#we've seen this dynamic of being in love with someone you dont know three times

[nuctua-larc]

GAHHH I LOVE ALL OF THIS THANK YOU!!!! I wasn't TOO surprised about all the davejade hate mostly because girl in the way of gay ship is a cardinal sin(apparently??) and the epilogues did NOT help matters. Plus theres all the Jade plot being shoved to the side in canon on top of fandoms general idea that bi characters can say theyre bi but if they express attraction to the opposite gender theyre no longer?? Bi?? idk about all of it but the point is I was SO glad to see a fellow davejade shipper,, our community is small but mighty.

Anyways all that to be said Im gonna try to give this the same amount of effort!(still so happy seeing this giant ass response to my ask like!!! i win. ive won) Also...This is not going to be near as comprehensible as yours is the tagents are immense, just a warning.

1. Frog breeding

Ok first off I gotta say that I love the flower breeding analogy going on here it really does help put the genesis frog mission into perspective!!

Its definitely... very odd how they didnt really elaborate on anything that happened with that mission. Honestly during my first readthrough I didnt see ANY of it. And this was mostly because I read the entire comic in one sitting and at that point was a little tired and didnt realize I was supposed to click on the pictures, plus I just didn't notice the banner(which I typically still dont, and have to go back everytime I get to it). I think a big issue the webcomic has for me is that while it is rather long it tends to put the focus on the wrong things.

We've got things explained through sprite prototyping, the sylladex, and moduses. A lot of the games mechanics are explained in an insane amount of detail, and yet, one of the most important aspects of the game(quests, genesis frog). I mean, Rose doesn't even get to look into the quest at all. Unlike most forms of media Homestuck doesn't any sort of time limit--no season deal, chapter limit, nothing tying it to being a certain length. Thats why its able to have extended wacky hijinks! And while I do appreciate the slow silly parts, or at least, I know that the parts I find boring someone appreciates, theres also a lot of unutilized space for them to actually SHOW us the important parts they left out. And yes, Im saying homestuck shouldve been longer. This is the hill I will die on.

Anyways, all that being said the whole idea of Dave constantly groundhog day-ing the game, reliving the same hour or minute over and over to make the game successful is just... SUCH an interesting concept. Not to point out the sollux parallels but pulling double-duty is something of a theme with him.

The day itself is a constant. The trolls pester them at the same times no matter what, John goes off on his own to godtier, Rose destroys her planet and goes grimdark, and Jade works to create the new universe. People die when they have to, they do what they have to, and he can't do anything more than preserve the best course of action. Even if that means Jade has to kill the first person she's seen since she was four, even if that means He can't hug her before she has to do it. Again the CONCEPT is wonderful, and we hear other characters tell us about it, with karkat mentioning her freakout and dave mentioning how he didn't want to upset her, but we're never SHOWN it.

Number one priority in a hypothetical alt comic, let these touch starved kids hug

2. Davejade vs Jack

If I'm being honest here, the dynamic with Jack Noir and these two is just...so underutilized. They had Jade fight the two superdogs in the finale. Well...fight as a loose term here, in all honesty she flew around for a bit before getting punched into the ground, but in general while all the beta kids have a connection, narratively Jade and Dave have the biggest to me. For jade theres the obvious connection with Bec, all three are tied via the first gaurdian, abilities and care for one another, and I do genuinely like the weakness they gave Jack in that he just. Cant hurt her. Dave's connection is through Jade, with their first fight in the banner and my personal favorite fight sequence with him defending her in the game over timeline.

It just...felt like these two things were introduced, the idea that every time they meet he dies, the whole self sacrificial situation he keeps putting himself in and the tragedy of hypothetical survivors guilt even if hes still alive. One of many plot points introduced with no real conclusion because they never really TALK about it. Personally I would've loved to see her genuinely fight Jack. Maybe she teams up with Peregrine against Jack or maybe she just kicks ass on her own idk. Let her get revenge!! Or maybe even...idk....show the freakout after he dies? You know? Because if something big happens that has a heavy effect on one of your main characters you should...show it?

3. Grimbark

I'm not gonna lie...grimbark makes no sense to me. Grimdark in general makes no sense to me, especially in the context of Jade versus Rose. With Rose, it was the overtaking of a great darkness, a loss in humanity and a sole focus on rage and destruction powered by grief. While she'd been destroying the game prior to this, slowly allowing herself to succumb to the horrorterrors in a misguided effort of finding information, the death of her mother causes the big switch in her completely abandoning restraint and forethought.

It manifests in her being unable to speak, at least in that of any human language. She's angry and focused on nothing else but her revenge against Jack, a decision that leads to her demise.

In contrast to hers Jade is perfectly capable of speech, her 'switch' is triggered by the Condencse without any emotional reason(which is a small gripe, I'm fine with the mind control situation. However it would've been a little nice if there had been a prior snap moment for her that allowed for the grimbark thing to happen). She too acts violently without speaking, in this case to serve the Condensce's will. However I think the issue here is that unlike Jane's robo-mind control, grimdark never really felt completely divorced from the character. Jade in her grimbark form is just...so fundamentally different from Jade that I can't even imagine a scenario in which she would be pushed to act like that.

Personally I would've enjoyed a more emotional shutdown situation. Witches and Seers are(not sure if canon or not but in general) very opposite classes. Witches are a class that takes action while Seers are the ones to plan. So for Jade instead of a one track mind of grief induced rage, maybe it's cold calculation, brought on by constant isolation. Jade's been through a lot, and even in the game over timeline where Davesprite is there and John's alive she still seems...lonely.

And during the game over plotline I kind of would've liked to see Jade successfully get revived! First off because for a proper retcon where each group has its own issues leading up to the final battle, having all three perspectives present(Terezi for the meteor, Roxy for the alphas, Jade for the ship, and then John going through with all the plans) would be helpful...I also just want some sort of reaction to his death. It's the second time it's happened and maybe then we'd have an opportunity to *see* how that had hurt her the first time. Eventually I wanna write out an alt game over situation...give this girl sme FOCUS! she deserves it!

4. Music!!

[cracks knuckles] ok. so I actually have a lot of thoughts on this. First off, that post has been living in my mind, cat rotating in microwave style for a hot minute(btw seeing you reblog my tags,,, I keep winning >:000!!!). Second off music theory and music in general is a bit of an obsession of mine so imma elaborate way more than is really necessary.

Their band name is SpaceTime Continuum. The opportunity is right there, how can you NOT. I absolutely love the idea of lead vocals\woodwinds jade and the robots being bass and guitar respectively. And I said this before but Dave is so percussion to me. That man is BUILT for the drums let him POP OFF!!

But also I love the idea that like...during the three year timeskip they both react to the boredom by learning new instruments. And then they meet up after everythings said and done and they're like wait..we both ended up learning instruments that compliment each other really well. So like, Dave picks up the drums of course, and a bunch of other percussion based instruments, but then it'd also be fun if he like...picked up the trombone or something. He seems like a brass guy to me. Also...lowkey seems like an acoustic guy to me. Like he's chords/fingerpicking on acoustic to Jade's melodies and badass solos on electric! And the further complimenting going on in that she's a bass player that matches well with percussion(linking song here as an example to the fuckery they could do here)

And then more with woodwinds and brass matching well together like they naturally gravitate towards things that compliment!! Also vocally I like the idea of duets, her taking the lead vocally while Dave does harmonies. As far as general sound SOLELY for vocals not so much for vibes the Civil Wars comes to mind(dave cannot escape the country vibes).

And the time player powers can and SHOULD be exploited for the sake of harmonies the possibilities are endless here.

When it comes to character arcs them being in a band would be good for them…they both have a love for making music, sure, but also it would give Jade the connection she’s never been able to have before. For me there’s not greater connection to someone than to jam out on some musical collaboration. My best friendships are made through people who I sing with. Then for dave, being raised for the express purpose of battle, being able to completely divorce from that and do something thats just…fun, that doesn’t serve any greater purpose. It’d be!! So good!

OK OK SO!!

First off!!! Hello fellow davejade enjoyer i see you. Second off—what sort of things do you wish you could’ve seen with these two in canon :0. Could be expansion on canon scene, arc direction, or just a new scene entirely. for me personally I would’ve loved to see some genuine fighting collaboration going on. I felt VERY teased with all the magic combo’s in collide.

Third! I know they do a lot of music collaboration in canon, and I’ve seen some things with them making a band together post canon. What sort of sound do you think they’d have/what artist do you think they’d sound like?

Thank you :))

okay god theres so much i wish was expanded on in canon with regard to dave and jade

this post is swan dive into homestuck meta and took me over a day to write. so i would appreciate feedback or discussion on this if you'd like, reblogs appreciated!

despite this question being posed as davejade related, my answers here are actually relevant for anyone interested in homestuck meta as well.

it’s just recently come to my attention that there are a a handful of people on twitter who are vocal davejade dislikers. i didnt know it was actually disliked until i looked it up on twitter, i honestly thought it was a joke blown out of proportion but no they exist! it surprised me a lot to see people think they "lack chemistry". not only because knowing what i know about them thats a ridiculous insinuation, but also i haven't seen the vitriol on tumblr. probably because we can actually poast about it on here in an unabridged manner which thus enables better, deeper critical analysis and engagement with the media. i think also people forget that dave strider is canonically bisexual and are too yaoipilled + facing the consequences of the epilogues to even give davejade a serious look/analysis. (dave dates terezi and karkat in separate timelines, thinks jane is hot, thinks roxy is a babe but shoves it down when he discovers she’s his ectomom lmfao. davesprite—an extension of dave himself—dated jade! but i'm going to cover that in more depth in this post since theres a lot of misunderstandings about the nature of that relationship in fanon.)

(as a side note according to what some people have told me in inbox and what ive seen lol i think that ive been inadvertently been getting people into davejade. it's all in my davejade tag here in chronological order if you'd like to get a Whiff. be sure to read the tags on posts in there too!)

even though theres a lot in this post as it is, it doesn't cover everything ive talked about wrt davejade, and i think it would benefit readers to have complementary posts alongside this for the full picture with stuff it doesn't cover. there's a ton about why theyre cute and why i think they work well together in that tag.

here's some highlight analysis posts, but be sure to check the tag because there's a more in there:

post a / post b / post c / post d / post e / post f (← one of my favorite ask responses ive ever gotten)

i think a huge chunk of the issue has to do with how the narrative handles dave and jade. one of the most damning things to me is how glossed over their canon interactions were in act 5 despite them collaborating on one of the most important things in the story. i haven't talked about this yet but i'm going to do so here. because they’re put on the backburner by the focus of the narrative during act 5, people who don’t read carefully will miss the implications that are there all along in canon but easily passed over.

under the cut ive separated it into multiple parts

1. Jade’s Quest: What Frog Breeding Entails

this is an analysis examining apart exactly what jade and dave did while frog breeding. i wrote it while high which was extremely enlightening and it allowed me to comprehend it and hopefully explain it in an understandable way. i also discuss how shitty the lack of on-screen communication between jade and dave was for this part and the next.

2. Jade & Dave vs. Jack Noir

ive discussed this one before on my blog so it's not as dense (see davejade tag). but i still sewed the gifs together and discuss how unfortunate this was to be be delegated to a banner at the top of mspa and the neglect of that whole arc despite the outcomes of it being reissued by characters thousands of pages later

3. Davesprite and Grimbark Jade

i get into davesprite's head here and try to make his motivations about the breakup clear to the extent that i can infer because jesus fuck i love these characters way too much ive known them for a decade i understand their core personality structures and why they think what they do and what is most likely to happen when extrapolating. not to toot my own horn btw .. but what im saying is i am confident in my interpretation based on canon. i also talk about how grimbark jade changed the way the fandom perceives their relationship, leaving davejade on a low note instead of a high note. and then hs epilogues had even worse consequences for davejade but i wont get into it because it was character assassination all around and doesnt deserve my time or yours. but if you wanna know what i think, here

4. The music question

where actually answer this ask like it's an ask and not an essay

1. Jade’s Quest: What Frog Breeding Entails

i wish we could have seen what collecting frogs entailed for the two of them. what exactly were they doing? jade’s quest is one of the most interesting.

before i start i want to take a tangent and say the frog breeding reminds me of back in 2020-2021 when i would breed hybrid flowers in animal crossing new horizons to get a very specific gene sequence for these flowers to not only use to breed for hybrids, but to get known gene sequences that i could use to “check” the genes of other flowers. the goal is to get two parent flowers whose sequences when bred would make a specific phenotype 100% of the time.

this sounds complicated but here’s what i did for the lilies:

(“rare island” refers to one of the first acnh patches that removed a nook miles island from the pool that had hybrid versions of your native flower of very specific phenotypes for each color. i wrote out the breeding chains to get parents that would always breed that exact flower found on the rare hybrid nmt island that is no longer available.)

the cleanup ALL TO GET the white 2-2-2 lily looked like this. and after i got white 2-2-2 lily it was smooth sailing

after all that i could use the orange 2-2-0 lilies and white 2-2-2 lilies made in the black lily process and get rare island orange 2-2-1 lilies 100% of the time. in mendelian genetics these numbers (2-2-1) are quite literally RR-YY-Ww.

RR-YY-ww (orange) x RR-YY-WW (white) = RR-YY-Ww (orange: heterozygous Ww gene)

and all that effort into getting white 2-2-2 lilies enables me to get it over and over again now. i don’t have to repeat that process to get rare island pink lilies. all i need to do for the pink 2-0-2 lilies is breed two default bag red lilies (2-0-1) together. 50% will be red (2-0-1) lilies, 25% will be black 2-0-0 lilies, and the last 25% will be pink (2-0-2) lilies.

anyway sorry back to the main point. FROG BREEDING. it just reminded me of it. now that i think of it the frog breeding process also reminds me a lot of artbreeder back from when AI was only a fun little toy 4-5 years ago

ok so have a look at what kanaya says about what jade must do. this is the coolest quest imo because of how it progresses and how long it actually is

here’s how it works. remember back in act 2, when the wayward vagabond needed to tie a longer cable to descend down the ship (and refused to give up the ones that made up his mayoral sash)? he used the appearifier in the ship to appearify the extra cable across the gap to his location? that’s how the appearifier normally works when when it’s locked to the present. it’s very straightforward.

when jade appearifies a frozen frog, it shows us this exact thing. she appearified the actual frog itself (the same way WV appearified the actual cable across the gap) to her exact location. it can get the frog out of the ice in the way WV could untrap serenity from the amber. if something’s destiny wouldn’t otherwise be changed, it will not be paradoxified, it will just simply itself be warped to that location, with precise carving if it is somehow trapped inside of something else.

if you could appearify it to your location right now, you wouldnt be able to take it out the appearifier’s crosshairs in person later to alter its destiny because the object won’t be there at that time. it wouldve been with you the entire time. unless you decide to take the appearified item back to that location so that you could appearify it in the past, but that’s the most pointless time loop ever and doesn’t change its destiny.

for this icicle frog jade and dave weren’t capable of changing its destiny anyway, because it was completely encased in ice, and just didn’t bother to go after it. partially because it was with jade at the appearifier the entire time anyway and she can’t exactly put it back in there in the future. the point is, besides jade appearifying it to her location, the frog had no other possible routes of destiny. in that part of lofaf where she appearified the frozen frog from, the ice is too deep to get anything out of it (other than appearifying it) and i’m not sure the forge would have melted it in time before their reckoning ended anyway.

the goal of jade and dave is to target frogs on the appearifier screen and trust that their future selves follow through in altering the frog’s destiny. if so, then the frog’s paradox slime will appear instead and its genes would be collected in addition to creating offspring between multiple paradox clone frog genes. then, dave and jade would necessarily have to go out adventuring and find the frog so that they end up following through for their past selves.

if i understand correctly, jade is creating all the frogs on her planet that grow up with manually modified genes. these frogs must be genetically altered from their parents so that the frogs she creates don’t grow up to become one of their parents (as they’d be identical). the mutant offspring frogs “generation A” she ectobiologizes will eventually mature from tadpoles to frogs, assisted by dave’s time travel. then she will eventually target “generation A” with the appearifier to get their paradox slime to fuse with some other frogs’ paradox slime and create new slightly altered frogs “generation B” (and then follow through on altering the “generation A” frogs’ destiny so their slime and genes can be paradoxified by jade and dave’s past selves). repeat until the genes are fine tuned for the genesis frog.

this is why i compared it to my breeding in animal crossing. getting the genesis frog reminds me of the blue rose paths. i worked with the garden council back in the day and i used backwardsN’s “cesspool” method, except i honestly gotta say my white 2-2-2 lily thing was much more involved and carefully maneuvered in a way that i imagine frog breeding is more like. backwardsN’s “genepool method” was basically making a red-orange-black rose primordial soup and waiting for a blue rose to emerge out of it, just increasing the chances seeing a blue rose sprout the next day after watering with each generation of offspring. you KNOW my ass was using time travel, even if i happened to get lucky and got a blue rose without even finishing the big turtle plot. without time travel, most players (95%) will get their first blue rose before these # of days. (open up advanced tag)

there must be so many daves running around to help her going back in time all within the span of a few hours while still having their own linear, older timelines that are much longer than the “time stage” they’re actually functioning in. this sounds complicated but it’s not. think of this “time stage” as analogous to the 3 days until the moon falls in majoras mask. it’s the “time window” all the time travel takes place within, but link doesn’t become a day younger when he travels to a day ago. the timeline of his “self” is older but is kept within the confines of the 3-day timeframe. similarly, in tears of the kingdom, two master swords exist simultaneously for most of history, but the one on the light dragon’s head (who was above the cloud barrier before the upheaval btw) is further ahead on its own linear timeline: it starts as the other, pre-gloomed master sword → broken by gloom → sent to the past to be repaired → renewed over time, existing at the same time on the “time stage” as its own pre-gloomed past self but ahead on its own linear timeline

now imagine this but within the “time stage” of just a few hours on 4/13/2009. kanaya says frog breeding ordinarily takes weeks. multiple daves can exist simultaneously because they’re operating in the same few-hour-timeframe but one can linearly be days ahead of another. it’s the exact same thing as breeding flowers in animal crossing for irl days but to your game it’s whatever date you have it set to. your irl progress isn’t lost if you go back a few days in settings. i’d often find a week in june to use as a “time stage” to loop through when it would rain at least one hour on each day of that week which would save me the hassle of watering my flowers every day before time traveling to the next.

it must’ve sucked for dave to hear jade say the same things over and over again. the novelty probably wore off pretty fast lol…… dave says he saw his future self fighting and dying to jack and knew that’s what he’d eventually have to do as well. every single dave at all points of his linear timeline understood that and it probably settled something horrible into his heart.

im imagining during the original run dave was thinking to himself: “im bored but cant alter anything about this without creating a doomed timeline. if i dont see my future self hugging jade then i cant hug her even though i really fuckin want to. note to future self: hug jade. aww shit look at me go guess i remembered. hell fucking yes cant wait for that to be me in a few hours” and gives a thumbs up

future dave pov, hugging jade and watching his past self give him a thumbs up from afar thinking to himself: “ahaha i remember exactly what i was thinking there” and gives a thumbs up

but anyway. goddamn. JADE AND DAVE. what did hussie do to you.

this is a goddamn atrocity.. what the hell man. i wish we could have at LEAST seen the text file jade sent to kanaya. we got to see ConversationWithAVeryStupidGirl.Txt but not daveisafunnyguy.txt?

i mean i GUESS the humor is delivered through this

and like, yeah that is pretty funny? but i feel like the single laugh this gives me is nothing compared to the joy i wouldve gotten out of seeing what dave has to say about the cloning apparatus for ants here and talking himself into circles about frog procreation enough to make not just gigglehouse jade laugh, but kanaya too

we spent so much time learning about the mechanics of the punch designix and hardly anything about creating the seed of the actual new universe. we learn about it through kanaya and karkat messaging jade, instead of dave and jade working that out through SHENANIGANS. even though this is JADE AND DAVE'S session. it’s fine that kanaya is helping them, as she should, but we’ve seen parallel pesterlog conversations before so i dont get why we didn’t get that here! jade and dave frog breeding is one of the most important events in homestuck, and yet it was terribly glossed over. everything in the story, their futures, are predicated on their success. not just in their unwinnable session, but the one they split up for 3 years and escape to.

at first i thought, maybe their lack of shown interaction has to do with hussie working out the intricacies of pesterlog/dialogue thing? as he once stated on tumblr:

shoshaumbay asked: In the intermission of act 6, it says that they get to talk. Does this mean that their guardians couldn’t talk to them before and that is why they left them notes all around their houses?  The achievement badge only upgraded their ability to speak to each other as presented through the comic. I.e. it permitted them to speak to each other… WHILE WE WATCH! Do you think all the trolls were hanging out together, not talking at all? Or Dave and Jade were doing all that frog hunting without a single peep?? That’s ridiculous. On the other hand, abstraction weaves itself through the Homestuck reality, and it can be hard to pin down where abstraction is to be taken literally. The truth is, there is not much distinction between the layers of abstraction and the reality they are meant to stand for. John was both literally named on his 13th birthday, and not quite, because that’s silly. The guardians are both literally silent automatons, and not really, as there is indication through allusion they function as normal people too. And the kids went through a huge adventure, achieved immortal god status, and even then had to gain a few more levels just to gain the achievement of simple dialogue as a literal upgrade, as well as not literally, because that makes no sense. The reality is inseparable from the way the story is presented and the way the “game” is played. But those abstractions are also a facade for a more life-like reality beneath it as well.

then i realized, this is not only an arbitrary cop out that affects my enjoyment of the comic in retrospect because they wind up being able to talk later anyway and that makes me feel cheated in these moments, but also still actually awful within these parameters because hussie breaks his own rule here, proving he could have shown us dave and jade talking in person at any time regardless of needing the gift of gab achievement for us to watch them as readers. recall this is also the first time john and rose met in person (at least when rose wasn't asleep):

2. Jade & Dave vs. Jack Noir

this is where i take out my frustration over this being delegated to a banner at the top to the point where readers forgot it occurred.

i wish their time on lofaf frog breeding and fighting with jack was front and center and wasnt just in the banner at the top of the page. it makes it seem not as important when it completely was, considering that characters brought up what had happened in that scene multiple times.

it is significant because it is at that point that jack noir has killed all of the kids at least once. the only one left being jade who he refuses to kill due to bec’s loyalty

THIS IS WHAT THE REFRANCE (foreshadowing)

jack noir killed john on his quest bed which allowed him to ascend to god tier. then he killed john AGAIN but it wasn’t a heroic or just death so john was revived

jack killed grimdark rose. john smooched rose’s corpse, allowing her to take over on derse.

jack killed dave by redirecting jade’s bullets into dave’s body instead. jade smooched dave’s corpse, allowing him to take over on derse.

after jade shoots him through jack, he’s down for the count. she kisses him and he wakes up on derse; all he and rose have left of “themselves” in an existential sense are their dreamselves. they didnt know they were going to ascend to god tier delivering the tumor. they assumed they were just going to die like for real and not come back which is why dave went with rose since he didnt want her to die alone.

it was also an important point since her time spent with dave on lofaf is the first in-person contact jade has had with another living human since she was probably 4 years old with her grandpa.

for jack noir, we got [s] seer: desend and [S] ==> (3696) which were hella impactful. seeing jade and dave essentially go through the same thing but with an extended battle sequence honestly kinda warrants a flash in my mind. (the sad thing is that unite synchronization was originally written with those pages in mind (the track was originally called redshift) but of course malcolm brown couldnt have known what was going to happen unless hussie commissioned him for a specific track for a specific story beat, probably like whatever he did to coordinate cascade’s music with toby ahead of the 10/25/11 release of the flash and publication of volume 8 on bandcamp)

i think one of the worst parts is that entire conversations were referenced, but cut or never written.

this is a real forgotten homestuck fact: jade was completely freaking out after filling dave with bullets until karkat had talked her through it. very easily forgotten since even though it being referenced twice we never actually saw the conversation. (i overrode the black scratch background so it's easier to read)

wow thats so crazy i as a member of the audience dont in fact remember! would it have killed to write it my guy

and we find out thousands of pages later dave was thinking more about how it wouldve made jade feel to watch him die than knowing he was about to fucking die. if you even care btw

i wrote more about this here

3. Davesprite and Grimbark Jade

davesprite—an extension of dave himself—dates jade but breaks up because he feels inadequate at being the dave that he thinks jade deserves. NOT because they fought or anything. they were still on good terms. davesprite just felt inherently unlovable. john seemed more upset about the breakup frankly.

what davesprite did was because he thought it was in jade's best interest. there is nothing to suggest it was a fight / clash break up. they still seemed to be on good terms, davesprite asking where she went and all. jade says the breakup “is complicated” and “hes going through a lot of stuff”. given the context i think it's reasonable to assume that davesprite's thought process was: “we're coming up to the new session soon and youre going to meet up with dave again and i dont want to make shit awkward with you dating knockoff dave. you deserve to be with real dave instead so im gonna cut what we have going here in advance and distance myself from your life”

jade probably protested about saying how he's just as real as “real dave”, but davesprite made his decision already. im sure it wasnt easy for davesprite to break up either. with emotions running high (sadness, not anger) he probably just left to be alone and distance himself from jade, and seems to harbor guilt about it as we see in the log. that's probably why he wasn't at john's movie party. this is just speculation on my part but it doesnt seem in character for the breakup to be explosive because jade seemed more understanding than john. sad, but understanding.

i feel like a lot of people forget this. grimbark jade made it seem like davesprite did it to hurt her, or for this to mean that dave and jade are not actually good for each other, which is a wild mischaracterization of what happened but the one that stuck with the fandom nonetheless.

not only that, but davesprite's existence tragic and he's understandably depressed. after spending about a year in sburb (accounting for time travel) without john or jade, only to go back and give up your personhood to advance the alpha timeline and become forgotten is fucking crushing, and i think the breakup is also about davesprite coming to terms with that trauma, being okay with his existence as a sprite instead of being a bootleg stand-in for the dave that jade knew.

basically what vintagegamebro says,

it was such a tragic way for them to part for 3 years with no communication, and it was only proceeded by more tragedy because jade then had no one but davesprite to turn to, and davesprite needed anything but romance at that point

grimbark jade isn’t a good reflection of jade’s actual self. she pushed the mayor into lava for fucks sake which normal jade would never dream of doing, grimbark jade is straight up unhinged. i’m sure jade was hurt because all breakups hurt, but it was blown out of proportion (see how calm she was above a few days after the breakup?) because of Evilness. but also as @vintagegamebro mentioned it also felt somewhat … “off”? or out of left field? especially seeing what the nature of the breakup was from both sides in the above screenshots.

when dave says “theres no way i would have done that to you” i genuinely believe him. i have no reason not to believe him. look at him above asking for questions and clarification. thinking about how what davesprite did, a version of himself beyond his control and how it reflects on himself, i think it's obvious dave cares a lot about how jade feels about him

even after this confrontation in the game over timeline, dave laid down his fucking life to defend her corpse from the becs in he hope she could be revived by jane

and to think that after all this he still chose to save her, like always, probably knowing he had little to no chance, just because he cares for her, her life and who she is beyond this moment, really meant a lot for them. i really, really was mad that this would be the last time they would truly ever be together in a way that to me mattered

4. The music question

i wrote this post regarding instruments with this song in the back of my head if its anything. takes about 12 seconds to start after you press play for some reason

this too, closer to the “style”. i like imagining dave going apeshit on drums

[ninethousandbees]

sorry to butt in but I don’t really see this as...a problem in their relationship per se? Like surely this is the whole point of the Harrow/Alecto relationship at this point in the series - what do you do when the imaginary girl in your head is now a real person with her own feelings and goals who doesn’t really know you and isn’t in love with you? What do you do when you can’t project all of your love and longing onto someone who can’t reciprocate anymore? What if the purpose for yours and your House’s existence woke up and refused to destroy you, leaving you facing the possibility of having to live outside the role you’ve been forced into since birth?

(Yeah I do think that Harrow was kind of done a disservice by NTN because of all the characters, her arc seems to be the one that cuts off at the most awkward point but I also think that if you look at all three books you can still figure out where she’s probably going)

I've seen multiple posts that make me think people want Harrow to be further along in her character arc than she actually is and I get why, I’m pretty sure it’s a similar reason to why Kiriona blindsided people. Gideon’s narration at the end of HTN is so incredibly romantic and devoted that pre-Nona it was easy to think that all the anger and perceived abandonment she also expressed in that speech would pale in comparison to her love for Harrow but as we’ve seen now its going to be the other way around - the issues have to be properly confronted before the love can truly flourish. Same goes for Harrow - yes, HTN made it blatantly obvious that she’s in love with Gideon and I think she know it too. She’s also carrying around a pile of guilt the size of Canaan House about how she treated Gideon in the past and about (as she sees it) ‘letting’ her die. Obviously she knows that Gideon has forgiven her for the former but nevertheless I don’t think that Gideon loving her back will have even crossed her mind as a possibility.

The lobotomy proves that Harrow will put Gideon above her duty to Alecto when it really comes down to it which is extremely important character development, don’t get me wrong! But it also doesn’t mean that her duty to and love for/obsession with Alecto just disappear, and I think that’s actually crucial to her arc. Harrow was born to guard Alecto’s tomb, and for that birth 200 other children were killed, a fact which has fucked Harrow up horribly and means that she sees herself as inhuman, an abomination. The Tomb being her life’s purpose and her perception of herself as being unlovable are why she latches onto Alecto as an object for all her love and affection - if she loves the girl inside the tomb, then she has a reason to keep living, and the Body is a safe target for love because (until now) there was no chance she could love Harrow back and make her confront that huge pit of self-loathing. Anyway tl;dr I think exploring Harrow and Alecto’s relationship means exploring Harrow’s duty to the Locked Tomb/the Ninth House and what that even means any more and also dealing properly with her feelings of monstrousness due to the circumstances of her birth and if I’m right then I’m very excited for that, I think it’ll be cathartic as hell.

my early new year's resolution is I shut up about "I want to journey to find god" . but anyway alecto doesn't even care about her specifically enough to love her or hate her. But does like her enough that it's not fun one-sided angst. but doesn't like her enough that it's sweet. but doesn't dislike her enough that it's funny. a situationship so vague that the main interesting part is how everyone else reacts