#which is baffling to me

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Doctor who tiktok my mortal enemy

[dhwty-writes]

sometimes i am confronted with the fact that people care and think about me and i am just sitting there trying to incorporate that into my worldview

[kala-mies]

Wouldn't it be cool if we as a fandom could stop inaccurately assigning Jay the role of 'the smart one' or 'the babysitter'. Wouldn't it.

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

I'm going to try to go back to work tomorrow. it's gonna suck - my dad was a volunteer at the museum too, lots of people there knew him, and it's where I last talked to him on the day he had his heart attack. I loved getting to work there with him, seeing my dad during breaks, showing him the things I was doing there, sometimes having lunch together, and I'm really going to miss that, even if we only had that for a few months. but I can't just stay home forever. there's a project that needs finishing, and I need to get out of the house and do other things too.

but I'm really, really not looking forward to this.

[pwurrz]

some of y’all should. go outside. touch some grass maybe.

[dear-ao3]

the most devastating part of being an adult by far has been realizing bit by bit that Every food opinion i had when i was 13 was entirely wrong

[inspisart]

dick took the news that a strange thirteen year old broke into his apartment while he was away at the circus pretty well, I gotta say

[bunnieswithknives]

Decided to read The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, I have yet to finish it but here are some of my favorite bits so far and I'll probably go back and draw some more later

[qqueenofhades]

The number of white, ostensibly liberal male political pundits insisting that elections in the Biden/post-Dobbs era are just Completely Unpredictable and Wild sure is something, huh.

[dailyhmsw]

we're so back but since some of you seemed to like the second to last thing of tha last post,,,

loop 159

[bixels]

Be honest, what are your thoughts on appledash? Do you hate it or its more of not a big deal

Not a big deal to me. I like it, I see all the appeals, I just personally like Rarijack more.

[dawnscales]

I saw people on twitter talk about how Jack Black and Neil Gaiman are 'good Jews' because they are not 'evil Zionists'. The reason given? They are for a two state solution.

And I don't know how to tell this to none Jewish people kindly but uh.................... that. That's Zionism?

Believing in Palestinians right to have their own State, self determination and the right for a safe home, for education, for a life free of Hamas and Terror in a Two State Deal is Zionism because the other state in this deal???? Is still Israel. it is still a Jewish state. It is still believing in our rights to return and stay in our ancestral homeland.

Being for a two state Solution, for peace and for working together can and is part of being a Zionist !! And also you don't get to call people good or bad Jews that is antisemitic as fuck.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Why The Ending Sucks

Ok I figured it out. Hear me out:

The entire comic has a running theme best summed up as "who is controlling the narrative, and why are we listening to them?"

Hussie plays a caricaturized version of himself that he describes as "buffoonish" and "oafish". Caricature!Hussie is well-meaning, but a dumb idiot who's incredibly biased in favor of certain characters and in disfavor of others (the most obvious example being his "love" of Vriska, but there's also the way he constantly disparages Eridan). As a result, you have to be VERY SKEPTICAL and VERY CAREFUL when approaching Homestuck's narration, because even when the "best" narrator is at the helm, he's not 100% trustworthy and incapable of giving the readers an unbiased view of the story.

I say "best" because, importantly, Hussie isn't the story's only narrator. He and Doc Scratch explicitly fight over control of the story - Doc Scratch, the child abusing predator who engineered Alternia's fascist murder society, whose shaping of its history is explicitly described by character!Hussie as "fanfic". He is then killed by Lord English, who is described by Hussie as embodying the "toxically masculine" and by extension, the patriarchy, and Caliborn explicitly takes control of the story. John even grapples with Caliborn's version of events, calling out how sexist and misogynistic and shitty it is.

So if we're keeping score: control over the narrative is LITERALLY wrested away from Hussie (who was already struggling to be unbiased) by fascists, abusers, and the patriarchy. It's stressed multiple times that Caliborn/LE are responsible for literally everything that ever happens; the reason the Game Over timeline ends the way that it does is because the alpha timeline is, in essence, the narrative LE is telling: the forces of fascism get to claim the new universe, thereby propogating itself, while friendship dies and all hope is lost.

Who's in control of the narrative, and why are we listening to them?

There are other minor examples of this, too: Aranea is an exposition fairy, and she's biased as fuck and wrong ALL THE TIME about her own teammates. Karkat's explanations and rationalizations are constantly tinged with his own self-loathing and self-blame. Sollux and Meulin are both prophets as per their Mage class, but are both so bogged down by their own emotional issues that the futures they pick out are actively harmful. So on and so on. At nearly every turn, you have to interrogate who's telling the story, what their motivations are, and what they're overlooking or deliberately obfuscating.

So given that this theme is so prevalent, and so thoroughly weighted toward "well, actually, maybe you shouldn't take narration at face value and should interrogate it and come to your own conclusions," it would be Really Weird for the story to go "actually, you can totally trust the narrative now because everyone gets a happy ending".

So, I know that it makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but here's my genuine take on Homestuck's ending:

The ending is shitty on purpose because the viewer is intended to take it as a dare to refute the narration and make something better.

Why are we letting character!Hussie tell the story? He's a biased idiot. Why are we letting the various avatars of LE and Caliborn tell the story? They're fascist, misogynistic, predatory assholes.

And - because Homestuck is a story about life - why are we letting idiots, assholes, abusers, and creeps dictate the story of real life? The world is full of forces that would try to take control of the story and make everyone else play along, represented in microcosm within the text of Homestuck. We cannot let those forces win.

So please go out and do something kind and hopeful and loving in the world today. Thanks for reading.

[necrotic-nephilim]

i personally have very complicated feelings on the Gotham Knights video game and the routes it takes with characterization. i think it has a charm to it and it goes in an interesting direction with everyone (especially within the confides of the plot of the game) but it does have certain moments that veer painfully fanon for me. (such as: the dialogue where Tim drinks too much coffee) it's an interesting story for what it is but i don't view it comics-based for characterization and therefore don't care to interact with it much for like. fanfic purposes.

that *said* though. i do have to give the game some kind of credit for giving one of the top five JayTim moments that lives rent free in my mind. every since i played the game, the cutscene lives in my mind daily. it's the specific cutscene where Jason and Tim are arguing about whether or not Jason's non-lethal bullets are too dangerous for the field, and the argument leads to TIm *standing in front of the target* Jason is shooting and telling Jason to shoot him. it lives rent free for me. i never stop thinking about this.

the absolute certainty Tim has that he is in no danger standing in front of Jason, who has a loaded gun pointed at his face. the way Jason *hesitates* for just a moment before lowering the gun. he thinks about it for just a second. Gotham Knights JayTim seem to get along very well and can rely on each other, but Jason still clearly holds a bitterness about his death and Tim that flickers through in some lines of dialogue under the guise of jokes. especially since this game deals *heavily* with concepts of Pit Madness causing an altered state of consciousness, i think it's believable that occasionally, Jason fights the urge to fight and hurt Tim for the feeling of being replaced.

i like their tension so much in this canon. they get along but you can *tell* Tim is afraid of addressing Jason's trauma or even addressing Jason head-on, and Jason leans into spooking Tim about it. which isn't very comics feeling in their dynamic, but it is an interesting way to place their dynamic if you're playing with a more timid Tim who's newer to the role of Robin. (which he seems to be in-game) he really doesn't want to offend Jason, or worse, piss him off. but he'll still face Jason head on for things like this, while completely aware of what Jason could be capable of.

and Jason seems very protective of Tim and respecting Tim as a Robin in typical Jason fashion. if Tim pushes, Jason *will* relent. he knows this is a kid who's proved himself and should be treated with equal respect, sometimes even more than Dick and Babs do in-game.

so for all that to culminate in Tim stepping in front of Jason's loaded gun that he *knows* is on the edge of being too dangerous, just to force Jason to listen? it's the most unhinged way Tim could've gotten his point across in this scene. he was literally daring Jason to hurt him and playing with a very dangerous fire. but he did it anyway bc he believed he could make Jason heel just at the thought of hurting Tim. and he was *right*. they're gay and i'm feral ty.

[dootznbootz]

Fascinating how Polites, the character who is the personification of Odysseus' optimism and is only in 5 songs, is more grieved and appreciated than Eurylochus, a character who is his own person and is in 11 songs.

[seekstrivefind]

okay, question for you all, i desire your thoughts.

if a), who do you think was the architect? who built it? was it purpose-built for the lyctor labs or did they come later? if b), do you picture an existing building or structure when you're reading?

if c), tell me your secrets.