#utopianparadoxist

[bladekindeyewear]

Light/Void and Ascent/Descent, Outward/Inward

I was helped in putting together something pretty huge this week, Aspect-ways. Sometimes lately, I've been chatting with Taz (aka optimisticDuelist, @utopianparadoxist) and we discuss or debate over character and Aspect interpretations, or they link me some interesting thoughts they've posted blogways or from a third party. This time we were discussing a post they made on Void's potential connection to Gravity and all its potential conflated meanings, such as Love pulling things together, which they based on analysis stemming from @lime-bloods's Void/Home association theoryposts -- I was skeptical of this Gravity interpretation, for reasons I'll go into later below the cut, but one of those reasons was I felt as if paired terms between Light and Void are important when solidifying the domains of each Aspect, and I couldn't think of one for Void's "Gravity" that had a Light equivalent. For example, recently I had the belated inspiration in terminology, for instance, that Light is "Location" where Void is "Dislocation", a perfect tie between Light's links to Maps and Landmarks contrasting it with Pumpkin-like "disconnectedness from spacetime" and ability to appear anywhere, which I quickly added to the Aspect Duality post in late February (I should add the edit date in on that).

And while we were tossing the idea around, we stumbled on another set of even MORE important paired Light/Void terms that made me do an acrobatic pirouette off the fucking handle. I got permission to paste the conversation:

BOOTS: otherwise there might be other aspects that better fit what's going on

((does Light "Push" where Void "Pulls"? could that be it? no, that sounds more like Breath and Blood…))

((actually that might be really important to Breath and Blood, shit! wind pushes forward/outward, chains pull in))

TAZ: I think its pretty fair to say that its a nebulous and abstract reading where a lot of the evidence is hard to parse, like I said at the end of the post I definitely still feel like I'm missing stuff about Void

And I also agree that other aspects have a lot of room to play in this space and overtake Void in readings, primarily Heart and Blood in this context

BOOTS: ((and the "inescapability" of black holes carried Blood associations with other inescapable things))

TAZ: Indeed

TAZ: But isn't that part of the nature of Void? To be a subtle force that falls into the backdrop and lets other things more visibly take over?

BOOTS: you could call that descending into the Ocean, into the abyss over a cliff, into irrelevance; it's Descent, but not necessarily Gravi---

AAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

TAZ: Well this is exciting

BOOTS: LIGHT IS ASCENT, VOID IS DESCENT

TAZ: Yeah, I can see that

BOOTS: there are so many fucking associations across the comic and I'm remembering so many of them oh my god

And that Gravity is wrapped up in this association as everything is naturally PULLED DOWN. The rest of the conversation is under the Read More cut where we started listing out more than a dozen freakin' examples to each other that show how UTTERLY PERVASIVE a theme this has been throughout the entire goddamn comic, from the start right up to and including the very latest update of Beyond Canon. (Contains HS^2/Beyond Canon spoilers if you're coming here from elsewhere, stop reading here if you're not caught up to the 2025-03-26 update!)

EDIT: (Just a brief note I'm adding to this above the cut, but a Discord friend just gave me ANOTHER association to add to Light and Void: Outward vs Inward, Light's outward projection the pair to Void's inward gravity!!! Shining Stars versus Black Holes! Void's Inwardness finally brings together its metaphysical ties with Heart and how the latter often sits isolated in the Ocean of Void like Dirk's house, the natural inward-looking nature of Heart-- compared to the outward-facing nature of Mind and its façades, tying Light and Mind together like Vriska and Terezi!)

TAZ: It might almost apply as a broad division to the upper and lower halves of the wheel in general, actually?

BOOTS: even in this LAST update they go UP to enter Canon a black hole is always Down

TAZ: But I like it as Light and Void specifically right now, lets examine that

Yeah yeah BOOTS: Looking at Light almost always entails looking Up, looking down is usually staring into the Void, with the exception of Derse players staring out into the Ring

mainly abysses and oceans with looking down TAZ: Dirk's consumption by Ultself is described as him being subsumed into the Ocean/descending into its watery depths, while Rose outright says about hers "I am ascending, and it is terrible"

BOOTS: Rose begins her grimdark path by destroying her first (UPWARD) Gate and rocketing off elsewhere and of course she's the prime example shown off by the comic of the Descend-before-you-Ascend of role inversion

TAZ: And Heart is on the lower half of the wheel with Blood and across from Void. So maybe there's something there

mmmhmm, mmhmm

BOOTS: it's been said even in like, Andrew's commentary outside the comic, that "Skaia is always Up"

it's never shown setting

TAZ: And of course they shoot the meteor Up towards the Green Sun

BOOTS: and the trolls see the creation-splosion of the green sun Up to direct them in Cascade--

yeah, exactly [what you said]

TAZ: Terezi's looking slightly Upwards as she remem8er's Vriska in [S] Remem8er

(Vriska) and (Terezi) staring Up into the Light of paradox space breaking

it really is all over the place, huh

for that matter, (Vriska) and Meenah looking Up into the fireworks as (Vriska) comes to the true realizations she does about how miserable it is to live the way Vriska and Lord English live

BOOTS: going against your hero role, Descending, is so often denying your true self agency and straying away from philosophical Truth-- after which comes the Ascent where you find and accept yourself

oh and by going into what's been constantly called HELL inside the Plot Point and then emerging out stronger, Vriska "descended" ala Dante's Inferno and then Ascended out of it

TAZ: indeed! indeed

Oh! Dirk and Hal's conversation on the rooftop!

Dirk sits on the side of his home and is literally staring down at both a long plummet/implied s*****e and literally into his Shades/his own Self

BOOTS: hell, if you wanted to make a pun of any love association, instead of gravity you could call it falling in love!

There's just SO MUCH MORE to this, so many examples of Light and importance and enlightenment and Skaia's philosophical truth being UP or involving ascent, where anything that drops or falls DOWN into the water or off cliffs becomes dislocated and its relevance unknown until it might eventually perhaps resurface unpredictably elsewhere. Tavros being driven down off a cliff by the Thief of Light to break his legs and stunt the playful drive he needed to become a fully realized Page of Breath, Aranea's snapped-neck body being dropped into the flames to fade into such irrelevance that she never surfaced post-Retcon, Vriska stealing all the luck/Light from the enemy creature in the first Meteor walkaround and it falling into a collapsing dark pit, so many people always going UP to reach concrete destinations, Roxy and others crashing DOWN through fenestrated windows and falling to reach the Furthest Ring, and of course there's always the Jung psychology stuff that was woven into Sburb (as I've reiterated in the past) and an essential metaphor for Descending into your shadow and Ascending from it to merge your shadow self with your conscious self for true self-acceptance and balance, like Vriska just did in the Plot Point, like the normal Quest Bed method of attaining God-Tier merging the Real and Dream selves and everyone looking Upward to see John RISE UP and achieve ascension: (From an older edit of the Wikipedia page for the Jungian Shadow--)

Nevertheless, Jung remained of the opinion that while “no one should deny the danger of the descent […] every descent is followed by an ascent”, and assimilation of—rather than possession by—the shadow becomes a possibility.

“We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals…straight up.”

As I've said before, the game IS the psychotheraputic journey from start to finish, complete with the same monumental challenges, pitfalls, rejection and acceptance (of help and of oneself!) that all sorts of different people must confront in order to simultaneously fully appreciate and become themselves, and also become the people they truly want to be. Skaia's Light and the path it guides players on thus represents a journey to one's philosophical enlightenment about oneself, their ASCENT, and the challenges and misleading dejection that causes them to reject this journey and fight against their natures is DESCENT, so often involving the Horrorterrors who embody the essence of Void in nature and motive.

Gosh when you think of all the times "UP" or "DOWN" has been the focus of major or even offhand scenes or panels, there's just SO MUCH that fits them into Light and Void respectively. I couldn't possibly begin to list all the examples, you're probably noticing more in your mind as you read this post.

--

I'm going to integrate this Ascent/Descent meaning into the Aspect Duality post's sections on Light and Void, and link this post there, but before we finish I wanna delve into the potential Gravitation meaning of Void that optimisticDuelist brought up and reasons I might agree or be skeptical of the ties drawn in their post... especially stemming from this Rose quote they included:

That seems to tie Void pretty inarguably to Gravitation, or perhaps the vacuum pull of nothingness, but because I didn't have a clear counter-meaning in Light I wanted to look up the full context of this quote when I made this post... (readmspa.org is a very useful tool while Homestuck.com is down and mimics the old manual search function)--

ROSE: Or what about, the tale of Isaac Newdon under the tree?? He was BONKED on the head by an apple. ROSE: Not reallyan apple though… an atomic idea. An emlemental unit of inspripation itself, id clocked him right on then noggin. ROSE: And this indivisible notion colliding with hish awareness, much like.. . a high speed partical fired to create a nuculear chain reacation, jarred from the void a more profund unnerstand, HIC, ing of the intrinsic nature of nothiness. Thatis,. Gravivitation. ROSE: Of course thess stories are acutually bullshit. They didn't happen in realaity. But thef act that they'rare bullshit makes them more inshresting. ROSE: Men have crefted many stories that are bullshit out of symbols risen from the abyss of coinsciousness withou necesharily knowing whath e fuck they were doing or saying, as they flounered around for some truth. ROSE: Bust in spite of themseleves they would for howefer briefly cross through a ray of light regarless. Becuss of the sbymbols. Dave.. The symbols hol dall the power.

Taz also mentioned that a commenter in their server pointed out that this Gravitation quote and the reference to a high-speed particle collider could also be an intentional reference by Andrew to the Graviton, the theoretical elementary particle responsible for mass and its gravitational force that has so far not been detected/discovered yet, remaining obscured (Void) compared to the particles tied to the other elemental forces.

Black Holes ALWAYS had strong ties to Void, the ultimate sinks for the destruction of information, ultimate darkness, (ultimate Down/descent), the compression of all meaning and separation into a melange forever irrelevant to the rest of Reality beyond one's Event Horizon (thanks @sagaciouscejai for the reminder). And in the Epilogues forward, "Non-Canon" belongs to the great Black Hole and everything that falls nigh-inescapably into it-- as opposed to Canon's comparative association with Light and story importance. But, hm... if Void is "down" and "descent" and the "abyss of [Jung's collective] consciousness", to what extent is it important as "Gravity" specifically, as well? Or is that just tied to the fundamental concept of "down" in the comic's metaphysical framework? Taz mentioned Dirk linked to gravitation to tidal forces too, hence the Ocean which is Void-linked. Does Gravity have a balancing opposite in Light that I can put into keywords besides "Up/Down" or "Ascent/Descent"? And if it DOESN'T have a balancing concept in Light... could Gravitation be part of Void's tie to Space that explains them as neighbors, a shared domain that Space and Void might possess?

In the end I think I'm positive toward Rose's speech and the fact of Black Holes (as well as "DOWN/DESCENT") establishing a definite tie between Gravity and Void, but where I'd disagree with Taz is how over the rest of their original post they pointed to "succumbing" to toxic influences and generational trauma as a sort of Gravity, which I'd disagree with and say has more to do with Void's existing and known "submission and divestment of agency" associations, as well as Centrality coming from it (which I'd have to reconcile with Light's "Location" meaning) not quite adding up for me, and Love as stemming from Gravity which I really don't think has enough in-comic evidence tying the two together. If we eventually deduce that Love has some Void associations-- and the Void characters we've met have certainly been more than a little Love-obsessed at times-- I expect that any association would have to stem from Void's other established meanings such as the submission of agency required by a relationship as opposed to making all the decisions yourself (Light's agency) and hogging the spotlight, like the contrast between Vriska and (Vriska) toward the end of Homestuck proper. There's more to lime-bloods's post that I haven't given enough thinking time to, like Voids always being the central seeding-place for new creation like a Womb, which would ALSO explain its proximity to Space on the official wheel... but, yeah. Those are all my in-progress thoughts on that for the moment, anyway. ((EDIT: "Outward vs Inward" like I mentioned above the cut finally completes the Gravity association!))

I'm still blown away by how clearly Light and Void can mean "UP and "DOWN", can mean "ASCENT" and "DESCENT", that's... just such a blindingly stunning revelation for us to have come to so late, IMO. I bet there's half a dozen theorists out there who put it together AGES sooner and I just never saw their posts. Wow. :D

[lime-bloods]

I've been really enjoying your posts on black holes and homes as sources of gravity (as I understand the posts so far). Out of curiosity, what do you make of page 5404, where Drunk Rose describes in drunk babble that Gravitation itself is somehow related to "the intrinsic nature of nothingness"? Combined with a few of the screenshots you've taken, it feels like you're hitting on something close to Void as a thematic presence in Homestuck to me, but bugger me if I know what it is!

My instinct is that Rose has reached the same conclusion I have: that 'gravity', as a metonym for the influence of a black hole, is just the inevitable pull towards oblivion. I think she's using "nothingness" as a euphemism for "space", over which gravity has dominion, but through this we can start to appreciate how the concepts of Space and Void weave into each other ("nothingness", "space" and "void" all being functional synonyms).

Understanding that Rose's lapse into alcoholism is her own way of succumbing to 'gravity' - a pull towards toxic familial cycles which not only evokes Vriska's own "addiction" to breaking 8-balls but also literally surrounds the drinker in a dark pocket - her allusions to the Void and gravity here are also tinged by her own experience and outlook as a Seer of Light (who heavily relied on a magic cue ball as her source; a fountain of information which is symbolically opposed to the information-consuming black hole). In particular, the idea that the gravity/knowledge contained within the apple was "for BIDDEN..!" feels like it harkens back to Rose's own quest for forbidden knowledge, which led ultimately to her first foray into the dark. (Like a sun collapsing in on itself, in her hunger for information Rose becomes the black hole in a simultaneously Biblical-and-Newtonian fall-from-grace-cum-moment-of-inspiration. Oh, hey, exactly like Kanaya said would happen!)

But through allusions to Adam and Eve, and the plucking of primordial ideas "from the void" or "the abyss of coinsciousness", we also get the sense that nothingness is the substrate from which things are born - in a manner of speaking, "the Void" here is an ideological incestuous slurry. Just as the void consists of the aspects of creation so "closely woven together [...] that they are barely separable", all things are eventually pulled by forces of gravity (or inevitability, or Time, or whatever name suits them in the context), manifested as a black hole, into nothingness... just to be mixed up and recombined again in Paradox Space's great masturbatory cycle of life and death, like English being born again and again in countless universes. And what Rose "take[s] for granned", about the ease of creating complex objects and the difficulty of creating simple ones, is the exact opposite problem to what the Rogue of Void experiences.

I don't know if I'm HAPPY with these answers, per se... Rose's rant is so rich with imagery I feel like I should be able to give you one, cohesive answer rather than 2-3 smaller fragmented ones. Perhaps that's sort of the point - in her drunkenness, Rose has access to this veritably spaghetti heap of interwoven ideas, but lacks the vision to line them up into a unified Point? But I can't help but feel like that's a cop-out.

Thanks so much for asking though!

[davekat-sucks]

I heard that optimisticDuelist was the one who created transmasc Roxy. Is that true or no?

optimisticDuelist / utopianparadoxist / RoseOfNobility was not part of the team that did Epilogues. They had some criticisms towards Roxy, with the recent one featuring her on both Meat and Candy. But I'm not sure if they were the reason for it. One thing is for sure, I don't trust OD who thinks Jake is a manipulator.

[pumpkin-mines]

1 of 2 requests for @utopianparadoxist (dirk in jakes glasses with the added bonus of Jake in Dirk's shades)

[dingodad]

ok i have just a couple tinfoil hat type thoughts before i think i've run out of things to say about addendum 1. i've been hesitant to straight up say that Vriska is the one 'doing' these addendums / retcons / whatever we're choosing to call this phenomenon because I feel there are a couple points where it's not 100% clear that's the case? keeping in mind we've been fooled by these giant blue lasers before in the leadup to 8r8k.

first of all, if we are presuming this new Jane is done with her therapyquest then does she get some kind of upgrade too? it's doubtful that the theoretical "Hell Tier" Jane would get the same fiery powers that Vriska has, true, but just worth keeping in mind that she might be capable of these kinds of narrative feats on her own now.

on a similar note:

okay, Jasprose helped put Jane on the right track so she could be transplanted back into the main timeline, and she had some help doing that - but if Vriska was the one doing the transplanting, who's here with Jasprose? consensus seems to be Snowman, which makes perfect sense. fuck it - you're hanging out in midnight crew world who else are you gonna lez out with - and if that's the case then fine, Snowman's a tertiary character at best and I don't think her being here has to mean anything.

but the hands are throwing me off, because to my eyes they look for all the world like an artefacted photograph! which to me could mean one of two things:

the original 'Diamonds, Dames, and Dads' story where Snowman last appeared used a lot of stock photography assets, often more than a little crunchy. so it could be that depictions of Midnight City and its inhabitants will continue to pay homage to that photobash sort of style, which would be fun!

it's some other character, important enough and novel enough to be depicted wearing weird photobashed JPEG gloves. and given all that we currently know there only really seems to be the one feasible candidate for such a character?!?

where there are retcons, we traditionally expect to see John, and I've been reminded that John's glimpse into the exploding Plot Point included a table from Problem Sleuth - so if we're to assume that all of those visions had to do with John's future specifically, it's really not so crazy to think that we might find a future version of John dining in a Problem Sleuth world! looked at this way, even the fact that the drink being poured is some nondescript blank liquid - in a panel otherwise dominated by a lavender-noir palette - comes across as meaningful. (@utopianparadoxist makes other arguments for John being the party responsible for this retcon, though these revolve more around the wispy blue smoke of Jasprose's cigarette, which to me would suggest John having just left, not still sitting at the table...)

ALL THAT SAID, it is right about time hs2 showed us what Vriska's new powers are, and I'm tentative to approach the story like it's trying to trick me. John's powers certainly lend themselves to changing history so that Jane and Jake joined the battleship journey at the start; but Jasprose's presence here and on page 666 tells us that this is the same Jane and Jake from Midnight City, and - if we exclude for the sake of argument the possibility that this Jane and Jake are just older than everyone else on the ship (funny, but seemingly unlikely) - that means we're looking at a Jane and Jake from one story re-incorporated into the past of another story. that sounds to me like something new, and in terms of powers, Hell Tier Vriska is what's new.

what's still open-ended is just what the process of getting from Midnight City back into the main space looks like (if that really ends up being important), and just how much agency we can assign to the character responsible for that. while it seems plausible that getting Mrs. and Mr. Crocker from A to B is something Vriska could have intuited to do as part of her newfound understanding of the medium, the transformation of Deltritus from blue to pink is different; not only is it difficult to justify the importance of such an act on the cosmic scale John and now Vriska operate on, it's hard to imagine how one might even go about achieving such a result through simple manipulation of past events!

so even if we determine that transporting the Crockers is conceptually within John's capabilities, there's still something going on here without the precision that necessarily comes with using those juju powers.

[strilondism]

@utopianparadoxist callieroxy utena

[0l-unreliable]

four dudes out on a date for @utopianparadoxist

(Joshua, Roxas, Dirk, and Jake)

[im-the-antonymph-of-your-mom]

Scary update because HOW are they gonna do this in a way that's, like, actual good writing?? Are parts of the Meat Epilogues just gonna be permanently null now (👎), or are characters (Dirk perhaps, Jasprose hopefully) still going to know things and have their memories like with the retcon in HS^1? How much has even been changed?

Honestly they severely pulled off the Vriska therapy and both teams have done wonderfully with the Yiffany situation so I should probably expect awe-striking greatness every time an idea seems risky at this point

But we'll see

Beautifully subtle loss.jpg btw

Edit: Check out the reblogs; I slightly changed my mind in there from an Epilogue focus to a Catnapped focus. And also I think utopianParadoxist's theory is likely.

[circlejourneyart]

Maybe it'll turn out better this time: A love letter to all the joy and sorrow that this story has given me

(Art by @blogofyolo)

Here's the first of two tracks I had on Land of Fans and Music 5 Act 2, which came out two days ago! I'm dedicating this one to @utopianparadoxist, who wrote the post that made this track appear in my mind in such blinding clarity I couldn't stop making until it was done.

I also have some extended commentary about this one--it's more important to me than I give it credit for.

When I finished reading Homestuck, I was...disappointed. That disappointment morphed gradually into disgust as I watched schisms violently open in the fandom following the Epilogues and Homestuck^2, and in the process I felt like I'd lost something.

I kept thinking that maybe, if I just read the comic again, it would turn out different. Maybe it'd be the story I'd once loved and it would fill me with breathless wonder again. Maybe it'd be better.

But earlier this year, a post by uP crossed my dash after he'd disappeared from my periphery for well over a year. He was outlining his plans surrounding Pumpkin Path, a story he's writing that runs adjacent to the Epilogues and (eventually though not yet?) gives these characters the futures they've earned.

And I realised...the way I'd been thinking about it, that's not how it works, y'know? It's not the story that has changed: it's my heart, my relationship with it. And the best thing I could do was take what this once-beloved story gave me and make something new with it. And that's what many people have done in the wake of Homestuck's end: we've all gone off and made new stories, for which this long-beloved comic was an undeniable progenitor.

It reminded me of a certain recurring motif in the comic itself. Every time the universe resulted in a corrupt or barren session, the players...well, they rebooted it. They left the old universe behind, and started a new one, billions of years all over again just to see where it would go this time.

There was no use in searching for the story that used to be, because it was me that had changed.

You may as well leave that old universe behind and start a new one from scratch.

This is the idea that seeded the above track, and it caught me off guard, because it was the first Homestuck music I had made in more than two years--after I thought I'd sworn it off for good. And then, two days later, Maybe it'll turn out better this time was done. (Two days is, by the way, a very short time for a track to emerge.) It was a small, silly, wonderful little thing, a sapling in the ashes, that proved to me that things could change.

But beyond my track, the entirety of LOFAM5A2 feels especially so. It's a startling breath of fresh air that emerged from so much genuine joy and excitement. I'm happy I got to contribute even just a little work to it and I really, really hope that the fandom sees it for all that went into it. An UMSPAF manager once said that my music always sounds hopeful, but it was never intentional until this one. Thank you to everyone who's made good art that has inspired others in turn, you create life with your own hands.

[homestuck-fanauthor-coalition]

THE APOCRYPHON OF JAKE ENGLISH

THE APOCRYPHON OF JAKE ENGLISH (53399 words) by optimisticDuelist, KeeperofManyNames Chapters: 8/8 Fandom: Homestuck Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider Characters: Jake English, Dirk Strider, Rose Lalonde, Alternate Calliope (Homestuck), Original Characters Additional Tags: Suicide, Graphic Depiction of Suicide, Negging, Parental Negligence, Abuse, Manipulation, Xenophobia, Sexual Themes, Toxic Masculinity, Religious Themes, Pantheons, Discussion of Infidelity, Discussion of Genocide, Nonconsensual Immortality, Suicidal Ideation, Impalement, Shooting, Stabbing, Phallic Symbolism, Necrophilia, Mightve forgot other stuff, If youre worried pls have a friend vet it for you, Ill add tags if people deem them necessary, Epilogues Sequel, Canon-Compliant, canon non-compliant, Canon Divergence Series: Part 1 of Pumpkin Path Summary: If you didn't like the epilogues there's probably nothing here for you, but this was basically my emotional processing for them and I think what came out of it was a lot of fun, if fucked up. Anyway. dirkjake: not only still good, but better now that its worse actually. here's my thesis on why as well as my attempt to deconstruct the narrative pandora's box that is jake goddamn english.   Every hat in attendance MUST be doffed deferentially to sam keeper, who i made co-author because i swear to god this shit was never getting posted ever if she didn't step in to save my sorry ass with her bonkers efficient text formatting skills. I cannot imagine trying to color format all of this stuff by hand and even with the text formatting its probably only sometimes legible LOL. Let me know how that goes for y'all.

~~~~~~~~~

@utopianparadoxist brings us this brilliant work set in the realm of the epilogues. Jake English is giving us the pumpkin path! check out the blog to find out more.

[nelfes]

@utopianparadoxist @dandelion-stuff-and-fluff and @likes-words-and-shrimp

just wanted to let you know my evening has gotten exponentially better w some good fam news since hearing from you guys 🫶 sending all the love back!

[reversalsun]

5 Songs I'm Into Right Now

tagged @sailor-artemis thank u I'm finally getting to this

KICK BACK by Kenshi Yonezu A friend of mine played it while we were all chilling in our hotel room at a con, and its been stuck in my head ever since. Doesn't help that me and my friends just finished our read through of CSM part 1 in our manga book club. That baseline is so addicting....

New Shapes by Charlie XCX I'm mostly here for Chris, but the sound overall really hits for me, I love all the solos. The vid for this one is super enjoyable too, I enjoy Chris doing what I can only describe is "aggressively nonbinary dancing" in contrast to the other two. Great costume design too.

Hysterical Us by Magdalena Bay A song that was introduced to me by the person who tagged me actually. Very fun, very good vibes. Feels just a little bit magical and I like that. Fits right onto one of my many character playlists lol.

Chariot by Burn the Ballroom Came across this one recently via my Discover Weekly. I like it quite a bit, but it feels like its missing something. I think it would be perfect if it had one more verse in the last third instead of just playing some variations on the chorus. Well it is what it is and I still like it.

Souven1r from Splatoon 3: Side Order Excluding Spectrum Obligato, I think this is my favorite level track in Side Order. Very chill with just enough strangeness that occasionally resets my brain while listening to it. A mix of Side Order music have been getting me through some extremely busy work days and writing sessions recently, and I always appreciate when this one shows up.

(Ahhh... I forgot Unconscious... a song too good to only be used once in Side Order.. Can I give Unconscious the honorable mention? I love how much you can tell Marina's voice actor has grown in the last couple of years.)

Anyway. Tagging @kingcheddar @utopianparadoxist and @chidorinnnnn if they'd like to share some songs :]

[davekat-sucks]

Am I the only one who likes optimisticDuelists Kidsona and Fursona designs but hate the man behind the creation and voice? I really like the art and design so damn much, but the fact that a complete loser is behind them just pisses me off so much.

It tends to be like this where the characters or media is cool, but the person behind it is not as great. Which is why people like to separate the art from the artists.

[pumpkin-mines]

part 2/2 of requests for @utopianparadoxist 🐯

[dingodad]

Something I'm wondering about now is that like. It's heavily implied the Black Hole doesn't exist anymore? Like, Vriska asborbed the singularity (thus the entirety of the green sun AND the black hole created to contain it), so like. Is she the vessel through which the Candyverse exists? And why she's so easily able to portal out of it, obviously. But more importantly, I wonder what that means for the Parents, who are still stuck there. John has expressed intent to follow, and presumably the others will for the other lost kids or related, then that begs the question of how? Also, wonderfully fun parallel, making Vriska contain the Candyverse akin to Snowman containing universe A. Not unlikely that her life being at risk will now equate to the entire Candyverse being at risk, thus incentivizing all the Parent Players into protecting her. Anyway, sorry this is a disorganized question, I'm trying to ask what you think HAPPENED to the singularity/black hole/plot point/green sun after Vriska "br8ke."

the word is that the black hole was "collapsing" when Roxy and Calliope brought Vriska on board to help, and now Vriska has the power to save a universe but not the one in the black hole. so it sounds to me like the collapse is still going on. but I agree that the story seems to be keeping the door open for important stuff to keep happening inside the black hole, just without any one clear direction as to how. Vriska being a new Snowman would be fun, though I don't know if that really lines up with the way she describes her new mission - for now it seems like she's figuratively acting as an ark for some of the remnants of the dying universe, but she's made it pretty clear that she can't take all of it with her.

utopianparadoxist has been speculating in a direction that makes Roxy seem like an interesting candidate for the new gravitational center of the candy volume - I would say again, figuratively, but it does also feel like it's about time the Rogue of Void got a turn to flex what she can really do, powers-wise. there are other outside players we haven't checked in on in a while too; the black hole was Alliope's project in the first place, so it stands to reason she's invested in its fate in some way, and we already know she has a plan to put an end to Homestuck's deterioration by bringing the story "to a satisfying and hopefully timely conclusion". so that could also come into it.

i wonder now though if the black hole's "collapse" means something more than just straightforward destruction. like, if the hole is shrinking and dying when viewed from the outside, what does that actually mean for the people living on the inside? we've already had the black hole's time dilation effects demonstrated to us via Vriska aging 8 years in a matter of minutes, so what if time inside the black hole universe just starts going faster and faster as it collapses? i keep thinking back to the implication that Meenah has made Karkat immortal... are we gonna see a billion year old Karkat or WHAT!!

we've still got Alliope's warning about something waiting for them on the outside once the black hole bursts to think about too. and i can't help but get the feeling John's little vision is somehow trying to communicate that John IS who's waiting? i donno!

[treeprince]

thanks for tagging me @alienbabydraws! i havent done a tagmeme in a hot minute lol

last song: Honeywell by Clem Turner

currently reading: the same book ive been trying to read for the past two months orz Body Neutral by Jessi Kneeland (its really good!!! i just have fallen into the habit of trying to read it before bed and zonk out before i get another page in)

currently watching: rewatching Utena for the nillionth time and loving it. its always fun to bring in a new audience :3

current obsession: the same obsession ive had for over a decade now, the stuck at home feelings are inescapable 🤟😔 but also totk and the locked tomb kinda took over my life the last few months, and hard

tagging: imma drag @sashthevampede @asherinn @missmeowzers and @utopianparadoxist into the fray, and anyone else who'd like to join in!