in her face, but she can’t understand it!

“but there’s no textual evidence of john wanting to be a girl!!” see, we’ve officially waded deep all the way into the murkey grey waters of nuance. so if you don’t know, june is the embodiment of what us trans women refer to as the “pre-egg crack”, aka, the phase before you realize you’re trans. this phrase applies to all trans people, but trans women use/identify with it the most, just cause we usually come out way later, usually around say, 20-23, like john/june is by the end of homestuck! huh, what a coincidence. in all seriousness, this is because most trans women start their transitions when they first live on their own. john/june’s also a computer scientist by hobby, something a lot of trans women do. this is because trans women are one of the smallest minority groups, so we usually have to go resort to online communities to talk to each other. this is also necessary for a lot of us, due to research on hrt not really being as advanced as it should be, and the fact transitioning is still illegal/hard to access in a lot of areas. trans women are also likely to stay inside on our computers cause yknow… dysphoria. plus computer jobs often have decent pay, low barrier to entry, and require little to no interaction with other people in person, making them perfect to both medically and socially transition. sure, june never outright says “i want to wear a dress” or laments about dysphoria, but again, homestuck is by adults for adults. the story shouldn’t have to explain something like this to you. the only reason you had the impression that there’s no evidence of john being trans is because you weren’t educated on the subject matter, but now you are!

“you’re just projecting onto this character!!!” and you are too! again, that’s how everyone engages with art. to think you don’t do the same yourself is foolish. utter poppycock even! however, i really despise this sentiment. the fact i’m a trans woman makes me the most qualified to speak on this subject, not the other way around. who are you to speak on the experiences of trans women? exactly. i’m tired of us trans women being berated for headcanoning characters as trans women, even when it’s extremely obvious why we do as such. it’s always the boils back down to the same bullshit in response: “well actually YOU’RE the transphobic one for saying all trans women look/act the same!!!” *sigh* that is literally the definition of an identity. you sound dumb, and are speaking over actual trans women, whose opinions are infinitely more important than yours when it comes to this subject. this is literally just the “what is a woman” debate repackaged with the guise of liberalism. it’s annoying.

“all this june stuff came out of nowhere!!!” this headcanon became prevalent during the pandemic, where tons of trans people were able to start their transitions! i did this myself, and so did hussie. doesn’t seem so random now, does it?

“hussie is just doing this for woke/fandom points!!!” uh, and what would they be gaining by making john trans? if this was about making money, wouldn’t the merch link on the official website work? hussie makes visual novels now, and has removed themselves from homestuck as much as feasibly possible, while still maintaining their ownership of the IP. not exactly the most lucrative career path. and if you’re implying hussie is adding any element to homestuck simply to please fans (yes, that includes davekat), you obviously know nothing about hussie. go on reddit, read ANY responses to the epilogues, or the plot of homestuck^2, and tell me when you find the tons of people happy with their contents. oh, and see how homestuck fans feel about kankri and cronus while you’re at it. i’ll wait.

“okay but the toblerone stuff is dumb!!!” at no point before the june wish did hussie say that finding a toblerone would give the finder the power to make a canon-altering wish. as you can see here, all of the wishes weren’t even granted, some of which have no impact on canon at all. if hussie wanted to, they were well within their rights to go “yeah no, this is dumb, sorry” when the wish for june egbert was sent in. this means that june egbert already fit into hussie’s idea of canon, and as i’ve already pointed out, june egbert has properly been foreshadowed, so this all adds up. the idea that hussie “turned john transgender because of a toblerone” is an exaggeration of events perpetuated by losers misguided and ill informed fans. hussie has been sent an insurmountable amount of headcanons over the years, and aysha u farah, who has had major involvement for multiple homestuck projects over the years, has said “the only headcanon i've ever seen andrew get excited about is june egbert” on a now defunct podcast called perfectly generic podcast. (forgive me, but any links to the specific episode i’m finding no longer work due to their official website no longer working. i’m not listening to hundreds of hours of an archived podcast for this minuscule of a clip. be my guest if you want to take that on! once again, message me, and i’ll update this section.)

either way, based on everything we know, june egbert is canon because hussie wanted this prior to the toblerone wish, because if the wish contradicted or retconned canon, it wouldn’t have been granted in the first place. simply put, june egbert is canon because it’s want hussie wanted to begin with, and the wish came after that. once again, the sheer amount of foreshadowing here should be more than enough proof, and if you want more even more proof of june egbert foreshadowing, check out this blog post! it’s great!

“well it’s dumbledore logic!!!!!!!!!” is it though? j.k. rowling is a transphobic bigot, who’s works cost money to access, who confirmed dumbledore was gay only after he died, and then she still straight-washed him in future harry potter media. hussie is an actual trans person, running an indie project, who wrote one of the longest literary works in the entire english language, made it all free to access, supports all fan archives, and hasn’t even ended homestuck^2, where john/june is very much alive. and once again, the wishes were to add something to post canon content specifically, without shifting the canon of the main series. homestuck^2 is still updating, and as far as we know now, more projects are on the way, like the completion of hs^2 and hiveswap. these situations have almost nothing in common aside from deriving from twitter. if you’re mad about this, were you mad when jake was confirmed to be brazilian in a youtube livestream comment? or when gamzee’s red crush on tavros was confirmed via a dubiously canon comic? probably not. eh, maybe you were actually, i don’t know you. either way, feel how you wanna feel about jake being brazilian, i don’t care, but you can’t say there was “nothing building up to june egbert” now that you’ve read this essay. the dumbledore comparison is dumb as hell.

“well i’m trans and i don’t feel represented by june!!!” if you’re “feeling unrepresented” by june, it’s probably just because you’re not a trans woman obsessed with computer science. that’s just you not relating to the character. it’s really not much deeper than that. and on that point…

“well i just don’t like this!!!” with all due respect, you seriously need to put thought into why that is. i can’t think of a single non-transphobic to be upset about a character transitioning in a story. and again, homestuck is one of the longest literary works in the entire language, and is completely free to access. in all of homestuck history, not a single product was sold under the guise that “john will be cisgender forever” or “dave will not end up with karkat” or “jake will never be brazilian”. hussie doesn’t owe anyone any part of their story’s canon. it’s their story, full stop, and if you’re mad about that, you’re entitled to something that was never yours to begin with. not all art is made purely for your consumption, and free art is especially not made for your consumption. can you critique it? absolutely. there’s a big difference between criticism and bashing though. if you don’t like any part of homestuck, write a fan fiction, make some fanart, or write an oddly soapboxy essay about your personal fan theories and headcanons. turn that negative energy to make something positive! i’m being serious! hussie themself encourages this!!!

“okay but it’s still lame the davekat stuff happened off screen” i can agree to a certain extent, but dave and karkat’s relationship plays a major part in the epilogues, as well as homestuck^2, and that’s not even unpacking their weird borderline black rom dynamics pre-retcon. to act as though their romance starts and stops during one intermission really downplays how seriously their relationship is taken throughout the homestuck series.

“okay but isn’t a lot of that stuff dubiously canon?” baby, everything is canon. hussie has said so themself. there are infinite possibilities for what could have happened during homestuck, so maybe we should just focus on the fact it’s taken seriously at all? honestly, the line between dubiously canon and actual canon is paper thin. homestuck^2’s entire plot is currently deconstructing what canon even means. if you wanna only see the main series as canon, be my guest, but the accusations of homophobia and queerbaiting over the davekat reveal are a little ridiculous. their relationship plays a major part in all homestuck content for years now. also, big reminder that, with the reveal of june egbert, there’s now only one canonically straight character from the main series, and she’s a villain now, so…

“well you’re just strawmanning me now!!!” my loyal reader, i understand you are a human being with infinite nuances i will never be able to understand, cause quite frankly, i have no clue who you are to begin with. i don’t think everyone who hates davekat or june egbert is some anti-lgbt bigot. i’m just here to set the record straight, and provide context for people who are willing to listen. a lot of this shit is confusing, and there’s misinformation a plenty out there. most people who are participating in this discussion clearly haven’t bothered reading homestuck for years at this point, possibly even a decade. and that’s fair, most of us read it as kids, and probably stopped by the final update, if not sooner. honestly, i think the main issue here is that people are playing the telephone game via fandom discourse. that’s how we went from “hussie supports june egbert” to “hussie made john being transgender canon cause of a candy bar” in the first place. if you’re participating in this discussion, maybe try rereading homestuck before you let your vague memories of reading the comic years ago define your current day opinions? besides, i’m not delusional enough to think any bigots are going to read this post and be convinced, but i’m sure i can open up the minds and eyes of people who are willing to listen! give homestuck a reread, imagine how much more foreshadowing has gone unnoticed over the years!

i feel the need to be so thorough, bust out so many references, break down every bit of nuance, and speak from my own experiences, because inevitably, a small group of people are gonna read this post and still go “it’s not that deep! they’re just puppets! june egbert is a bunch of sjw malarkey!!!”, and to those people, i hope you stop making fandom spaces miserable because you didn’t wanna pay attention in english class. media analysis is a necessary tool, and i’m sorry our education system here in america failed both you and i. (or maybe your a non-american country has english classes as terrible as ours? idk.)

honestly, i think i read like five or six books in throughout of all high school. i failed english my freshman year, and dropped out by my senior year. there’s always room to grow though! look at how i’m able to write this essay now! all you have to do is just watch some video essays that break down your favorite movies, tv shows, books, and more!!! there’s tons of jackasses like me who will lament about their hyperfixations. plus, now you already know what symbolism, the rule of three, and allegories are! before you know it YOU’LL be the one noticing all of the easter eggs in the media you enjoy, just like us the rest of us pretentious media analysis fuckheads.

i’m sure all of us are old enough to remember how exciting it was when rosemary was first confirmed, or when the dirkjake kiss happened, or all the recent stuff with davekat. and guess what, june egbert is going to be that lots of young trans women! after reading all of this, is hating june egbert the hill you’re gonna die on?

you know, hussie practically uses homestuck as their personal diary. i don’t think anyone’s denying that. it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why they want their main character to be trans, or why they wanted dave to end up with karkat. maybe you’re just not willing to understand it? if we’re allowed to project on to these characters, then why won’t you let hussie?

if you got to the bottom of this post, thanks for reading! i might turn this into a video essay if i’m being honest, but if you wanna repost this, or make your own response, please just credit me! also check out my homestuck fanworks if you like this post, i’m sure you’ll like them too!!! i don’t really have anything else to promote so uh…. if you’re on the homestuck^2 team and read this…pleasefortheloveofgodiwouldkilltoworkonanofficialhomestuckprojectidontevencarewhowhenwhenwhereorhowbutillsettleforanytjingpLEdareplelaplwlalsplelallaldle

in all seriousness, thanks for reading! i doubt this post will take off simply due to how long it is. i’d love to hear other people’s thoughts and opinions on this, or possibly make mutuals to yap with even! dear lord i miss having friends to talk about homestuck with. also sorry for the censors, normally i wouldn’t bother with something like that, but i’ve been working on this non-stop for the past few days, so i don’t wanna risk it being taken down.

anyways….. THAT’S why i have the bro strider tag muted 😭

(EDIT ON 9/15/24: added a new source i found and fixed some minor grammatical errors)

[thewertsearch]

Ask Comp 01/07

Anonymous asked:i think youre the first liveblogger ive seen to actually remember that orphaner dualscar was eridan’s flarping name?

Mindfang clearly describes the Serkets, so I wonder if Dualscar says anything about the Amporas?

Eridan's greatest enemy does have a duality theme, after all - and he was certainly scarred when the guy stole his crush >:)

@captorations asked:i have terrible news regarding homestuck and the good place: https://x.com/nbcthegoodplace/status/1039908767763259392?lang=en not to mention that. well. the two share more than you've encountered yet. it's very likely not a coincidence. have fun! oh and. re: my ongoing campaign of pointing out the homestuck ancestry of tlt characters. please compare aradia's "i am very much alive and i intend to stay that way" with dulcinea's "i'm not in the river and i won't ever be again"

...oh my god.

On reflection, this makes a lot of sense. Homestuck's fandom is pretty large, and some of its members were bound to be involved in the production of mainstream media. Still, it's wild to see a Homestuck reference - or, technically, a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff reference - on the official Twitter for a show this big.

And Aradia does have a lot in common with Dulcinea, doesn't she? For one thing, they didn't really start influencing the plot until after they died.

Anonymous asked: Not really important anymore, but looking at what Gamzee has in his Strife Deck, it doesn’t look like he has any ranged options: he’s got the bowling pins, what appear to be a discarded sickle and lance from Karkat and Tavros respectively, what I’m PRETTY SURE is a whip of some sort, and the Zillyhoo hammer. The closest to a ranged weapon in that stack is the whip, or maybe the pins if he’s willing to throw them, but neither seem like they’d work very well against Vriska. Barring some secret power or other plot twist, I think Gamzee would genuinely be the underdog in that matchup. (Which feels weird, because Gamzee’s been mutating into a slasher villain while Vriska’s still very much an antihero protagonist. Usually the power balance is the other way around with those archetypes!)

On the face of it, Gamzee didn't seem to have great odds in that fight - but it's hard to know for sure with this pesky Bard. His Strife Deck contains plenty of cards we haven't seen, and whatever he did to the Black King is still shrouded in mystery. Everything's just so uncertain with him.

@mimescantscream asked: I've really been holding back all this time, but now that we've met the Grand-highblood, it really is extra painful to see a Gamzee who was once incredibly loving of his friends (despite their constant ridicule) end up falling down the path that fate seems to have pre-ordained for him. Was he truly always meant to repeat echoes of the past? Could things ever have gone differently for him?

Yeah, I've been having similar thoughts. His PoV seemed completely sincere, so I don't think his original personality was a fabrication, or anything. I think there is a part of Gamzee that cares about his friends - and maybe even he wants it back.

@jade-harley-real asked: […] I want a rant on the bad doctor from you pls pls pls

Scratch is straight up the scariest character in Homestuck.

What's he up to now? Hard to say since we're not telling him what to do. Guardians can never be told what to do.

The aura of menace he's cultivated is incredible, especially considering he barely even moves. He's playing the entire cast like a fiddle, armed with nothing but a typewriter and his own supercharged brain - and there's no doubt in my mind that his confidence isn't a mask. He knows he's going to win in the end.

English is coming. He's basically already here.

@elkian asked: I'll probably never be a Vriska FAN, but I gotta admit, she really never had a chance, what with the only adults in her life being: a trollvorous spider 1 missed meal away from eating her, Marquise "I do what I want" Mindfang, and Doc Scratch. Some role models! @manorinthewoods asked: So, now that Mindfang has been revealed, here's a question for you: how much of Vriska's Vriskyness is because she's Vriska, how much is because of Mindfang, how much is because of her lusus, and how much is because of Alternia in general? ~LOSS (20/6/24)

This is why I don't think she'd be like this on Earth. At this point, it's obvious that none of her Incidents were the result of her personality as it naturally arose.

I mean, look how anti-Aradiacide she was! They weren't even really friends!

Anonymous asked: ‘AA: there are all sorts of friends to meet AA: ones you already know and ones you dont’ I mean…couldn’t she just be referring to various doomed selves? I don’t see why the dream bubbles would just be confined to the alpha timeline seeing as the furthest ring is weird in terms of time and space

I was assuming that only Alpha Timeline deaths would be preserved by the Bubbles, but you're right - I'm not sure that was a reasonable assumption.

The Horrorterrors seem to eschew the concept of the Alpha Timeline. and, they've coordinated with both Doomed and Alpha versions of Rose and Dave. Plus, yeah, there is no time in the Ring, so timelines are probably meaningless there. Why would it only interface with the Alpha?

If the Bubbles do preserve doomed souls, then we might also run into the John who died to Typheus, and the Jade he couldn't save. That's a pair of ghosts I'd be very interested to meet.

Anonymous asked: If every Aradia comes back from every doomed timeline, the number would double each time, so you could get over a thousand of her with only ten doomed timelines.

Fair point- although, if an already doomed Aradia went back in time again, she'd be double doomed. Is that even possible? Would she die twice as quickly?

@mhafanlol2000 asked: Your issues with quirks and speech-to-text are pretty simple to explain. If a troll were to speak into a non-modified speech-to-text program, it would output text with their quirk. Because they, quite literally, speak in their quirk. Terezi probably isnt actually saying “YOU H4V3 LOST TH3 G4M3”, each number at a time, but the vibes are definitely there. I don’t know, this is hard to describe if you don’t inherently get it.

I think, jokes aside, it is indeed about the vibes.

In the troll intro pages, you get told a little about how each troll talks, and I think that's how we're supposed to translate their quirks to an audible medium.

Anonymous asked: i think ppl in the fandom have over time kinda built up a like, generally separate understanding of quadrants from how theyre described in the "official" explanation. which is like, not representative of how these terms are used in homestuck, but probably more useful for describing Good relationships that Do Not Suck. like basically making moirails equivalent to being queer platonic partners, making blackrom more about having a healthy fun rivalry, that kinda stuff.

It's funny, actually - I don't think I've encountered a single asker who accepts the quadrants as they're originally described.

The main issue is that, with the possible exception of matespritship, we haven't seen a single troll relationship with reflects the infodump's explanation of the quadrants. I think Hussie might just have jumped the gun a little when dropping it.

Anonymous asked: Shoutout to Karkat poking his friends in the background! Terezi (crying over Dave) and now Soloux (talking to Terezi). Karkat isn’t sure what the right response is but wants to be included! Reminds me of actual cats, just putting a paw on you for no discernible reason. @manorinthewoods asked: I'd like to note that Karkat poking Terezi's tears is the same sprite (and same 'poooke'!) as Karkat poking Sollux's burnt-out eyesockets. ~LOSS (12/6/24)

My man just likes poking.

@alicesoinions asked: not much to say just wanted to say I really enjoy your liveblog!!

Glad you're enjoying!

I've actually got a few new followers recently. Maybe I'm showing up in people's recommendations?

@heliotropopause asked: Dream bubbles are pretty neat, eh? Neat enough to inspire half of HtN, I'd bet.

…wait.

Oh my god, you're right. It's literally a River Bubble. They're both located in afterlives, for crying out loud!

Anonymous asked: Wanted to thank your liveblog for reminding me of a lot that I had flat out missed in canon, due to not putting it together or just reading too quickly. Most recently and notably on my mind right now, is that Feferi is the one who set up the dreambubbles!!! I had always thought that they were just a part of the world that readers didn’t know about yet, like how we weren’t yet introduced to Alternia and it’s moons until act 5. This went right over my head and it has me absolutely REELING (fishing pun included just for fef!!)

Feferi truly is the MVP.

I wonder what happened to dead Players before the Bubbles?

They're certainly not the only type of afterlife in the multiverse. Alternia has at least two types of undead, which implies that the Players are very, very lucky to have retained their personhood postmortem. Imagine this was what Feferi looked like in Jade's dream.

Anonymous asked: Knowing sollux, he probably already had coded his tech to recognize if his speech ever changed, and gave himself a different typing quirk for it, long ago. Not because he knew or thought it would happen, but because he thought it would be a fun coding project ((I know nothing about coding))

And yet, you somehow know exactly how we think.

Anonymous asked: Something I hadn’t really thought about, until I started reading this liveblog, is how much VRISKA ((autocorrect decided to caps that and I’m leaving it in lol)) was manipul8ted into a lot of her violence. Scratch pushed her towards vengeance against Aradia, and she didn’t want to go through with it. Did VRISKA ever tell anyone how much of her live she spent resisting these forces, or even really acknowledge it? She didn’t hide Spidermom, and arguably her need to kill other trolls was to prevent herself from being killed. BUT on the other hand, VRISKA voice would make it sound like a compliment “I almost didn’t kill you why don’t you appreciate me!!!!!!!!”

The thing is, VRISKA probably felt a lot of social pressure not to tell people she was coerced into her crimes. That would reveal that she was reluctant to kill, which is the opposite of what the Empire wants.

@manorinthewoods asked: You could have written a great Homestuck if you'd been Hussie. I think your style, if translated from reacting-to-comic to making-comic, would work great with what Homestuck is, and could have made a better product. I think you'd make a cerebral Homestuck, which would have been cool to read, except I would have botched reading it like I botched reading Homestuck in our Alpha Timeline. ~LOSS (11/6/24)

Thank you! I've tried to write before, actually, but whenever I reread my stories, they come off as esoteric, stilted and a little hard to follow. It's not an insurmountable problem, of course, and I really need to take a writing workshop at some point.

I'd love to make a webcomic, too, but my art also leaves a lot to be desired. I can adapt sprites just fine, but original drawings are hard, guys. Did anyone else know about this?

Anonymous asked: i counted just now, and only like 24 out of all 54 paradox space comics have zero spoilers. some of them are certainly more substantial than others (e.g. i counted ones that include jade’s consorts that you havent seen yet as spoilers) but a lot of them have Very Big Spoilers

It would have been awfully messy. I'm probably just going to read it once I've reached the Gigapause of 2013, and no longer need to worry about spoilers.

@bladekindeyewear asked: “Nepeta wasn't trying to pacify Equius, nor did she seem to be fulfilling any rigidly defined 'role' in his life. They just came off as very good friends, and their relationship was much better for it.” Well, maybe we ought to look at it through the lens of real relationships between friends? Once a healthy dynamic and boundaries are established, perhaps Moirails stabilize as long as they’re together.

That's a good way to interpret moirallegence - although, it does raise an issue with the quadrant that I'll be discussing on its own post, once I've finished the comp. There's no point in prehashing what I'm about to say, so I'll see you there!

Anonymous asked: karkats message didn't go through because of trollians narrative awareness feature, where it'll display something different in service of one of the several "all"-seeing entities, of which the reader is one <3 watsonian and doylist explanations are kissing with tongue

Since the fourth wall is an actual, physical piece of technology in this world, this isn't even that far-fetched!

@sashonya asked: So, as the session's timers continues to count down, what do you think will happen after The Scratch?

Beyond 'the session ends', it's difficult to say for sure. I think the two most likely possibilities are that the kids start exploring other sessions, or travel to a location completely outside the current scope of the comic. I am, of course, hoping for both.

@ericvilas asked: "I still believe that out of all the trolls, Karkat’s traits were featured the most prominently in humanity" yeah, I guess even humans aren't free from the effects of carcinization

CG: THERE IS ONLY ONE STEP. CG: AND IT IS ME.

[maxlarens]

all the daniel stuff has really put a damper on my weekend and it seems like VCARB don’t even know and even if they don’t drop him it’s s horrible and cruel.

i had a pit in my stomach earlier cause i was so stressed about it i had to stop going on social media :/

he’s been doing a good job! vcarb just don’t know what they’re doing

i’ll be so sad if true cause daniel is the reason i got into f1 in the first place and last time there was a chance he was back but idk if it can happen again

(sorry for ranting in your inbox i just saw you posted about it and i’ve been so stressed lol)

no ur absolutely fine, im more than happy to discuss this kind of stuff! i may start making more posts about drivers and f1 politics and things tbh.

but yeah anyway. anyone’s personal feelings about daniel and his performance and whether or not he deserves his seat etc etc aside, it’s just appalling how redbull are handling this. they have clearly not made a concrete decision yet (ie: pen to paper. i think people know), but have been stringing daniel along on the hope that he may not get replaced. i just think its disgusting with how truly terrible vcarb has been re: his tyre strategy. this race was a mess? i don’t understand why they would pit him first like that so early on. it makes genuinely no sense to me. and it puts him in this awful position wheres he’s got to fight through the midfield every time he races.

i don’t get it. and i think its absurd to judge him off his race position when they shaft him every time.

and just yeah. throwing him to media wolves when he has been fucking loyal to redbull. sure he left. but they treat him like dirt under their shoe. for what reason??? especially when he came back on the hope of getting into the redbull seat. and fine if thats not an option okay. why has he seemed to think that he’s been safe and/or had hope up until the end of this race? where literally everyone is acting like its foregone conclusion that he’s gone and he has to grapple with that in front of everyone. without support from vcarb or rb.

i can see vcarb not knowing. i think max knows. i think h*rner knows. why doesn’t daniel know? why wasn’t he given an appropriate send off?? why haven’t they announced the swap with a race or two to go so he can be prepared for it, have people celebrate his career.

i love logan. but that sudden swap makes sense to me. he was causing damages that a team like williams can’t absorb. daniel is not crashing. i understand its the pressure of the wdc. but to me it looks like the reason daniel is not getting into points is because vcarb screw up his tyre strategy. perez is costing them money, perez is costing them points. i don’t think theres a big conspiracy to keep him in his seat, but i AM confused as to why daniel is unfairly bearing the brunt of that? thats what it feels like to me.

i will be very interested to see what they announce/how they announce it for daniel. and i will also be interested to see how they handle liam and his tyre strategy if thats what happens. because yeah whats the value in this swap is what it comes down to imo.

overall these mid season swaps are not a pattern that i particularly enjoy seeing. its not out of character for redbull of course, but it just reeks of disrespect for their drivers. especially someone like daniel who loves that team, clearly deeply loves driving and has been in the sport for a significant amount of time. a mid season swap is not unacceptable to me, but the lack of care in handling it is.

[chaos-enchanted]

Ok this is a bit of rant but I feel like at least on Tumblr I won't be harassed or scrutinised for liking The Acolyte.

But honestly, with all of the news floating around about The Acolyte being cancelled (although I still haven't seen an official statement from Disney, but apparently they've taken The Acolyte merch off their store page), it's made me realise how toxic the Star Wars fandom can be (I mean I already knew, just look at the responses to the prequels and sequels). Sure, I understand everyone doesn't have to like everything that gets produced, but as someone who f**cking LOVED this show (especially Master Sol) it's so disheartening to see how loudly everyone is cheering about the show being cancelled and reinforcing that toxic behaviour I have seen both on social media, and especially in swtor general chats (don't even get me started about that) of people straight up bullying and harassing people who like the show. Actually I would like the mention that on swtor I did make a joke that there were a few people on the fleet with the same name so qouted "the power of many", and was told to "shut my stars wars wh*re mouth".

Also, shoutout to that one person I see on the Star Forge swtor server whose name is The Acolyte who wears Mae's armour, whether you're doing it to rile people up or because you want to publicly show your love for the show, I respect you big time.

I know there are many people out there who know how it feels to be a fan of an unpopular fandom but it's just so disheartening to see how loudly aggressive the hate towards The Acolyte and those who genuinely enjoyed it is. I have no doubt those who so loudly protested it will see this as a huge win (ironically "the power of many" I guess), and fine, if enough people don't like it I get it that's just how it is, but I really hope this won't be taken as the opportunity to essentially 'prove' to people who genuinely enjoyed The Acolyte that it was an 'objectively bad show' and they are wrong for liking it.

Lastly, I find it ironic that to those who so loudy hated the show but also were practically begging to learn more of Darth Plagueis the Wise have now become victims of their own hubris so we're likely never going to see more of his story, good job.

Anyway rant over, point is, I'll still keep rewatching The Acolyte and continue writing my Master Sol fic but it's a shame that if it is officially true that the show has been cancelled we'll never get to see what happens with Darth Plagueis, Qimir and Osha (that last scene was fantastic btw) and Mae, so I guess like most things we'll keep it going with fics and fanart in the nice little void corner of the internet <3

[killugon-truther]

hxh CAA gon rant/analysis

i honestly feel like some ppl judge gon a little too harshly when it comes to his actions in the CAA, specifically what he said to killua in ep. 116.

while i do agree he should apologize (which he did, offscreen and onscreen after killua teasingly mentioned it in ep. 147), i also don’t think that gon’s sole intention was to be cruel and dismissive towards killua.

i definitely agree that that was part of it, he was trying to be harsh in an effort to push killua away. but i do think that he was also trying to push away one of the last good things, the BEST thing, out of his life.

it’s behavior i’ve witnessed in other fictional media and even irl: being a dick in order to push away someone you rly love in order to continue sabotaging and destroying urself w/o them trying to help you. even more so, you can sometimes even see it as protecting your loved one from yourself and the situation at hand.

if there’s one person who can bring gon back from his own darkness or recklessness, it’s killua [ex: ep. 95 when gon literally almost kills morel & killua is able to swiftly snap him out of it]. he can (or at least could, at the time) bring gon back w just a simple touch and a few words, and gon knows that. it’s part of the reason he’s so grateful for killua in the first place— killua is always there for him, esp when he needs him.

but gon doesn’t want killua’s touch or his soothing words anymore, he doesn’t want his help, and he doesn’t want to be saved. and it definitely isn’t bc he doesn’t want killua anymore or doesn’t value him or his friendship, but bc he doesn’t believe he deserves it. he simply isn’t in the mindset to receive any kind of help in the slightest, not even from his closest ally.

gon subconsciously and consciously blames himself and only himself for kite’s death. and gon has shown that while he’s become comfortable and okay with the idea of killua sacrificing himself for him [ex: ep. 70, when both killua and gon are willing to sacrifice killua’s hands during the dodgeball game], he’s NOT okay w killua dying for him [ex: ep. 50, where killua vowed to serve as a distraction for gon to escape, and gon smacks him & seriously seriously tells him that HE’S allowed to talk abt dying like it means nothing like he also did earlier, but killua isn’t]; gon values killua’s life over his own.

gon’s combination of self-loathing and intense misplaced responsibility/guilt and thinking abt keeping killua safe so he can punish himself, while also being in that already very deteriorated mindset during the arc is what lead to those words. gon knew it would hurt, and that was the point.

“it has nothing to do w you” = “kite’s death has nothing to do w you. it was all my fault, so let me suffer for it now alone.”

if he’s at fault for kite dying, then why would he even deserve someone like killua still being at his side? why would killua deserve to be disposed to the same fate as him?

it’s what made me re-think pretty much every “thank you!” gon has given to killua; there seems to be moments of gon being so grateful bc he doesn’t entirely or always believe he deserves killua being at his side and having his back no matter what [ex: ep. 61 where gon felt guilt for killua having a spell on him, walking away from the ppl who could have possibly helped, & helping him in order to find his dad, thinking all of those things are his fault, and then thanks killua whole-heartedly right after: “killua… thanks. i’m glad you came with me. no- i’m glad i got to know you!”].

someone loves him, despite his selfishness (that’s not an insult btw !! all hxh characters can be selfish) and other faults. killua is still staying by his side, refusing to leave him no matter what. killua isn’t abandoning him (don’t even get me started on my belief of gon’s abandonment issues and how it affects his low self-esteem and self-loathing; his guilt often overrides his sense of self-preservation and triggers his black-and-white mindset).

and while i also doubt that gon was aware of the lovers’ suicide (“shinjiuu”) killua planned to commit w him (ep. 121) but if he did, then i can imagine that would influence in actions in pushing killua away even more. i think one of the last things gon would ever want killua to do is die for/w him; why would he, when killua’s life is sm more important to him?

i’ve actually seen how it’s become a pattern for gon to display moments of maturity, intelligence, and self-awareness, but for it to easily become glossed over and he then gets stereotyped as a one-dimensional, black-and-white character when i think he’s more complex than that.

it’s not that big of a deal ofc, but it’s just interesting to see some ppl come to conclusions such as “gon is a selfish monster and a terrible person who doesn’t care abt killua” or smth like that.

if u have any opinions, comments, and/or criticisms, pls let me know !! hope you enjoyed this.

[saints-who-never-existed]

Right – first scene and already my brain is fired up!

I just want to rant and rave, first of all, about the choice to start in media res with James Ross and the Netsilik Hunter. There's something oddly freeing, narratively speaking, about knowing from the start that they're all doomed. It lends so much more weight to the characters' actions - we already know the ending so all that matters is the journey to get there.

(Although I suppose in media res isn't quite the right term actually given we’re at the end of the story and not in the middle… Is there a term for that? In finem res possibly? I don’t actually know!)

Anyway, just thinking about that phrase alone sent me down a rabbit hole. I half-remembered reading that it’s often associated with Epic Poetry which is interesting in itself. That genre deals with heroes on journeys/quests, battling and overcoming a variety of often divinely-wrought obstacles in their path. In many ways then what we are seeing on screen is an Epic of sorts but it is, of course, a woefully and irrevocably corrupted one. We have a central figure on a journey both external and internal and a divinely-wrought obstacle in the way but nothing is really overcome in any way that matters.

Interestingly, I’ve now learned that there are more specific characteristics of that genre and more interesting still is to see how well our story fits them, both in general and in the way it’s laid out in this first scene:

Begins in medias res ☑️ (Self-explanatory)

The setting is vast, spanning many locations or even the whole world/universe ☑️ (I'm thinking not only of the endless expanse of the Arctic and of happenings in England but of internal emotional/spiritual landscapes too)

Features invocations to a muse (I haven't fully figured out where and how this one fits. Franklin certainly invoked God often enough but really this refers more to the story's narrator invoking a muse and in that case, perhaps if the Netsilik Hunter is the narrator then we might consider Crozier himself as a muse of sorts?)

Begins with a statement of the theme (Again, I'm going to think about this one a bit more before I can speak coherently on it.)

Includes the use of epithets ☑️ (Many more articulate than I have discussed the specific naming of things as a recurring theme - "James Fitzjames, like a bad pun", "A man named Cornelius Hickey", "Aglooka", "Lady Silence", "The thing made of muscles and spells", "The man who ate his boots" etc.)

Contains long lists - an epic catalogue ☑️ (Again, other articulate people have mentioned the constant counting and measuring of things across the series - men both living and dead, remaining supplies, chances of survival etc. - and I think that counts here.)

Has long and formal speeches ☑️

Features divine intervention in human affairs ☑️

Often show the hero's descent into the underworld or hell ☑️ (All fairly self-explanatory really.)

Focuses on heroes who embody the values of their society ☑️ (This is one of the most interesting to me. The men of the Expedition do indeed embody the values of the society in which they lived but that's very much not a good thing when said society is such a cruel, prejudiced, colonialist, morally-bankrupt one driven so utterly by greed. )

[fireflyatlast]

As promised: Rite Here Rite Now Review

Spoiler free above the cut, spoilers WILL be under the cut. (Word count: 1110)

Wow wow wow. In simple terms, RHRN was incredible. The recordings were edited very well, the crowd was great, the vocals were amazing as always, and the long-awaited continuation of the chapters was very satisfying.

As a newer fan (really started listening right when Re-Imperatour was ending) I unfortunately never got the chance to ever see any shows live. However, despite my newer status, I have made Ghost a key part of my interests. (ask any of my lovely irl friends, they've had the misfortune of hearing my rants.) I've watched countless interviews and old rituals in order to make up for lost time, but never have I felt more immersed in any Ghost media than I did when I saw the KIA shows on the big screen. It didn't feel like I was in row G seat 12 of my "local" mall's Regal Cinema, it felt like I was right there in LA.

The opening 5 minutes as Square Hammer plays softly in the background was great. Because there wasn't much going on on the screen, everyone in the theater that I was in was softly humming or singing to themselves quietly (Side note: I was worried that people would be super disruptive as the movie was going on, and I was really happy to not have those worries realized. My theater was respectful for the most part, and the only time anyone sang was during that five-minutes of not much.) It felt very nice to belong amongst such a nice community irl. As an introverted neurodivergent, sometimes I struggle to find places or people welcoming or sharing my interests. So being in a theater full of people who love the same thing as me, as much as me, was such a nice feeling.

The cinematography during the entirety of RHRN was great, with my personal favorite segment being Con Clavi Con Dio. The editing was really nice for the most part, and I love the development Cardi was given throughout the movie. I feel my one gripe with the filming is that while we did get great perspective shots on the ghouls, we didn't get much of their personalities. And yes, I get that technically they are just hired musicians and not the main focus by any means, I think it just would have been nice to see more than just a handful of clips of them interacting with each other or Papa.

All in all, RHRN was a wonderful experience and I strongly suggest any Ghost fan out there gives it a watch.

And now its time for my more story-based review. Spoilers under the cut!!

Again, wow. I was pretty excited to finally get some more of the chapters, I'm a big fan of anything that has "lore" even if it doesn't need it, so I definitely owe the chapters a thanks for really getting me into Ghost.

I was thrilled to find that we finally had a true conformation of Cardi's parents. I had always theorized that while Nihil was Copia's father, Copia had come from an affair with the audience members in the Kiss the Go-Goat music video, and that Imperator was Copia's adoptive mother after Nihil's abandonment of him. It's good to know I was wrong rather than not I guess.

Something I also enjoyed was the constant foreshadowing of Sister's death. It wasn't very subtle, but its definitely something I only connected the dots to at the end. Whenever we saw Sister, we saw pills. Lots and lots of pills. I had originally brushed this off as a background joke, but once Cardi reads her note, I realized that the pills were for her unnamed "condition." I think going into it, all of us knew someone would die, I just personally thought that someone would be Copia, not Sister.

That after-credit scene was amazing too. I loved Cardi's new outfit, and the conformation that yes, there will have to be another papa. Which obviously, yes, of course there has to be a new papa, but now, it just feels so much more real. Speaking of the new papa I WISH WE COULD HAVE SEEN HIM AAH! I get cliffhangers, but he was RIGHT THERE!

I'm excited for the next era and the next papa, the next costume of the ghouls. I have a theory though. I see a lot of people being stressed about the changing of the ghoul costumes with the new era, but I think we have one more cycle with the Impera masks. I've noticed that each mask and costume stays the same for two cycles. Opus to Infestissumam, the only thing that changed was the costumes becoming more remnant of Catholic ministry-wear. From Meliora to Prequelle, the masks stayed mostly the same, now with an added more feminine looking mask and more "suit like" outfits over religious attire. I definitely think we have one more era with the Impera masks, but different costumes. Also speaking of the ghouls one of them talked!! I think it was Mountain, but honestly I have a shit memory and it could have been anyone.

Onto my focus on who Cardi actually is. I am so happy we finally got more of a look into his mind now that he is papa. I feel like his personality when he was Cardinal was very timid and awkward, however I never thought he would stay that way at all. I like that he's way more confident now, to the point that he's questioning the higher authority of the ministry and their ways. I love that this confidence is partly just a mask to keep his fears of death hidden. I think his fears manifesting as an angry, questioning personality gives him a lot more depth than if he just gained confidence through his performances, which obviously happened too, don't get me wrong.

The last thing I want to discuss is the credit song, "The Future is a Foreign Land." First off, loved it. It was great musically, and the uncertainty in the lyrics fit very well with all of our uncertainty about the next cycle. Second off, I can't be the only one who think it sounds very similar to Subvision. I personally love Subvision, and even if its only for that one song, I'm super glad that style was revived for Ghost.

In conclusion, I love the developments made in RHRN, and I am more than excited for whatever is next. I think my brain will have to marinate on what I saw a bit more, maybe then I'll have some actual theories.

[peebrainiac]

does anyone remember the skirt arc in the first twenty episodes of Jackson's Diary. I do. And I have feelings about it. Long rant incoming, I've held this in for a long time and I've never seen anyone talk about it.

I love the characters of Jackson’s Diary, they’re the reason I keep coming back, but you have to admit at the start they’re cliche. Maybe that's what Paola was going for, but the characters introduced later on aren’t any kind of cliche?? Jackson is the stock standard protag, Exer is the jock who bullies the protag for fuck all reasons, David is a twink, Ronald is the Russian One, Brenda is a popular girl, and Pamela is the goth chick. Side note, this takes place near the end of the cold war, I’m surprised no one thought Ron was a soviet spy.

These characters change later on, and by the end of season one and onwards they feel more like real people, but I’m left wondering why the beginning was so cartoonish.

Now the conflict, everyone and their mother hates the misunderstanding trope

misunderstanding plots are overdone and frustrating. Things like this happen in real life, sure, maybe if you're surrounded by idiots and have crazy bad luck. The main problem people have with misunderstanding plots is that the characters who’ve been friends for a long time suddenly turn on each other because they overheard something, and at least that doesn;t happen here. No one really likes each other yet. But yeah, this shit is so frustrating to read, I can’t imagine reading these as they came out and knowing the next episode would be the same song and dance.

Everyone feels. SO. DAMN. STUPID. Exer and David are actively making things worse and when the whole debacle is over Jackson blames HIMSELF?????? I get it, they think this guy is a pervert, but do they have to constantly talk over him? Why does no one let anyone communicate AND WHO WALKS AWAY WHEN SOMEONE IS TALKING TO YOU?? WHO DOES THAT?? WHAT THE FUCK BRENDA??

i get it stupid teenagers doing stupid things yada yada, this still just wasn't fun to read, man.

the thing I actually hate most about this arc is the fact that you could skip it almost in its entirety (except for the ron stuff because WHY WOULD YOU WANNA SKIP THAT) and it would not hinder your experience at all. This takes up almost ten episodes and FOR WHAT? You can’t even say it was so Jackson and Pamela have a meet cute because THAT IS NOT A MEET CUTE??? You're not cute, I’m getting second hand embarrassment JACKSON DON’T YELL AT YOUR HALLUCINATIONS IN PUBLIC YOU”RE GOING TO GET PUT IN A WARD, AND I KNOW THEY WERE SHITTY IN THE 80S.

TDLR: I just. I don’t know anymore man. This arc is a HARD read, I considered dropping it so many times because I wanted it to be over. On reread it becomes bearable, but maybe I’m just desensitized.

please remember people can criticize the media they like, I don't hate Jackson's Diary at all

This chain of events is a slog to get through, and with a few tweaks it could be written out of existence, and everything else could happen as it does in canon. This arc was probably thrown in to endear the audience to Jackson and see him as a little wet cat who’s the victim all the time, and it works. Because by the time Jackson snaps, it feels deserved. The thing is, other, worse things have happened in the time after the skirt accident and the time he snaps. So why is so much time spent on this?

Does this arc have any fans? Do I have to worry about getting swatted?

I could also rant about JD being detached from its 1980s identity and aesthetic but I'm not as angry about that.

[thenationaltreasuregazette]

Meet the Editor

Hi, I’m Rachel, the editor of the National Treasure Gazette!

As part of Treas-tober lmao I thought it would be fun to introduce myself. Since we’ve got a newspaper motif going I thought I’d, like, interview myself. Which is super normal I’m sure.

Why are you like this?

Great question! In 2004, at the tender age of 10, I had my brain chemistry rewired by a cinematic one-two punch of two of the greatest films of all time: Scooby Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed and National Treasure.

I had always liked stories, but SD2 was the first time it occurred to me that somebody actually wrote them. And maybe…I could write them. The hyperfixation hit HARD. That night I invented a fascinating new drug called fanfiction. It would be years before I learned that that was a thing and you could put it online for other people to read, but that didn’t stop me from writing it, and I took it so seriously.

As far as I was concerned I was writing what would become the real sequels to SD2 and NT. I spent fifth grade working on the Scooby Doo one (a god-awful self-insert fic with no plot to speak of) and sixth grade working on my own version of the as-yet-unrealized National Treasure 2. (Also a self insert.)

But these projects got me interested in writing. I started learning about story structure and screenplays, and for National Treasure I started reading more about history.

Specifically, for an open choice book report I read an entire adult-level book about American conspiracy theories and then presented to my class about the Skull and Bones society and other weird shit like that. I’m sure my teacher was thrilled.

What inspired you to start this blog?

My love for my two favorite nostalgic comfort movies stayed with me and I would periodically rant about them to my friends and loved once, who were very kind to humor me.

I’ve had plenty of other interests and hyperfixations throughout the years too, and one of them was CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. When I fell back down that rabbit hole in 2021, I happened upon the exquisite collection of asks and articles by @addictedtostorytelling. (Seriously, if you were ever even a little bit interested in the og CSI and haven’t discovered this, check it out.)

And I thought, well reading this is fantastic but it seems like even more fun to be the one writing the articles. What piece of media could I be, like, a subject matter expert in? Not one with a million think pieces already, just a casual place that I could have fun exploring at my own pace? National Treasure!

And then I put off making it for a year or two because I was sure I couldn’t keep up with it and it would become yet another dead project in my graveyard of notebooks, forever haunting me with the specter of what I could have accomplished.

But at some point I said, “fuck it” and here we are!

What are you proudest of, re: the blog?

That it exists! When I started I set a goal of posting 10 articles before I let myself give up on yet another thing. I definitely still don’t get to it much more often than I do, but now it’s not a ghost!

Also that there are other people who like it? I started this fully expecting to be rambling into the void, but I’m so thrilled that there are other people out there who are still thinking about National Treasure. We are few but mighty.

Do you have any takeaways from the project?

Yes! The fun of this isn’t in being a National Treasure expert, if such a thing exists. It’s about sitting with a movie and asking new questions. Every time I explore an article topic or get asked a question I learn something different about the movie, that I doubt it would have occurred to me to think about otherwise. And you my dear readers always challenge me to explore more.

I love paying that kind of attention again. I think the reason Monsters Unleashed and National Treasure will always be so special to me is because I did spend all that time sitting with them, exploring every nook and cranny and possibility I could find. I’ve missed that.

Do you have any plans for another blog like this?

Well I do have the url @the-coolsville-inquirer saved right now, but there are whole swaths of Doo lore I am unversed on, so no, no current plans.

What do you do when you’re not thinking about National Treasure?

I walk my dog, take pottery classes, work on my YA novel, watch movies for the movie club I’m in, try to learn Turkish, cook, and chip away at a million unfinished writing projects. (And you know, work and stuff).

What can readers expect in the future?

I have a few fun ideas left for Treas-tober and one very exciting art-related surprise the 20th anniversary. At least, I’m excited.

And I hope a few people participate in the fanworks week!

Oh babygirl it's almost thanksgiving.

At least one Riley article, really!

You would think I'd be starting to run out of things to say but actually the more I seem to find to talk about.

Thanks for enjoying the ride with me so far!

[beevean]

You probably didn't want someone ranting a bit to you at this hour, but I had to get it out. Following the Shadow short there has once again been a lot of inane discussions within the fandom, and I've noticed one new weird thing. People are kinda starting to exaggerate just how "old" the adventure era games are, to the point of making them sound like lost media. Like, someone tried to make a fuss about sega retconning shadow's backstory again by inserting emerl there, and when they got rightfully asked "have you not played Battle", they went "well sega never re-released Battle for newer consoles, so what am I supposed to do". Someone else even tried to support their statement by saying that we "only have the cutscenes of SA2 and a mediocre solo game, so we know literally nothing about shadow". I don't even know what to call this, but this is definitely the first time I'm seeing people trying to argue that og adventure era games are so, so, so unavailable right now that no one can glimpse the lore from it.

We know nothing about Shadow because we only have the cutscenss of SA2 (the cutscenes, not the game, environmental storytelling at its finest) and a mediocre solo game. I lived through the era when SEGA shoved Shadow up our asses to hear this. Sure. Fine. I'm fine and right at home in the fandom.

Anyway, what else can I say? Pass Battle, although at this point I'm sure even phones can emulate GBA games and if you don't want to bother with the games the cutscenes and script are easily available, but the Adventure games are literally on Steam. SADX may suck without mods, but SA2B is fine. They're not even expensive. What more do you want? And if you haven't even played the damn games, maybe you shouldn't bother with the discourse in the first place?

I understand that everyone was a newcomer once, and kids aren't born with fandom knowledge, so fine, they don't know about Battle, and fine, games from the early 2000 would feel old. But if what you say is true, this speaks of a lack of desire to look things up in the first place, just the desire to complain and go SEGA bad because it's trendy.

[mountingpulisic]

DECODE

a/n : i just want to thank that anon that gave me feedback on my writings, it was greatly appreciated and i hope this makes up for all the cliff hangers :). the song is decode by sabrina carpenter

you're good at the falling, not the staying there

you're good at the giving too much then getting scared

you're good at impersonating someone who cares

and you had me for a minute there

mason’s behavior perplexed you nonetheless. one minute, he made you feel as if he was ready for a relationship. inviting you to his games, gifting you his famous number nineteen jersey to wear and introducing you to his teammates on the pitch. 

the other fifty nine minutes, he ignored your existence and acted as if you weren’t there. after it happened a second time, you confided in your friend about it. expressing your frustrations about how hot and cold the footballer was towards you, giving you mixed signals constantly but expecting for you to drop whatever you were doing at the dime of a hat when he finally called after being awal for weeks. you felt foolish that you would fall for it time and time again. 

but now I wonder why

I let your confusion keep me up at night

i'm so tired

re-read every single undertone and I

another sleepless night was upon you as you tossed and turned in your bed. mason had rung you before you laid your head down, saying he missed hearing your voice and to give him a callback when you received the voicemail. any other time, this usually had you going weak in the knees but not tonight. you started to fluster on why he was constantly toying with your heart, you were so tired of this recurring cycle.  

overanalyzed it, front, back, and beside it

where else can we go?

there's nothing left here to decode

done lookin' for signs in the gaps and the silence

it's just getting old

there's nothing left here to decode

Mm-mm-mm

“ i don’t see why you just don’t block him, y/n. mason is obviously showing you all the signs that he genuinely doesn’t care about you. stop trying to decode every little thing he does and ditch the lad.” y/bf/n ranted angrily on the phone, tired of you always ringing her to bitch about mason’s odd behavior. you knew she had a fair point; however, you couldn’t simply just brush off the chelsea player. having mistakenly fallen for the charming brunette despite his odd behavior.

“ you know what they say, the best way to get over somebody is to get under somebody.”

there's a weight off my shoulders now that I don't chase you

being myself, did that emasculate you?

learning from you that I can walk away, too

and you had me for a minute, too

y/bf/n had invited you out with some of her co-workers to indulge in the london nightlife, at first you didn’t want to go. work was keeping you exhausted, your brother was crashing on your couch and don’t even get you started on the million unread messages from mason. In a strange way you felt at peace not overanalyzing his behavior, or trying to diagnose what mood he was in when he had sent you a rather short text. feeling as if a weight had been lifted of your shoulder for finally realizing that mason was only playing games with your heart, you had agreed to y/bf/n invitation to join.

and that’s how you found yourself face to face with the one person you were successfully avoiding.

mason

“why are you avoiding me, love?” he asked.

he had successfully cornered you when you excused yourself from your group of friends to use the restroom. trapping you in the stall, not caring how it looked to bystanders. aroused by the sudden close proximity of your bodies, you gently pushed him back to create a distance.  

“I asked you a question, y/n.” 

“I’m not avoiding you mason, i’m just no longer chasing you. you had me going mad when one second you were telling me about how you’d talk to your mum about me, then the next i see you out on social media with another’s girl tongue down your throat.” you felt yourself getting teary eyed as you finally expressed your emotions out loud to him. 

mason surveyed your expression, trying to pick up on any sign that you were just pulling his leg, that you actually weren’t being serious.

“love, i didn-” 

“no, i'm going to stop you right there. you don’t owe me any type of explanation because you and i,” gesturing between the small gap you created between the two of you “we aren’t together, and i finally have come to the conclusion you are not in the position to be a boyfriend right now. so i’m doing us both a favor by walking away.” 

with that you pushed past him out of the stall, leaving mason there flabbergasted at your actions.

mason knew dragging you along was wrong, but he was only doing it because he was scared. scared of trusting his heart, falling headfirst into love but fearing that no one would be there to catch him. he knew deep down you were nothing like that, when he first met you, you’d actually haven't even given him the time of day. Too busy worrying if your to-go order was going to be ready in time because you didn’t want to be late to your lecture. 

mason was the one doing the chasing then, following you out of the cafe and begging for your number. you had given it to him after he followed alongside you towards your university, talking your ear off and listing multiple reasons why exactly you should give him your number. irritated, you finally folded, writing it down on a piece of paper and shoving it into his chest.

mason had called the number on the paper as soon as you started to walk off, causing you to laugh loudly from his actions of making sure it wasn’t a fake. 

now he had demolished what you two were slowly building up, and he couldn’t help but to kick himself and feel emasculated. 

There's nothing left here to decode

Mm-mm-mm

There's nothing left here to decode

Mm-mm-mm 

maneuvering your way through the crowded club, you wanted nothing more than to go home and wallow in self-pity. mason consuming your thoughts as you pushed past the sweaty club goers, a few more steps and you would’ve successfully made it out of the club if someone didn’t grab your wrist and jerk you back. 

turning around ready to bite the head off of the person who had the nerve to forcefully grab you, you fell silent when you noticed it was mason. 

“Im scared, y/n.” mason confessed loudly to you, dropping your wrist and moving closer to you so you could hear him properly. “ i’m scared that after i let you into my world, you are going to regret giving the stupid footballer a chance. that you’ll end up hating me for being away so much, that you’ll hate me for all the online hate you are bound to get, i don’t want you to hate me.” 

In your mind you sarcastically repiled, too late for that, but chose to keep silent when you noticed the few tears that had made an appearance in the brunette’s eyes. 

“ i know you properly already do hate me but please give me another chance to prove to you that you could be happy, that you could be happy with me.” the words he spoke sounded inviting, despite all the bullshit he put you through.

time passed slowly in mason's mind as he saw the wheels in your head slowly turn at his monologue, silently praying that you wouldn’t just walk away and forget his existence. 

“one chance.” you said, holding up your index finger. “you ruin that, there won't be anymore, mount.” 

mason doesn't give a verbal response as he pulls you into him and gives you a passionate kiss. lips crashing into each other, he pulls you even closer when he feels you melt into it, your hands finding home on the back of his neck. 

"you won't regret it, love. now come on, let's get out of here."

[innitmarvellous]

Yeah, I know, I said the last ace rant was the final part, but the third aspec book I read ('Sounds Fake But Okay') annoyed me again, lol. It wasn't all bad, but some bits...

Except that it doesn't? It never has? People say they love their friends or their family, or a character from a TV show? Or also idk, God or Jesus if they're religious. None of these imply romantic love even without specifying anything.

Well, good for her, but that's not much of a comfort, isn't it? So we'll inevitably die alone, but we don't need to fear that because we can still have friends - who'll desert us once they find a partner. Yes, well, that's certainly very nice :/

Lol, maybe that's why my existence is so "unrecognisable" then. Because I literally didn't have any friends before I started to use social media etc. And even know my biggest fear is too annoying, too boring, too whatever else for everyone - and I have a hard time to make out whether the people I consider friends consider me as such too 😭

Well, this part was at least relatable, even if I never thought about this before. Then again, it might have been the other way round for me. Being a girl/woman was literally never very important for me, and I never felt the need to adhere to gender norms just because it's expected. E.g. I never thought I needed/wanted to be pretty to be attractive for men. So it sort of did felt like things made sense when I realised that there is indeed no need for me to attact anyone with my physical looks.

---

The chapter about QPRs made me realise that this isn't an option for me either. The insecurities around this form of relationship would be simply too much for me. Like, having to agree on what the relationship looks like, what kind of things would be alright or not alright (re physical contact and all kinds of intimacy etc), how long it might last and all that...it would be near impossible to agree on anything like that once I would put in my wishes in that regard. Because it wouldn't feel right to push my demands on someone else, and yet I'm way too selfish because I also wouldn't want to live in a way another person wants me too. So...I think that's another dream I might as well bury right now, before I got into it too much. ^^

---

Yet another general thing: the books usually mentioned that we should think about what we would expect from a relationship and I did give this some thought. I think the main - and honestly almost only - prerequisite for me would be that any potential partner would accept me as I am. Well, and some mutual trust would be high up on the list, too. That's literally all I need, I think. I wouldn't mind if e.g. in case it's an allo person and they would have someone else to fulfill their sexual needs or whatever, as long as I could be sure of still having a relationship based on trust with them.

Yes, I know that this is already asking for way too much. I'm only too aware of that, so maybe it's understandable why I'm so frustrated. I know I should do it, but I'm too selfish to lower my standards, so there isn't much hope for me and I hate it :/