#will be the child of people who grew up reading homestuck

[prokopetz]

It's actually kind of striking how tightly wedded most major genres of tabletop RPGs are to the decades when they were popularised.

Trad fantasy tabletop RPGs – even those that aren't positioned as revivalist – are so intent on emulating the sword and sorcery literature of the 1970s that the only reason they don't come off as quaintly nostalgic is because nobody reads sword and sorcery anymore.

Cyberpunk tabletop RPGs are, at this point, essentially an exercise in retrofuturism, endlessly polishing a vision of what people in the 1980s thought the year 2015 would look like.

Urban fantasy tabletop RPGs might include smartphones and electric cars in their equipment tables and mention 9/11 in their lore chapters, but culturally and aesthetically, most of them are taking place in a world where the 1990s never ended.

I don't mean this as a criticism – I'm just fascinated with how this tendency is so strong that, for example, a brand new urban fantasy RPG written in the year 2024 is liable to end up being a 1990s period piece at heart even when that was 100% not the author's intention, simply through the inertia of the medium's well-established tropes.

I'm mostly curious what the characteristic tabletop RPG genre of the 2020s is going to end up being thirty or forty years from now, and I hope I live long enough to find out!

[clouds-soup]

My take on Dave's Bro

First of all, I separate Dirk from Dave's Bro. Dirk is an entirely different can of worms that would take me a million for years to explain. If I tried to do both in one post it would turn into a masters level thesis essay that no one wants to read 😭 Second, I have read through Homestuck twice, I've read the epilouges, and I'm currently reading hs2. This is all just my interpretation of it. THIRD OF ALL ⚠️ i kept getting 500 errors, so some of the screenshots are from some kids' blogs analyzing the Dave and dirk scene. But they ARE all canon.

ANYWAY!!!!

I've seen a few people getting upset at fans characterizing Dave's Bro as abusive, and I get it to some extent. I think the physical abuse is up for interpretation - I also agree that the strife they all have with their guardians is comedic, if that's what you're going off of. I don't think there is an intent for them to *actually* injure each other. But with Dave, this ISNT all there is to go off of. If I remember correctly, Dave is the only one who seems actually hurt after the strife. Based on the note, it seems to be a common occurrence. It could be made out to be brotherly roughhousing- except that it *isn't*. Dave says that he convinced himself that all it was for the first 13 years of his life because it was what was normalized for him, but it wasn't normal. Being trained sense birth to be on edge and expect to be attacked out of nowhere, to get into physical alterations with your guardian to 'prepare you' IS NOT NORMAL! It would have been impossible for Dave to feel safe and grow up normally in an environment like that. He talks about how he never felt at peace because he was always scared. He talks about being scared of metal sounds from the swords. He grew up in fear. He did not feel love - Bro did NOT love him.

However, I think that the neglect is undeniable. Neglect is a form of abuse. Either you think it's because bro had malicious intent, or because he just didn't want/know how to take care of a kid, the neglect still happened. I think the most obvious example of this in the comic is when Dave is talking to Dirk, and he mentioned that he didn't even know what a fridge was for - meaning he didn't have extra food at home. He doesn't even get to keep food and water in his house - he hides it in his closet. THAT is more than just negelct. He alludes to other things going on that he doesn't want to drag anyone else into. If you consider Paradox Space canon, he mentions being locked in a dark room alone. Dave was a baby when Dirk found him, so sense birth, he was fending for himself. He had to figure out mundane, domestic tasks like laundry and cooking by himself. If he didn't teach himself how to find food, he would die, it's as simple as that. So not only did he live in fear, but he also had to worry about his survival...Basically sense birth. Or ectobiological creation, I guess.

The relationship Dave has with his Bro is complicated. When grieving their guardians, John is sad, and Rose is angry, but Dave just feels conflicted. I think it's clear that he is still figuring things out at this point, and I think the separation from his Bro allows for him to think about everything that has happened to him. It is confirmed that his upbringing is set apart from the others - the other guardians genuinly cared for and loved their child. Bro did not love Dave. The lack of love can be just as hurtful as the other abuses he was dealing with. He is given the opportunity to explore what has happened to him, and how unfair it was.

Anyway, i guess my point is, that it is insane to claim that people characterizing Dave's Bro as abusive is unfounded. People are the product of their upbringing, and that argument is explored in Homestuck. Dave's character was shaped partly because of his upbringing- it sets him apart from the others and allows for personal development.

[diezmil10000]

what was your dave hc for that davekat comic? just curious

okay so. two things. first of all a content warning for discussing homophobia and child abuse (i mention child sexual abuse but don’t go into detail). second of all, i read homestuck for the first time last month and i’ve never read any analysis of dave’s character, so i have no idea of what the general opinion is!

this is insanely long so it’s all under the cut, sorry if you didn’t expect this wall of text anon

i think it's pretty much explicitly canon that dave has a complicated relationship with his attraction to men, both because of internalised homophobia and because of the abuse he suffered as a child from his bro. as someone who didn’t pay much attention to dave until later pages, i want to say that his first meeting with dirk was the only moment in all homestuck that made me cry and left me with my heart stinging. i had to stop reading for a while

my comic was the result of days of thinking of how dave is a deeply repressed and traumatised boy who left earth thinking being gay is a joke, only to fall for another boy whose entire species is bisexual by default. i like to interpret dave as someone who is simultaneously uncomfortable with and yearning for intimacy – he is kinda okay with having a partner, with casually making out, but he freaks out the moment he has to talk about his feelings or take things a step further. the fact that he (as davesprite) suddenly breaks up with jade, unable to put his feelings into words for a proper explanation; the way he (pre-retcon) describes his relationship with terezi on the meteor as “a thing” and refuses to talk to karkat (or anyone) about it; the whole goddamn conversation between him and karkat and john in the final arc… this poor kid has gone through a lot

a lot of the abuse he’s suffered because of his bro is very explicit, like being denied privacy, but a lot of it is also left implied. he’s weirdly fixated on dirk being gay, not only because he wants to know how he came out, but also because learning about it made him have a realization about his bro that he refuses to even bring up in the conversation. the first though i had was that he went through some kind of sexual abuse, not necessarily involving physical touch (though it could be) but strong enough to damage his perception towards his own body. even for a headcanon in which that doesn’t happen, dave says his bro never truly loved him, and i can imagine him having never received any kind of genuine physical affection

we also have to take into account that dave’s last sight of earth was 2009’s earth. we’re in 2023 as i’m writing this and men all over the world still have a complicated relationship with affection and feelings, especially straight men towards other men. dave grew up in a time in which gay marriage wasn’t legal in the united states, in which a lot of feminist ideas were outright discarded as crazy, and he never had to question lgbt issues because all of his crushes before karkat were girls. so he left earth being not exactly homophobic but finding jokes about gay people funny, and then he was forced to live with aliens that don’t understand heteronormativity because they quite literally don’t care about gender. and on top of that, the only other human in the meteor who happens to be his sister is suddenly a lesbian, and he feels like he’s the only one who can’t come to terms with his own sexuality

as much as it’s tempting to think that dave and rose had some conversations about the topic on the meteor, to me it is much more interesting to think that they haven’t. rose is another can of worms, and i personally love that the way she sorted her feelings out is 100% up to interpretation (i have dozens of explicitly repressed lesbians to read about in other media) – however, in every possible scenario i imagine dave dying to ask her personal questions, but ultimately deciding against it because it would put him in a vulnerable position. he isn't alone, but he's been taught to believe he is

so, finally coming back to how i envisioned my davekat comic: they have made out more than once but they have never talked about how they feel about it. karkat is afraid to death of hurting dave because he apparently can’t stop hurting his loved ones! but he guesses that at this point they are both on the same page and they should take it a step further and maybe dave just needs someone else to silently take the initiative? which isn't entirely wrong (they are horny teenagers physically craving for touch), but the sudden skin-to-skin contact is too much for dave, who isn’t mentally prepared for this. and he won’t be prepared until he talks about it, but he will eventually. because he will learn that he isn't alone and he will never be

honestly, out of all things i didn’t expect when i read homestuck, the last one was a well written teenager coming to terms with the fact that he’s bisexual. i really don’t want to hear any debate about this topic, because i was genuinely touched by how human dave’s development felt and that’s the emotion i want to remember. i too have been a lgbt teenager with no words to describe my experiences, afraid of coming out to my friends, and it was very nice to read that two of the four main protagonists of homestuck are explicitly lgbt. sorry if the wording isn’t the most pleasing, i know that literally almost every homestuck character is explicitly lgbt (you could argue that all kids are), but i guess that rose and dave being *inarguably* lgbt while being so important to the story makes my heart warm. we don’t usually get stories like this that get so insanely popular. also, i hope this hasn’t come across as me reducing dave to his insecurities and sexuality, it was after all a reply to a specific question!!

thank you for the interest anon, and thank you for reading all of this to anyone who has :)

[sistersorrow]

Random facts about me too uninteresting for their own posts

As a kid, I first learned of Alexander the Great in a children's book that was being distributed for free on a flight to visit relatives in the UK

In college I thought I simply didn't get hangovers, but it turned I was getting hangover but didn't notice cause I already felt like shit all the time

I used to burst into hives when exposed to faux fur

People often doubted I was my parents' child because I was a very pale baby

I have recurring dreams where the doors in my house won't lock and something is trying to get in

As a baby, I was bowlegged

My earliest memory is of a time I stepped barefoot on broken glass

One of the only people irl who knows I'm trans is my ex girlfriend and this fact haunts me

I have recurring dreams where I have a white cat and then something kills him

In dreams I generally have no strong emotional response to murder and will solve all my problems with murder

My mom does not remember the time I tried to come out as trans

Jared Leto's Joker is how I learned I was bi

The two things that got me into Disney Channel were the Mr Bean animated series and seeing Shego made young me feel a certain way

My least favourite field of biology is botany

Closing my eyes makes it harder for me to visualise things because when I close my eyes what I see can best be compared to boiling paint

If i sit in a quiet room and roll back my eyes, I can make myself hear whispers

I do not like wearing long sleeved shirts as they feel suffocating

I like wearing hoodies though

I first got into webcomics because 14 year old me was looking for places online to read Dilbert comics

I do not like mountains

When it gets cold, my finger joints swell and completely lock up

I got my chosen name from the Old World Blues mod for Hearts of Iron 4

I am 6'3" and walk quickly, but also have very quiet footsteps, so I often startle people

None of my widsom teeth grew in cause they're sideways

I eat coarse salt straight out the bag

Coming up with facts for this list was really hard cuase I can't think of many facts about myself

When cooking ramen I boil off as much water as possible to increase flavour concentration

Much of my taste in music comes from the Life is Strange soundtrack and Homestuck AMVs

I can't properly pronounce my birth name as it contains sounds not found in English

I hold mugs backwards sith the handle facing away from my hand

My go to alcoholic mixes are gin/vodka screwdrivers, tequilla and coke, or rum and tropical punch monster energy

[lilietsblog]

Alright, let me make headers same as you do.

ALLEGORY: HOMESTUCK IS NOT A ONE OF THOSE

Sburb being a creation myth doesn't make it allegorical. It is very much about these kids very literally creating a universe in the text. Same for coming of age: it's not an allegory about coming of age in general, it's about these very specific internet friends literally growing up over the course of these specific events.

Neither does having themes make it allegorical. Themes are, generally, about literally what happens, and how it echoes The Way Things Happen In General.

"If you read Homestuck as if it's an allegory for growing up" but it's not one of those! You literally just quoted Hussie saying it's a creation myth. A creation myth is not an allegory for growing up, those are completely different things!

"Therefore, we are not meant to read SBURB's destruction of the old world as fully literal; we are intended to read it as metaphorical." Incorrect! This is a creation myth. Things happening to universes do literally happen. This is a story of a death of two universes and creation of a third.

My source:

HS was always going to be a story about an extremely elaborate creation myth. As elaborate as I could conceive. In the HS reality, Sburb/Sgrub is the means by which universes procreate. Planets and civilizations are the seeds from which one or many new universes will blossom if the players succeed, at the expense of the life on that planet.

And also:

I always saw HS as an exploration of young people developing relationships over the internet [...] There's a lot more to HS than just that obviously,

So no, we are in fact meant to read all the deaths as literally happening. Everyone said to die very much did litearlly die. Does it have PARALLELS with regular growing up? Yes, of course. But the game takes that up to 11 in a very cruel way.

Your own analysis (as well as generally accepted analysis across the fandom) generally takes literal in-universe events seriously. Eridan has been killing from a young age, and this traumatized him. It's not a metaphor for doing something else, it's a story about a child soldier. Rose is not a metaphor for children misunderstanding their parents, she literally grew up with an alcoholic mom which fucked her up. Feferi is not a metaphor for rich kids, she's an example of one.

This is an important distinction: when something is an allegory, we aren't meant to ask questions about literally what happened. Do foxes generally eat grapes? Doesn't matter, the fox is an allegory. The story is not about foxes.

Meanwhile in most instances of "themes", we are meant to read the text literally, and find themes in that literal reading. Characters are not metaphors for something else, they play the role of themselves. They are meant to be taken literally as examples of what the work wants us to think about. Raskolnikov is not a metaphor for the economic system or whatever, he's literally a 19th century university student who got stuck in his own head a bit too much. It's a story about 19th century university students and the world they live in. It's stuffed with themes to the brim, but it's not allegorical. Raskolnikov's social class matters. Raskolnikov's living situation matters. Raskolnikov's social group matters. People Raskolnikov meets and who exactly they are and what exactly their circumstances are matters. Raskolnikov's actions matter. He goes to prison not because transgressing against society in general merits voluntary incarceration, but because he literally killed two women and it's that specific act in that specific context that he finally manages to process correctly by the end of the story.

Unlike the story with the fox, where the actual species of the fox is completely irrelevant to the story, in non-allegorical thematically rich stories every single detail matters. They are detail rich, and we are meant to take every detail seriously and understand the reasoning of the characters and the events that happen in context of that detail. The curtains were blue, and this made the mood of the person spending every day in that room a little more melancholic. Rose was left without a chance to ever talk to her mom, and turned to drinking as the last tie she has to her. The fact the kids' guardians literally died, and not just stepped back to let them live on their own, changes the calculus of what they do and how they think drastically.

Homestuck isn't just a creation myth, and it's not just a story about kids growing up. It's a story about KIDS GROWING UP IN A CREATION MYTH. They panic and flail because they are kids growing up; their mistakes have catastrophic consequences and their fears are multiversal scale because it's a creation myth. You can't just cut away one part and interpret the other part as allegorical. Just like how Homestuck is not an allegory for regular kids growing up in a normal society, Homestuck is not an allegory for competent adult creator deities making a world. Both these parts are quite real, and it's their INTERSECTION that Homestuck explores.

(Hence all the references to real life religions. They serve to drive in the point that yes, this is that epic, you are meant to be that scared and take things that seriously. The Welsh sword is in fact that significant, lighthearted jokes or not)

PREDESTINATION, FREE WILL AND CRUELTY

Indeed, Homestuck predestination runs on free will. Events happen the way they do because of a complex mathematical equation involving the personalities of everyone involved. That's why I talk about Caliborn's responsibility for what he did, instead of saying that it's not his fault because it was fated.

However, the way predestination works robs characters of the ability to make informed decisions. Dave had no way of knowing he was dooming his timeline when he prototyped Lil Cal. Karkat skipping the last frog didn't realize he was giving the new universe cancer. Jade and Jake making John a present had no idea it would enable Jack's ascension. So on and so forth.

The way predestination works bases everything on what the people involved are like, but it doesn't go for the best case scenario. As far as I can tell, the "gravity" of the alpha timeline was towards the Lord of Time's existence and powers, since that's what those powers are. Karkat goes on a whole monologue about how other versions of him god tiered (grew up! matured! confronted death!), but he personally didn't, and he's the one who gets to survive "because the alpha said so".

(Lord of Time powers given to a lonely, miserable, angry preteen-to-teen, whose idea of how to use them boiled down to an immature fantasy - this did not doom him because fantasies like this generally doom kids, they don't. It doomed him because of the out-of-his-control amplification of his immaturity by the game's mechanisms)

Even where they did have information: put simply, if you give a 2 year old a real gun, you're responsible for the resulting injuries, not the 2 year old. If you put a 7 year old behind the wheel of a stick shift car that's already moving in the middle of a busy intersection, you are responsible for the resulting damage, not the 7 year old. If you give a 16 year old a button and tell them that if they press it, everyone on Earth will die, and they don't believe you and press it to prove it, and everyone does die, that's on you for making the button and giving it to them, not on them.

And in all of the above situations, the act of giving them the responsibility they aren't remotely equipped to handle is, in fact, cruel.

And so: the 2 year old would be wise to be scared of the gun and refuse to touch it. The 7 year old would be wise to throw a tantrum and refuse to touch the steering wheel. The 16 year old would be wise to turn around and walk away, or perhaps call for a trusted adult.

So in this game, refusing to engage and striving just for escape is not an "immature" position. It's just trying to kick off the bottom and raise to the surface against a current that's trying to drown you. Even if it keeps insisting that it's for your own good.

SUMMARY

I don't have different sources than you. I don't disregard Word of God to construct my own death-of-the-author'd interpretation. I read the text as it was written, with Hussie's comments in mind. (It's been years. I've forgotten the specifics. But they shaped how I read the story, how I understand it and how I remember it. Thank you for bringing the specifics back)

And the blood is on the gears.

Murder, Love, and Destiny: An Eridan Ampora Character Study

Warnings for things from Homestuck, like discussions of child abuse, mental illness, murder, suicide, etc. etc.

Because there's a huge wall of text after this point, I'm going to summarize what I hope to convince you of in bullet point format, and then hope you'll actually read the rest of the text before arguing with me about it.

Eridan is the least casteist highblood, if you ignore all the slurs.

Those are his emotional support slurs.

Pale EriKar was not only canon, but set up to be endgame.

Eridan is incredibly plot-relevant, thematically relevant, and was definitely originally intended to be brought back to life, alongside the other dead trolls.

He's Sad.

The first thing we have to establish is what counts as "canon" for the purpose of this essay. I am only counting the original comic up to Game Over, after which there's a general consensus that Hussie kind of gave up on his original planned ending, and slapped together something that most people hate. So I am immediately disqualifying Pesterquest, supplementary material, fanworks deemed canon, the epilogues, and Homestuck^2.

Moreover, we are taking Hussie's commentaries with a grain of salt, for two reasons. The first reason is that I firmly believe - and will be arguing - that the original plan was to bring Eridan (and the other dead trolls) back; therefore, Hussie (who has a track record of playing coy with future plot twists) can't speak too fondly of him, lest he give it away. The second reason for de-emphasizing Hussie's words is that, post-retcon, Hussie isn't very well going to say that he had plans for a better ending, and then didn't execute on them; to save face, he has to act as though his trashing of several prior plot threads, including but not limited to Eridan, was the plan all along.

Therefore, this essay will not be putting too much emphasis on Word of God, and will instead be relying on textual evidence from the comic itself, of which there is plenty. So without further ado:

Eridan is a Consummate Murderer.

The reason I'm starting with this point is that, far more than any other, this truth lies at the core of his being. Eridan is formally introduced to us with a murder, and he's haunted by an overpowering genocide complex. He outright describes to Rose at one point that "killin is all i evver done practically," and uses "murder" as an expletive (ie "swweet stinkin murder"). With a conservative estimate of 5 kills per week for 4 sweeps (Vriska looks VERY young when she has to start killing, and Eridan was likely a similar age when he began), both Eridan and Vriska easily have bodycounts above 2000 - the real number is probably even higher.

At this point, many raise an objection that Eridan is only killing lusii, but I believe we need to count his kills as troll murders, for three reasons: first, a dead lusus results in the orphaned troll being culled; second, one has to assume he has had cases of trolls trying to defend their lusii, or coming after him for vengeance; and third - and most importantly - Eridan HIMSELF is thinking about the orphaned trolls.

Compare Feferi: Go Home:

That should keep her happy for a while. At least until she dies.

To Eridan: Go Home:

That should keep her happy for a while. And make a freshly orphaned troll somewhere very sad.

So Eridan, to a much greater extent than even Feferi, is thinking about the orphaned trolls he's leaving behind, and considers his own actions to be murder.

Now that we've established the facts regarding his murders - a rough bodycount, and the fact that, by his own admission, he barely had any hobbies outside of it - we can move on to the effect that it's had on him. It's not very good!

Vriska's manipul8tions and murders had to be done for her own sake - if she ever stopped, she died. Therefore, much of Vriska's personality revolves around justifying her own actions so she doesn't have to reckon with her softer feelings, like guilt or kindness - which she expresses would be viewed as scandalous by others of her caste.

But if Eridan ever stops feeding Gl'bgolyb, everybody dies. The stakes he has riding on his shoulders are, at all times, the fate of all trolls, including all his friends. Given Dualscar's title was "Orphaner," it's implied that killing lusii for Gl'bgolyb has always been a violet blood's duty, and is seen as such by the others, which is why nobody expresses gratitude for his hard work even a single time.

Which brings us to our next point:

Eridan is Crushed by Anxiety.

If Eridan stops killing lusii, everybody - especially his friends, but everybody else, too - dies.

If Eridan ever shows guilt or kindness, he'll be considered "weak" by the standards of highbloods - he shares this with Vriska.

Eridan is expected, by aristocratic tradition, to take on the mantle of his ancestor Dualscar and finish his work. Dualscar met a comedically cringefail end, so this is a massive undertaking.

Before finding out that god tiering is an option - so, for nearly his entire life - Eridan has had to live with the expectation that he will outlive all of his friends. The lowbloods from culling or dying on the battlefield, the highbloods from old age, and Feferi from being killed by the Empress when she gets old enough.

(This is reflected in who he talks to the most - Feferi, who's the only one with a natural lifespan longer than his, Vriska, who's a highblood, Kanaya, who's practically guaranteed to survive into adulthood, and Karkat, whose anonblood allows Eridan to give him the benefit of the doubt.)

Also if he can't land his concupiscent quadrants he'll die from that too, but that seems pretty secondary to the rest of his concerns.

He can't even make friends with the other highbloods, because sea dwellers are expected to hate and antagonize them.

He had a free ticket into adulthood, but would almost certainly be expected to join the army and serve as a commander. That is to say, his fate of performing the role of a vicious, murderous sea dweller seems dreadfully inevitable to him.

NO WONDER he can't stop having emotional breakdowns. NO WONDER his chatlogs swing wildly from relentless self-aggrandizement to traumadumping. NO WONDER he's obsessed with murder and death and genocide.

Doc Scratch calls him a "vengeful boy on the path of nihilism," and it's not hard to see why: Eridan's entire life has been about living up to the role imposed on him by society, sacrificing his own time and sanity for everyone else, which he "nevver got any appreciation for anywway." And all he had to look forward to was more of the same, all his friends dropping dead one by one before him. For Eridan, there has never been any hope.

SGRUB could have been a way out for him, but a combination of his own terrible choices, spurred on by his anxieties, and his teammates' unwillingness to knock some sense into him, meant that he only wound up mired even deeper in his hopelessness.

We all know about how Eridan wouldn't stop killing the angels on his planet, provoking their aggression and turning it into a ball of death. How he was definitely not supposed to be doing this, and how his stubborn insistence on it led to his further ostracization from the rest of the group. The thing is, when we look at his angel-murders from the point of view that Eridan's entire life has been about murdering things or else Something Bad™ happens, it actually starts to become... kind of sad.

KARKAT: BETWEEN A TRIGGERHAPPY PRINCE WITH A GOD WEAPON BLASTING ANYTHING THAT TWITCHED AND A MILLION CRAZED ANGELS HE DELIBERATELY ENRAGED, IT WASN'T WHAT I'D CALL AN IDEAL SOCIAL HUB. KARKAT: IF YOU WERE LONELY WHY DIDN'T YOU VENTURE OUT MORE OFTEN? ERIDAN: wwell i wwoulda but nobody else wwas vvolunteerin to pick up the slack on angel killin duties

Killing the angels is something he feels like his has to do, because his entire life has been about killing things he doesn't want to kill. He's unable to break out of that mindset on his own, and his unpleasant personality has scared off anyone who might want to help. No one on the team tries to understand his thought process on a deeper level, not even Karkat, who just tells him it was an idiotic thing to do without addressing his underlying anxieties at all. Indeed, "nobody understands."

And this is really the root of why I think so many people get the wrong read on Eridan - Eridan is constantly contradicting himself, constantly denying his own feelings, constantly pushing an image that he doesn't actually believe in, and constantly insisting that he's fine with all the horrible shit in his life - that he likes it, even. After all, he can't admit to his guilt for his murders, or how much he doesn't want to watch his friends die, or how scared he is about the future - that'd be weakness!

CC: I can't look after you anymore. CA: I DIDNT EVER NEED ANYONE TO LOOK AFTER ME CA: i was totally fuckin fine my ambitions were noble

You see his contradictory nature with his stated love of history, which he only ever offhandedly mentions - because he's not actually that interested in history, it's just something that's expected of someone of his station. And you see it with his wavy accent, which he himself calls "weird" and drops when he's trying to be emotionally sincere. And you see it with his dumbass outfit, which is very clearly an imitation of Dualscar (with the only exception being the wizard-ass scarf, because wizards are his actual interest. I don't believe he likes fashion. I genuinely believe - and Eridan himself says so - that he basically has no hobbies outside of murder).

Even being proud to be a sea dweller is pretty much an outright lie:

CC: You can't )(ave t)(e sort of affinity for "our kind" t)(at you profess if you've only spent, w)(at... CC: A few days underwater, maybe? IN YOUR W)(OL-E LIF-E!

One that he tells because he's SCARED OF THE OCEAN. Because he knows what lives in the ocean, because he's been feeding it his entire life. I see a lot of people who give Eridan an interest in marine life, and I'm telling you, that's just got no basis in canon. He's fucking TERRIFIED of the sea.

And for that matter, land dweller genocide. Eridan doesn't want to do it. Both Feferi AND his internal narration call him out for not actually wanting to do it. He outright states he wouldn't kill his friends.

CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

But he feels like he HAS to want it, HAS to believe in it, HAS to be talking about it constantly, because that's what's expected from him as a sea dweller, and a sea dweller is ALL that he will get to be. The mutation that puts a violet streak in his hair is damning. It's a fate he feels like he can't escape. Which brings us to:

Eridan is Not Actually Casteist, Well He Is But Not Like That, It's Complicated

Secondary title: Those Are His Emotional Support Slurs, Okay

In the exact same vein (haha) as secretly not wanting all the land dwellers dead, Eridan also genuinely doesn't feel like he's better than lower blood castes. Vriska and Equius obviously put quite a bit of stock into being nobility, and both have acted superior to Karkat for it. Feferi actually revels in her high status, and while she is genuinely well-meaning, she's not as interested in abolishing casteism as she is in changing the meaning of "culling" specifically (the hemocaste, aristocracy, and casteism still very much exist in a Beforus under her rule). Gamzee MIGHT be the only highblood less casteist than Eridan, but then again, as soon as he snaps, he does say a lot of casteist stuff to Equius, although it's unclear how serious he is, and he also proceeds to get really into his weird highblood clown cult.

Meanwhile, Eridan - despite all his slurs and talk of genocide - does not actually try to "pull rank" on a lowblood for being a lower caste than him with a single exception. That exception is Sollux... after he's already shown having entirely caste-neutral opinions on Sollux:

CC: But Sollux finally came t)(roug)(, and now I believe t)(e full c)(ain is complete! CA: man that guy CA: hes a fuckin drama machine it is fuckin pathetic CC: YOUR STUPID FIS)(Y FAC-E IS T)(-E DRAMA MAC)(IN-E T)(AT DO-ES NOT)(ING BUT W)(IN-E AND GLUB. CC: 38P CA: fuck SORRY CC: Anyway you s)(ouldn't say t)(at about )(im, )(e is a )(ero and )(e saved my life. CA: yeah sorry

CA: my feelins seem petty and meaninless noww CA: she had better things to wworry about than my ovverwwrought bullshit CA: like the dead guy wwho savved her CA: so forget it thanks anywway

It's only AFTER he's mad at Sollux for dating Feferi that he starts going in on Sollux with casteist rhetoric... which is treated as unrequited flirting and not serious casteism:

ERIDAN: hey finless this doesnt concern those wwith mustard sludge slippin through their vveins ERIDAN: its a matter for royalty only ERIDAN: so keep your mouth closed or ill slit you open ovver my next meal SOLLUX: w/e bro, not iintere2ted. FEFERI: -Eridan, please! I don't want to see any more dueling. FEFERI: Don't try to provoke )(im. It's not like I don't know w)(at you're doing! You keep trying to spark a rivalry wit)( )(im to get me to auspisticize between you two, and pull us out of our quadrant! FEFERI: It is t)(e oldest and lamest trick in t)(e book. It didn't work t)(en and it won't work now!

THEY don't even think he's being casteist.

In fact, directly contradicting this earlier argument he has with Feferi:

CC: T)(is is t)(e last time I will say t)(is. CC: W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!! CC: GLUB. >38( CA: pshh CA: hemospectrum begs to differ

He OUTRIGHT states his real feelings here:

CA: im the biggest fuckin idiot who ever lived CA: i cant BELIEVE i just opened up to you like a chump when i knew what was comin CA: i am one sad fuckin brinesucker CA: overemotional sappy trash youre right im not better than anybody CA: im worse than anybody CA: EVERYBODY CA: all the bodies

So the question of "is Eridan casteist" has an answer of "kind of, but also no." Eridan DOES espouse the rhetoric; he's constantly saying stuff that a casteist sea dweller "should" be saying. However, if you look at his ACTIONS, and the way he actually treats people, he doesn't actually care about blood color. He'll hit on anybody, and he's rude as fuck to everybody. The real problem with him is that he's terrible to talk to, not that he's discriminatory.

That's the thing about Eridan. Understanding him means looking past the way he presents himself, the lies he tells to himself, and even, at times, the way the narration presents him. His "overblown emotional theatrics" seem a lot less overblown when his problems ARE so real, deep-seated, and constantly causing him an unimaginable amount of anguish.

The problem is, the main people he has to bounce those problems against are Feferi, Vriska, and Kanaya, three of the people most comfortable with their privileged positions, for whom Eridan's genuine emotional distress seems like needless melodrama. Feferi loves being a princess, Vriska enjoys her noble privileges, Kanaya doesn't need to worry about culling. But for Eridan, his noble status, and the duties and expectations placed on him for it, have caused him nothing but pain - of course he would feel like nobody understands. Most of his closest friends genuinely don't, nor do they try to.

Because that's what he is at his core - a traumatized fucking child, who doesn't see any way out. Eridan is not a casteist genocidal sea dweller... he just wishes he was one, and tries to be one, because if he actually was one, he wouldn't feel so awful and scared and sad all the time. He'd be normal, like his friends.

The reason he constantly spouts anti-land dweller rhetoric and uses casteist language is to assuage this cognitive dissonance. That's why he has to come off so strong, present himself in such an aggrandized way, act like such a douchebag. They're his emotional support slurs. He doesn't actually believe what he says, which means he's a Bad Sea Dweller, which means he's Failing, which means Something Bad Will Happen, so he'd better get his ass in line and say something casteist!

And it's all made worse because:

Eridan is Dumb of Ass (and True of Word)

Oh my god you guys he's so stupid that it hurts.

Okay, that's not entirely fair. Eridan is clearly well-educated and book smart; he has some of the most elegant prose out of the trolls, and he's prone to going off on insane rants with it. (Actually, his language gets more flowery and showy when he's trying to impress a stranger, and gets progressively more laid back, chill, and even kind of "bro"-y when he starts talking to people he doesn't feel like he needs to impress.)

CA: at this point i find all her adorable black pixie dabblins to be prime kiddie playtime shit CA: all of her FRAUDULENT MAGICS cannot come close to posin threat to my mastery ovver the TRUEST SCIENCES CA: an wwith my empiricists wwand i servve as the righteous hope that wwill incinerate delusion and the deluded alike CA: my holy fire is the wwhite fury bled from the wwrath-wweary eyes of fifty thousand nonfictional angels CA: and wwhen theyre finished wweepin they wwill boww before their prince GG: wow what are you talking about

What I mean is this: his brain is so full of anxiety and cognitive dissonance and murder and death that he struggles to care about other people, which has devastating effects on his social skills. I go really in-depth on how his though process informs his behavior here. The question may have popped up in your mind already: if his casteism stuff isn't actually real, then what is Eridan actually like? The answer is, overwhelmingly, and discomfortingly, SINCERE.

This boy is gunning at 100% emotional earnestness 100% of the time, and it's deeply uncomfortable for others to deal with. He'll swing wildly from insults and derogatory language, to stating a desire to kill all land dwellers, to awe and amazement at his friends' prowess, to demanding that they do things for him, to traumadumping and venting, without missing a beat. Often in the same conversation.

CA: kan its hard GA: What CA: being a kid and growwing up CA: its hard and nobody understands

He's also specifically terrible at parsing hostility. Functionally, he interprets all hostility aimed AT him as either pitch/ashen flirting or "ironic repartee," and similarly views his own hostile words as verbal jousting, pitch/ashen advances, or even just factual descriptions of the world around him (ie calling Nepeta a "kittycat shipper cavve girl"). Hostility and aggression are just kind of his baseline, default state of being, and he basically has no ability to differentiate between good and bad attention. I talk more in-depth about his emotionally bereft upbringing (and shitty lusus) here, but suffice to say that our boy isn't getting any emotional support at home, and as a result, craves attention, no matter what kind.

This also means he's insanely gullible. For example, Rose calls him an idiot to his face, and then blows up his computer, sarcastically calling it "your first lesson in showmanship." Eridan proceeds to literally considers it that, blowing up Jade's computer after he's done talking to her. Furthermore, Kanaya sees him as a burden, insults him to his face, and pretty much just bullies him along with Rose for fun.

So she trains Eridan to become a powerful white wizard of hope to challenge her, as a joke.

And yet, in spite of all that, Eridan still has nothing but gratitude and praise for Kanaya:

ERIDAN: kan i been meanin to thank you KANAYA: For What ERIDAN: for all that trainin you did ERIDAN: i wwouldnt be the incredible holy wwizard i am noww wwithout your help KANAYA: But I Didnt Even Really Train You I Just Made You A Wand ERIDAN: yeah wwell thats all i needed i guess ERIDAN: i just needed for someone to showw a little faith in me so im sayin thanks i owwe ya KANAYA: Okay Then Youre Welcome KANAYA: I Hope You Use Your Magnificent Powers Of Light And Hope For Goodness And Purity And Lets Not Forget Science ERIDAN: dont wworry im all ovver that shit you dont evven knoww KANAYA: Uh Oh I Hope That Didnt Come Off As Too Sarcastic ERIDAN: wwhat KANAYA: The Thing I Just Said KANAYA: I Didnt Even Realize How Sarcastic I Was Being Its Starting To Become A Problem I Think KANAYA: Please Dont Take Too Much Offense ERIDAN: haha damn kan if thats your idea of offense bein made then i honestly gotta fuckin wworry for you ERIDAN: tell you wwhat ill givve you some lessons in dealin out the dark umbrage to repay you for your tutelage in the wwhite science

Like, he's in the middle of genuinely thanking her for believing in him, she makes fun of him to his face, and his response is to laugh it off and offer to teach her how to properly insult someone. It's honestly... kind of sad. Not that he doesn't deserve the ridicule, but what we're seeing here is a traumatized, emotionally neglected boy trying to communicate the best that he can that he loves and appreciates his friends, and receiving nothing but mockery in return.

It's really not a surprise, then, that he goes off the deep end. His entire life prior to the game has been shit; he got broken up with as soon as he entered the game (by someone who didn't even care enough not to use fish puns while doing it); he's ostracized and avoided for the game's duration; and then he spends the rest of his time on the meteor being bullied. He feels deeply hopeless and anxious about their situation because he literally doesn't know how else to exist, and his concerns are dismissed and mocked at every turn. When Feferi turns on him with intent to kill, that's his breaking point.

I see a lot of people say he goes grimdark, or succumbs to external influence somehow, but I don't think that needs to be true (nor is it) - he's just a deeply traumatized kid with almost no support network who's finally been pushed to the edge, despite displaying every possible warning sign and making multiple cries for help. Yes, ultimately, he's guilty for his own actions, but his killing spree - alongside Gamzee's and Vriska's - represents a cohesive failure as a team to address very clear problems in their midst.

So Feferi and Kanaya are sick of his ass. Sollux hates him platonically, Equius doesn't like him, and Nepeta thinks of him as a creep. Vriska is his awkward ex, and Terezi agrees with him when he calls himself pathetic. He never interacts with Tavros, Aradia, or sober!Gamzee. Is there anyone that treats him nicely?

Uh, okay, so I swear this isn't shipping goggles -

Pale EriKar Is Canon And I Can Prove It

So, I'm going to start this with a disclaimer: you can ship what you want to ship. I don't mind. I don't care. Headcanons are valid, death of the author, etc. What you do in your free time is up to you.

What I am attempting to argue in this section is that an Eridan/Karkat moirallegiance was heavily foreshadowed, one of the most heavily foreshadowed things in the entire comic, and - assuming that the original ending of Homestuck included all the dead trolls being brought back and redeemed - was going to be endgame. There's a torrential amount of evidence pointing to this, and very little of it is acknowledged even by the EriKar shippers, which is a shame.

At the very least, I'll be happy if I can convince some Karkat RPers to be extra nice to Eridans, because they are actually just friends who care deeply about each other. Canonically.

The first thing to note is that Eridan and Karkat, at least prior to SGRUB, talk all the time, to the point where Feferi feels the need to comment on it:

CC: You know, I'm not sure w)(y we never talk about our romantic aspirations. CC: We s)(ould more often. It is kind of -EXCITING! CA: shrug CC: Probably because you fill your gossip quota wit)( your nubby )(orned bro. CC: You leave not)(ing left to talk about wit)( your dear sweet moirail! CC: We are supposed to )(elp eac)( ot)(er wit)( t)(at stuff too, remember. CA: maybe CA: seems kinda CA: odd though

("Can you please stop having an emotional affair with Karkat" "Eh, I'll think about it")

The second thing to note is what the contents of those conversations entail. Sure, they "gossip," but it goes deeper than that, because they gossip about things that Karkat would NEVER gossip about with anybody else, because Karkat usually respects his "VERY GOOD FRIEND"s. For example, here Eridan mentions that Karkat has speculated on Kanaya's love life with him:

CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that GA: No Thats Not It CA: yeah it is your real feelins run pretty awwful RUDDY methinks evverybody knowws it CA: especially that assblood karkat he and me havve you so pegged about that its upright silly

And it's not even a one-off thing, because here Karkat is again, mentioning Nepeta's crush on him:

KARKAT: OK, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE'S STILL OBSESSED WITH ME. KARKAT: IT'S A VERY UNFORTUNATE, VERY RED AND VERY UNREQUITED SITUATION I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TIPTOE AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, OK? KARKAT: HER DISINTEREST IN YOUR ADVANCE WASN'T A REFLECTION ON YOU AT ALL. KARKAT: COME ON, WE TALKED ABOUT THIS.

It's a situation he's been trying to "tiptoe around for a long time," and he tells ERIDAN, of all people? MULTIPLE TIMES? (AND HE ALSO TELLS ERIDAN THAT THE REJECTION WASN'T HIS FAULT???? WHAT??????)

So we've established that they talk frequently and about some pretty seriously sensitive topics. But did you know that they also talk about... their feelings?

See, the thing is, Karkat has always been weirdly nice to Eridan. Here he is in a memo near the very beginning of their game, when Karkat is at his most "rah rah, I'm the big bad leader":

FCA: i got a problem FCA: wwith feferi FCA: and im really kinda sittin here in bad shape about it emotionally speakin CCG: OK, WELL CCG: I GET THAT, I HEAR YOU BRO CCG: BUT THIS IS STILL NOT THE RIGHT PLACE FOR THIS SO I'VE GOT TO BAN YOU. CCG banned FCA from responding to memo. CCG: BUT SERIOUSLY JUST GET IN TOUCH WITH ME IN PRIVATE ABOUT IT, OK MAN? CCG: WE'LL GET YOUR SHIT STRAIGHTENED OUT.

Compare that to Tavros asking for advice later down in the same memo:

PAT: sINCE i DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE NOW, bUT MAYBE HELP ME, PAT: aBOUT A THING THAT HAS TO DO WITH A GIRL, PAT: lIKE, PAT: a ROMANCE THING, yOU MIGHT KNOW ABOUT, CCG: YOU PEOPLE ARE IMBECILES. CCG: ALL OF YOU. CCG: I AM NOT POSTING THESE MEMOS TO COUNSEL YOU ON YOUR PAST AND FUTURE DATING PROBLEMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CCG: WHY ARE YOU ALL SUCH BASKET CASES. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY ANYMORE. PAT: sORRY, CCG: SHOULD I BAN YOU? WHAT'S EVEN THE POINT ANYMORE! ONE OF YOU STOOGES WILL BE RIGHT ON THE LAST ONES HEELS WITH ANOTHER SOB STORY. CCG: JUST CCG: HURRY UP AND TELL ME WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS BRO.

He then proceeds to dispense no actual love advice; he just points out that Vriska can totally read this memo too, and then mocks them both when she shows up - thus making it clear that he is giving Eridan special treatment.

You see it again in his discussion with Eridan in [S] Kanaya: Return to the Core, where Eridan invokes a "pact" between them, and Karkat immediately plays nice with him, despite himself being extremely high-strung and stressed out:

KARKAT: RIGHT, IT'S POWERED BY SCIENCE, I FORGOT. KARKAT: OR HOPE. WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT MEANS. ERIDAN: i dont fuckin need this from you i take enough shit as it is from the rest a you dirtscrapers i thought you and me had a kinda pact or wwhatevver KARKAT: OK FINE, SHUT UP, I APOLOGIZE. I KNOW IT'S TOUGH BEING YOU.

That's definitely pity, which Karkat states to be the basis of all relationships besides pitch. But, sure, okay, Karkat is sometimes nice to his friends. He is, after all, the Friendship Troll, so that's not necessarily out of the ordinary. But how about the fact that it goes both ways?

That's right, Eridan "100% aggro 100% of the time" Ampora is actually really considerate toward Karkat's feelings, and basically nobody else's. Upon hearing that Karkat is distressed that Sollux has died, Eridan actively puts his own meltdown about his breakup with Feferi on pause:

TC: BeCaUsE OuR GoOd bRo sOlLuX JuSt kIcKeD ThE WiCkEd mOtHeRfUcKiN ShIt CA: wwhat the fuck do you mean by that CA: are you sayin hes dead TC: YeAh :o( CA: oh fuck CA: oh god fuck noww i feel like an asshole

He then goes on to chastise Gamzee for his shitty advice, demanding to be given the chance to comfort Karkat himself instead:

TC: BuT I ToLd hIm tO Be cHiLl TC: BeCaUsE ThErE Is a mIrAcLe cOmInG, i cAn fEeL It CA: that is the wworst fuckin advvice CA: wwhat an awwful thing a you to say CA: MAGIC ISNT REAL STUPID STOP BELIEVVIN IN IT TC: i'Ve gOt tO BeLiEvE At wHaT My hEaRt tElLs iN Me, EvEn iF It's a fAkE ThInG TC: HoNk CA: this is a lot a pointless fuckin rubbish and isnt no emotional help to him or me either for that matter CA: put kar on

Before finally giving up when Gamzee insists he's "too scared of Jack" to help, drinking some Faygo, and trying to ask past Karkat for help, because past Karkat isn't sad yet about Sollux dying. So, to recap,

Eridan's first instinct when in emotional duress is to go to Karkat.

Eridan feels like he knows Karkat well enough to know that Gamzee's advice would be useless (and is proven right by the fact that Gamzee and Karkat's moirallegiance fails for similar reasons).

Eridan is willing to shelve his own emotional meltdown for Karkat's sake.

Eridan demands to be the one to provide Karkat with emotional support.

And this is, again, not a one-off thing. In the memo Karkat opens right after Eridan and Gamzee have both turned murderous, after he's spent several minutes making death threats toward Eridan and insulting him directly, he goes:

CCG: I'M SO UPSET, I'M JUST COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. PCA: yeah i knoww wwhat its like you wwanna talk about it

Eridan spends this entire memo under the belief that it's a completely run-of-the-mill conversation they're having:

PCA: i mean yeah obvviously i kneww you wwerent serious PCA: i guess i appreciate the effort youre puttin into cheerin me up PCA: i can alwways count on you for some good ironic repartee kar nobody else really gets our sense a humor CCG: UGH, NO PCA: are you busy PCA: you said youd try to make it to lowwaa soon wwell howw about it

Which implies that offering to listen to Karkat's feelings is also a completely regular thing for them.

But something magical is ALSO happening within this last memo, and to really explain it, I'll first have to be a little mean to the GamKar shippers (sorry).

So, canonically, GamKar doesn't work out for them, despite also being somewhat foreshadowed. In fact, they feature on Nepeta's shipping wall, which is actually, in my opinion, foreshadowing that it WOULDN'T work out. (Nepeta's ships being wrong, and shipping being something she needs to learn to outgrow, is a whole essay on its own, that I'm not getting into here.)

But the thing is, the seeds for them not working out were also planted in the first - and only - real post-moirallegiance interaction that they have with each other, where Gamzee tries to calm Karkat down... and FAILS:

GAMZEE: naw brother, i was just about to all say for you to try and get your settle down on, maybe. GAMZEE: :o( ... KARKAT: OK KARKAT: OK YEAH KARKAT: I GUESS YOU'RE RIGHT. KARKAT: NO, YOU'RE RIGHT, I SHOULD RELAX. KARKAT: AND BREATHE. KARKAT: I MEAN, WHAT ARE MOIRAILS FOR, RIGHT? KARKAT: THIS IS HOW IT WORKS, I STOP YOU FROM KILLING EVERYBODY, THEN YOU RETURN THE FAVOR AND CALM ME DOWN AND I JUST KARKAT: BREATHE KARKAT: LIKE KARKAT: THIS... KARKAT: SNIIIIIIIIIIIIFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK, THAT SUN IS BRIGHT. KARKAT: CALL ME CRAZY, BUT IT'S KIND OF HARD TO RELAX WITHIN A STONE'S THROW FROM, OH, I GUESS ONLY THE BIGGEST FUCKING STAR ANY MORTAL HAS EVER LAID EYES ON. ... KARKAT: BUT I MEAN, CAN THIS BE HEALTHY? KARKAT: AREN'T WE GOING TO GET BURNED OR HAVE OUR RETINAS SCORCHED BY LOOKING AT IT? KARKAT: OH GOD I THINK I'M HAVING A PANIC ATTACK.

But let's go back to that memo where Karkat is freaking out in every way possible. This is how he starts that memo - so upset about the deaths of his friends and terrified by Gamzee that he can barely string together a coherent thought:

CCG: WE ARE SO SCREWED. CCG: OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK. CCG: GUYS, I AM TERRIFIED, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. CCG: I'M IN A ROOM FULL OF BODIES, AND I THINK I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO TURN MY BACK ON THEM? CCG: OH MY GOD, I JUST HEARD A HONK. ... CCG: FEFERI, I'M SORRY. CCG: IT WAS MY FAULT, I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. PCC: Sorry for w)(at?? CCG: FOR CCG: I CCG: I CAN'T DO THIS CCG: IT'S TOO MUCH FOR ME, I'M SORRY.

In fact, he's so distressed that he bans Past!Feferi and Past!Gamzee almost immediately after they come in. But then Eridan comes in, and... I mean, first of all, just compare how long it takes for him to ban Eridan:

But more interesting are the contents of their conversation. Over the course of talking to Eridan... Karkat completely calms the fuck down. Like he's entirely forgotten that he's shitting his pants with fear. In fact, he even starts critiquing Eridan for his dumbassery:

PCA: evven if i wwasnt compelled to think you wwere still bein flippant and ironic wwith me you cant exactly outright reject me can you CCG: WHY NOT PCA: cause youre future you PCA: doesnt count unless its present you til then its all fair game CCG: IS THIS REAL, ARE YOU BEING IRONIC OR SOMETHING, I CAN'T EVEN TELL ANYMORE CCG: THE PROBLEM IS, I CAN'T PUT THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR PAST YOU AT ALL, SO I DON'T KNOW. ... CCG: YOU'RE KILLING ANGELS NOW, AREN'T YOU PCA: no CCG: YOU ARE KILLING FUCKING ANGELS, RIGHT NOW, IN THE PAST, WITH YOUR SHITTY GUN. I JUST KNOW IT. PCA: wwell uh PCA: therere just so damn many kar and theyre not gettin any less bloody pissed is the thing CCG: THIS IS WHY IT WOULD NEVER WORK BETWEEN US, MAN.

It's extremely funny. Over the course of talking to Eridan, he goes from:

CCG: OH GOD OH GOD OH MAN OH GOD CCG: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

To:

CCG banned PCA from responding to memo. CCG: ANYWAY CCG: THAT'S IT I GUESS.

Eridan isn't even trying to calm Karkat down. He still succeeds in doing so. This is because they are soul mates. And I mean that in the sense that the comic literally calls being moirails soul mates, which it doesn't do for the other quadrants:

A reasonable human translation would be the concept of a soul mate, but in a more platonic sense, and with a more specific social purpose.

That "social purpose" being that an even-tempered troll calms down a more hot-tempered one, and vice versa.

It also goes on to note:

But some pale pairings, as the one above [referring to a picture of Nepeta and Equius], will be strikingly obvious to all who know them.

But what's really interesting is the next page.

And yet others will seem to have been hatched for each other.

Did you catch that? Let me zoom in.

(Also, the blue and red cuttlefish to represent Sollux - Feferi and Sollux spend the whole game together, and even wind up talking about their feelings constantly in a pile - more on piles in a sec.)

In fact... in Eridan's first visual appearance...

The crab has always been there for him.

It's also important to talk about the bottle of Faygo that's been photoshopped to be candy red, Karkat's blood color. The path that it takes actually directly mirrors Karkat's relationships with Gamzee and Eridan - it's initially something that Gamzee has, but winds up being ejected out of his life, and washes up on Eridan's shore. In fact:

TC: SnAtCh aN IcEcOlD, dOg TC: MoThErFuCkIn cHuG ThAt sHiT LiKe yOu aNd tHe bOtTlE WaS ReUnItEd lOvErS CA: are you recommendin a bevverage to me or somethin CA: is that wwhat this is TC: YeAh mAn SlAm A FaYgO CA: i dont havve a fuckin faygo you stupid fuck wwhy wwould i keep that disgusting shit on hand TC: ArE YoU MoThErFuCkIn sUrE AbOuT ThAt? CA: oh CA: oh god youre right i do CA: i totally forgot about it TC: YoU SeE MaN TC: MoThEr TC: FuCkIn TC: MiRaClEs TC: :o)

When Gamzee and Eridan discuss this exact bottle, Gamzee even likens it to "reunited lovers"; it's something that Eridan has had this whole time (after all, he was cheating on Feferi with the guy), but never realized.

There are a few miscellaneous things that don't really mean anything on their own, but put next to all this other stuff, is worth considering, so I'll list those now.

First, they both do the bonk:

Second:

CG: ARE WE NOT FRIENDS ANYMORE BECAUSE OF STUFF I SAID. TA: eheheheh you LIITERALLY a2k me that every tiime are you jokiing. TA: ii cant even tell anymore. CG: IT'S A JOKE MORON. CG: HONESTLY I'M JUST GLAD NOBODY ELSE IS PRIVVY TO OUR CONVERSATIONS.

Third, Karkat muses to his future self about how he misses his friends, especially the assholes, two pages before staring at a dead Eridan's ass (joking, he's definitely looking at WV, but it's still significant that this thought is being associated with Eridan):

CCG: I MEAN, DON'T GET ME WRONG. CCG: I MISS ALL OF MY DEAD FRIENDS A LOT. CCG: EVEN THE ASSHOLES! I MISS THEM TOO. MAYBE EVEN ESPECIALLY THEM, IN SOME PERVERSE WAY. CCG: AND I SHOULD BE RELIEVED THAT THEY ALL SEEM TO BE HAPPY IN SOME WAY, EVEN IF IT'S BY FLOATING NEBULOUSLY THROUGH DREAM PROJECTIONS WITH THEIR FREAKY BLANK EYES. CCG: AND I GUESS I AM RELIEVED ABOUT THAT. CCG: BUT AT THE SAME TIME IT'S LEFT ME UNSETTLED.

Fourth, in the same conversation, he bemoans his failed relationship with Terezi, before Future!Karkat chastises Past!Karkat for his instability and mixed signals. Going back to the page on moirallegiances, an explicit function of a proper pale relationship is stabilizing a troll's other relationships:

The two partners in a strong pale relationship will serve to balance and complement each other's emotional profiles, and thus allow their other relationships to be more successful.

Of course, I don't need to tell you how messy and unstable Eridan's relationships have been.

And finally, Piles of Stuff™ are associated with moirails, and directly stated in-comic to cause an outpouring of emotion:

Standing near this pile stirs powerful emotions. The closer you stand to piles of stuff, the more freely the feelings flow. It is a law of reality.

So here's a seven-word tragedy for you: For Sale, Shitty Wand Pile, Never Used:

ERIDAN: at least i got the upright basic decency to hide my shitty wand pile somewwhere in the lab you wwont find it dont evven bother lookin KARKAT: WHY DO YOU ASSHOLES HAVE PILES OF THINGS, JUST STOP.

(Which he specifically tells Karkat about.)

So, yeah, what I'm saying is, there's just, like, a weirdly large amount to read into here. That Karkat and Eridan are probably soulmates or whatever. And that this is important because...

Eridan Is Plot Relevant (Well All The Dead Trolls Are But This Is An Essay About Eridan)

So. Now we are going to talk about themes. Yes, like we are in schoolfeeding again. I'm going to keep it simple, because "The Themes of Homestuck" is a whole essay on its own, and this one about just the shitty fish boy is already way too long.

I think it's fairly non-controversial to posit that the main theme of Homestuck is, "children should mature, care about each other, and throw off the shackles of their old society, because they will be responsible for a new world one day."

Up until Game Over/the Retcon, this is so prevalent and well-established that SBURB/SGRUB's coming-of-age themes will outright be commented upon by the characters, and the main villain is a child who deliberately stunted his own growth so he could go around kicking over other peoples' toys forevermore.

So, the thing is, with that being the theme of Homestuck, if ALL of the Alternian trolls don't survive to the end, the ending is thematically unsatisfying, because the message suddenly gains an addendum of "well, some kids just need to die," which totally sucks. Like, sure, Eridan was a violent, crazed murderer even at the best of times, but his permanent death within the canon ending kind of means that the comic is saying that people in his position don't deserve kindness or second chances. That position being a traumatized, emotionally neglected child, who was being bullied by people he considered his friends. It's a pretty terrible message.

It's even worse when you consider what other trolls don't make it to the end - Nepeta, the most outspoken troll against the hemospectrum (and Davepeta does NOT count, don't try to tell me the final culmination of Nepeta's character arc is being combined with some guy she barely knows and a bird). Feferi, who genuinely wanted the best for others, even if she was kind of a privileged princess. Aradia and Sollux also stay behind in the bubbles, even though their lives have pretty much been endless parades of suffering and being used by other people. Even Equius doesn't deserve it - he was kind of a casteist freak, but not irredeemably so, and the fact that he became kinder to Karkat over the course of SGRUB proved that he had the capacity to change. And Tavros, allergic to himself and being insulted by Vriska, is a terrible way to end his arc.

It's also really clear that, since half his friends are dead, Karkat just doesn't really have anything to do. His title is the Knight of Blood, and Blood is about bonds - romance, friendship. And yet, he ends the comic having never figured out what Blood was about, with no confirmed filled quadrants (sorry DaveKat likers, but within the comic itself, DaveKat is never confirmed), and most of his bonds nothing more than ghosts in the bubbles. It's a terribly unsatisfying ending for the most narratively important troll.

I think, then, that even if you don't agree that Homestuck should have ended with full revivals and redemption arcs for all the trolls, the essay is going to proceed on like you do, so, sorry, I guess.

The thing with Eridan, specifically, is that he's actually tied deeply into the plot and themes, and his return means more than just Karkat finally getting a date (although that's important, too). Eridan is directly intertwined with a prophecy to kill Lord English; he's set up to mirror Caliborn and Calliope; and thematically, his redemption would be the most clear instance of the "interrogating society" part of the theme of Homestuck, because Eridan is kind of the Society Troll. And also, he was definitely supposed to be Roxy's wizard boyfriend.

Just gonna get that last one out of the way real quick because it's a fast one, Roxy fucking loves wizards and is a hipster. Eridan is a wizard and is also a hipster. Roxy has a crush on a prince. Eridan is also a prince. Roxy wears a purple striped scarf. Eridan wears a blue striped scarf. Roxy uses rifles. Eridan uses rifles. Momlonde's introduction includes a passive-aggressive fridge battle that features a cameo of Eridan's quirk.

Using the colorful MAGNET LETTERS, you recently left a succinct message, which may or may not have been directed toward anyone in particular. But you couldn't find the letter W, so you just stuck two V's together. Your mother then purchased a fresh pack of W's and left them there for your convenience.

Yeah. So. Uh. Not only did Eridan need to be brought back to date Karkat pale, but he also needed to be brought back to date Roxy flushed. Can you imagine how funny it would be. They'd get together within 5 minutes of meeting for the first time and Rose would lose her shit. Anyway.

Him being a parallel to Calliope and Caliborn is also a quick one - Caliborn uses Riflekind/Sceptrekind, and Calliope uses Pistolkind/Wandkind. Eridan's two weapons are rifles and wands. Lord English is described as an evil wizard and at one point is shown using Calliope's wand. Eridan is also an evil wizard who uses a wand.

Look, I'm not saying that Eridan is necessarily directly related to these two, nor am I even necessarily saying that he and Roxy HAVE to date, but I am saying that he's got Weird Plot Connections that make him bizarrely relevant to characters that only come into play well after his death - almost like the comic was setting up that he would be coming back. His reaction to Cronus supports this, which I go into detail about here.

There's other strange "Eridan's plot important" things, too - like the fact that he's completely unimpressed by Faygo, considering it to be "just soda," and seems to be the only non-cultist who's okay with it. Or the fact that he's actually been awake on Derse since before the game (but unable to hear the horrorterrors, maybe foreshadowing some psychic resistance?) which he casually reveals to Kanaya and which Terezi is aware of, hence he's included in the people she names are "in" on the existence of the game. Or the fact that the genetic code for Alternia's first guardian was written within the pages of four FLARP books, with the addition of a fifth code Gamzee wrote in Karkat's ~ATH book... but Eridan was the fifth FLARP player in the team, implying that Doc Scratch/LE influencing Gamzee caused him to usurp Eridan's part of the first guardian code, giving LE his way into the trolls' universe.

Individually, it's all kind of nothing, but it just paints a bigger picture of Eridan being weirdly relevant, especially when we get to the juicy stuff:

The Prophecy

ARANEA: The 8ard of Hope may seem a little jaded these days, 8ut he once had a deeply a8iding faith in magic, and dedicated himself to 8ecoming a great wizard. He 8ecame convinced he was hatched to defeat an extraordinarily evil magician, one he swore the angels foretold of. ... [T]his magician once somehow from afar tried to strike him down at a young age, so he would never have to face him. 8ut the evil spell was deflected, sealing the magician's spirit away in a series of unassuming vessels until he could find some other cunning way to enter our universe. ... ARANEA: 8ut at some point he 8ecame disillusioned with magic. If there ever was any truth to his far fetched vision, the legacy of defeating the evil magician would have to 8e passed on to his descendant, or if his descendant proved to 8e as much of a failure as he did, then perhaps on to some other Hero of Hope.

ERIDAN: i slaughtered enough angels to knoww my limits and wwhere i stand against the lord of all angels they prophecized

GG: im pretty sure hes from the future! CA: wwhy GG: because he said hes my grandson CA: wwhat the fuck is a grandson CA: is that some kind of pervverse human familial thing GG: umm yes ... CA: that gun i just gavve you is somethin of a hatchright to the kid CA: happy i could play a role in your dirty stinkin lineage GG: like an heirloom? i guess it could be ... CA: i kinda think thats wwhy i found the gun in the first place CA: but noww im forsakin it because fuck i just found a better destiny than my old crappy one wwhich i nevver got any appreciation for anywway

Jake is supposed to have been the one to defeat Lord English. (No, Jake defeating pre-LE Caliborn right before he gets sealed into Cal doesn't count! He doesn't even get the final blow in that fight, DIRK does.)

But Eridan at one point had that destiny on his shoulders. Aranea turbohealing Jake, and the resultant hope field, summons a bunch of angels, which are heavily associated with Eridan - yet another random connection that Eridan has with future plot events.

Jake was another character, alongside Karkat, who was kind of reduced to a joke by the end, despite the fact that he had literally, directly, been passed the destiny of defeating Lord English. It's hard not to see this as a consequence, at least in part, of removing Eridan from the story. By cutting him out of the fabric of the ending, several plot threads - including this prophecy - are left dangling in irrelevance. And so Jake, like Karkat, now has nothing to do.

Homestuck is generally a series where every prophecy does come true, which makes it kind of startling when several prophecies fail to - Feferi's to "unite the two races," Jake's to defeat Lord English, and Karkat's to bring "compassion, forgiveness, and equality among all bloodlines" in the Signless's place.

That last one is actually relevant to:

The Thematic Importance of EriKar As Soul Mates

Eridan represents the worst aspects of Alternian society. He's a sea dweller at the top of the caste structure, with free reign to murder whoever he wants, soaked in the blood of thousands of innocent trolls. He espouses the casteist rhetoric that their society is built on, calling for the deaths of all land dwellers and the oppression of the lower castes. And while he should be benefitting from his position of privilege, it has also done nothing but hurt him.

Karkat, meanwhile, is a pariah. A mutant who would've been culled on sight, who spent his entire life living in hiding, and most of the game in fear that he would be ostracized or worse by the rest of his friends if they found out about his blood color. He's also the second coming of Troll Jesus, and thus, more despised by the Alternian ruling class than a mutant normally would be. For most of his life, he dreamed of nothing more than finding belonging within the society that had deemed him unfit.

Their friendship is something that "should not be." The highblood and the mutant. The royal-v and the off-spectrum. The empress's sea dweller and the second coming of the signless. Eridan "should" see Karkat as a miscreant to cull on sight. Karkat "should" be terrified of Eridan's very existence.

But in reality, Eridan doesn't give a shit about blood color, and Karkat just wants to be accepted. Eridan just wants someone to care about him, and Karkat loves his friends. Aside from Feferi, Eridan is the only highblood who never comments about Karkat's mutant blood, and they were best buddies even before Eridan knew.

Eridan and Karkat getting together isn't JUST the two most undateable trolls on the team finally landing a stable quadrant. These two, moreso than any other pairing, represent the themes of Homestuck. Children growing up, caring about each other, and throwing off the shackles of their old society.

In the pre-retcon timeline, their team failed to do so. This led to Gamzee falling into his highblood clown cult, Equius letting himself and Nepeta die by submitting to his place in the hemospectrum, Vriska killing Tavros because she couldn't allow herself to show weakness, and Eridan completing his caste's dream of genocide. Karkat spent the entire meteor trip and beyond beating himself up about it, since he considered it all to be his fault.

But with the introduction of John's retcon powers, they have the chance to, one by one, redeem themselves. I believe that's how the original ending would have gone: Terezi would ask John to bring Vriska back, because she only feels comfortable fixing her own mistakes. Vriska would then have asked John to bring back Tavros, whom she regretted killing. Tavros would be there for Gamzee, rendering him an ally. Gamzee would ask John to bring back Equius and Nepeta. Equius would ask John to help him not make the same mistakes with Aradia, and Aradiabot would catch John by the wrist and demand he bring her back in time to before she died, allowing her to circumvent her own death and Sollux's guilt. Sollux would ask John to keep him from provoking Eridan, saving Feferi. And Feferi would be pretty ok with the way things were... but KARKAT would then pull John aside, and drop an entire book of mistakes he made on John's lap, and this would result in a finalized timeline where all his friends are alive and god-tiered.

Because all the trolls SHOULD have survived.

Vriska should've survived because people should be allowed to have second chances.

Tavros should've survived because caring about each other, and being willing to show kindness and mercy, are good things.

Gamzee should have survived because people mired in religious fundamentalism and cults deserve to be offered a helping hand.

Equius should've survived because people should be allowed to grow and change their beliefs.

Nepeta should've survived because she was the anti-casteism troll. Casteism is bad, folks! Not only that, but I'm convinced that she was originally going to give the Ultimate Self exposition, and Davepetasprite^2 had to be contrived in the canon ending in order to shortcut Nepeta's character development, ruining it in the process.

Aradia should've been allowed to stay with the rest of the team and live a life free of the control of evil uncles and shitty ancestors.

Sollux should've been allowed to stay with the rest of the team because we all deserve to heal and be happy.

Feferi should've survived so she could be in a kismesistude with Nepeta, and realize that casteism itself is bad, not just the definition of culling, and then used her Witch of Life powers to even out the lifespans between the next generation of trolls, which needs to happen or else casteism will just happen again as long-lived highbloods inevitably amass power. And, also, it would complete the prophecy Gl'bgolyb gave her that she was intended to unite the two races (dream bubbles don't count, because by that metric, Sollux did more than she did by establishing a connection between the trolls and humans).

And Eridan should've survived, because the harm society has done to us can be undone. We don't have to submit to the roles it imposes, to the laws it wrote, to the abuse it inflicted. We can be free.

I've seen a lot of people who believe that such-and-such character did SUCH awful things that they don't deserve a happy ending. Oftentimes, it's Eridan, but nearly all of the dead trolls have gotten this treatment. So, let me just ask all of you who have gotten this far and still hold that opinion one thing. Do you think that's what Troll Jesus would have wanted?

This is why pale EriKar is so important: for it to happen, Eridan has to make a choice between upholding the beliefs of his shitty society, or pursuing a happier, kinder future, one where he outright rejects the caste system. For it to happen, Karkat has to shake all his insecurities about not being good enough by Alternian standards, and take on the duty of creating something better than what he came from. If pale EriKar happens, it means Eridan and Karkat choose love, not fear. Compassion, forgiveness, and equality.

This choice - this pairing - is the ultimate representation of giving Alternian society one big middle finger. Saying, we don't need you anymore, fuck off! Saying, we reject you at your core; we will choose something better! Saying, we will create a new world, and it will be kinder than the one we came from!

Pale EriKar means LOVE WINS.

Thank you for reading.

[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

Duplicatnation

The fandom's already put in a lot of work speculating about why Qi Xiaotian (QXT) has abandonment issues and how that's probably connected to why we know nothing about his bio family, but idk if I've seen anyone mention what the clones can “tell us” about the situation? The way they each go off the rails offers a lot of insight!

The Porty Clone (PXT) is very much a child’s idea of how being an adult works- he stays up as late as he wants, doing whatever he wants, and nobody can tell him what to do.

He even sounds like a child protesting bedtime: “Aw but fifteen houws I’m so sweepy- that’s what you sound like!”

He’s the only clone who has discarded his work shirt, another indicator that he Does Not Like Being Told What To Do.

Though he’s more than happy to tell other people what to do, since he easily got those bouncers and the clone swarm to obey him.

This suggests whoever QXT grew up with was the “Drill Sergeant” type of parent: “I am in charge and you will do what I say; and I will punish you if you so much as insinuate you don’t like my decisions.” I suppose they could just be some run-of-the-mill shithead, but Lego Monkie Kid can probably get more plot mileage out of making them a villain.

---

The Artist Clone (AXT) is “older” than PXT; instead of throwing a tantrum to get what he wants, he conforms to what others want from him in the hopes that he'll be rewarded (or at least not punished) for acting "correctly".

“Pretty good? Pretty good?! That’s not good enough! You asked me to help paint your boat, and that’s what I’m going to do. I won’t stop! Until it’s perfect!”

Naturally, he gets mad when Sha Dali doesn’t follow the “script”. Sha Dali is “supposed to" agree that AXT needs to be better by fully devoting himself to the task at hand. “Pretty good” is a deadly insult- if “pretty good” is all that Sha Dali expects, then he must not think AXT can reach perfection, and if AXT can’t reach perfection, then he’s not good enough, and if he's not good enough, then why even keep him around?

AXT responds by doubling down, because he can be perfect! He does have value! He’ll make Sha Dali see that!

Not to be a God Damn Homestuck, but all these paint splatters are definitely supposed to remind the audience of blood. If QXT’s parent is a villain, they are not of the comic relief variety.

---

The Delivery Clone (DXT) is distinct from the other two in that he actually deviated from his purpose! If he’d followed the pattern the other two had set, he would have performed his purpose too well, delivering his orders so quickly and in such large amounts that the shop would have run out of stock and been unable to serve its afternoon customers. He ate all the noodles and outright fought with Zhu Dachu because he represents QXT during the "snapback" part of his life- his parent demanded more and more from him until he had no more to give, at which point he realized trying to satisfy his parent was impossible and started turning all that effort towards himself instead, with less than ideal results.

QXT’s parent would have considered him to be no longer useful after that and abandoned him, so DXT probably also represents food insecurity.

---

Zhu Dachu started yelling at QXT, Sha Dali wanted AXT to stop trying so hard, Long Xiaojiao wanted to leave the arcade- each clone reacted the same way. “My loved one is unhappy with me” turned into “they’re going to abandon me” turned into “I can’t deal with that happening again” turned into “if they won’t stay voluntarily, I’ll make them stay.”

Perhaps the person who raised QXT wasn’t actually his bio parent, but kidnapped him from his bio family because they sensed his Super Special Hero Potential or something.

That the clones briefly showed up in “This is the End!” suggests they’re more permanent than the average clone, so I’m curious to see if they’ll provide more info in the future.

---

I haven’t read Journey to the West, so I’m casting this question out to the fandom at large: are there any Journey to the West characters that match my description of QXT’s hypothetical villainous parent?

[mollydastoertchen]

Homestuck love! Back in the days I was a huge homestuck fan, with several cosplays and, of course, own fantrolls. And while I honestly dont have much left for homestuck itself, the world it created was amazing. And even today @Zelendur and I love our fantrolls dearly.

And first and foremost, for me at least, are Tybalt (the smaller) and Xavier (the taller). Tybalt is a purpleblood - royalty. He lived in solitude for a long while until other purplebloods planned on using him for dark juggalo rituals. Tybalt - who was exceptionally smart even as a young troll - quickly got behind it. One day, a troll slave named Xavier was to ask Tybalt to come with him to his master. It seemed like a jolly invitation at first, but Tybalt knew that something was wrong. The slave was shaking and obviously scared. However Tybalt followed the invitation, but he came prepared and killed everyone who was involved in this trap. As he killed the enemy highblood, he claimed the shaking Xavier as his prize and forced him to live with him instead.

Tybalt didnt want a slave, though. He wanted a butler instead - someone who still worked for him, but who wouldnt be treated so poorly. It took years, however, until Xavier truly felt home in Tybalts hive. At first he tried to run away, but he quickly learned that not listening to Tybalt was a bad mistake. And while Tybalt could be a little impish from time to time, he still was just a very excentric child who loved Xaviers attention. He paid Xavier and somewhen granted him free time, in which Xyvier found love.

But everything changed when Tybalt started to realize that he was unlike the other trolls. He wouldnt grow any further, still small and underdeveloped. He would often be mocked by other highbloods for his peculiar ways of handling people. And one day, someone spoke it out loud - he was a defective troll. Born with multiple deficiencies and mental illnesses, Tybalt began to learn that the world was cruel to those who were different. And it didnt take long for Tybalts world to slowly shatter. Every passing day he started to hate his own reflection in the mirror even more. Every day he became more depressed, and his self hatred just grew and grew.

One day, he couldnt look into the mirror anymore. He broke off his massive horns, using scissors and similar tools to break off more and more of the remnant of the horns despite all the blood pouring out of the base of the horns. And to his very luck his buttler, Xavier, found him that day and calmed him before he could end his suffering. That was the moment where Xavier uderstood that Tybalt truly needed him. It was the day where Xavier devoted himself to his rescuer and caregiver, no matter how broken he was, no matter how often Tybalt was mean and strict to him. Xavier knew as well that Tybalt was not going to become any better, but that his problems had just started.

Tybalt refused to leave the hive. He refused to see other people. He started hiding, and Xavier were his only eyes. Later he began to dress up. Use other trolls identity to go out. With his horns shortened and filed down, he found a way to use them to attach fake horns onto himself to take on the role of any other troll. With his slim and small body he could easily dress up as young girls, and his high-pitched voice made it easy to convince others. Only Xavier knew his real face, his real voice, his real name.

Over the years, this constellation hardened. Tybalt and Xavier became inseperable. Tybalt, who was riddled with depression and hatred towards the outside world and himself, was not eady to handle. He often had violent outburts where he would even hurt Xavier, before falling into despair and tears once he realized what he had done. And Xavier learned to keep a smile on his face at all times for his precious master. As Tybalt had problems reading someone elses emotions unless they were very clear, a smile was enough to deceive him and calm him down.

The solitude, the hiding, the theatre they put on every single day (and in their hobbies, as Tybalt was a theatre-writer) took a toll on them after all. Together with their messed up experiences of their pasts, both of them are just a tiny bit crazy. Xavier, who was allowed his artistic freedom, helped making new incredible costumes for his beloved master. And with that it meant kidnapping strangers, killing them softly and then getting their horns and hair for Tybalt to wear. He turned the bodies into stuffed marionettes in his little macabre chambers. Which is where the idea from this picture comes from:

While Xavier is 'technically' the one who is the puppetier it is Tybalt who controls Xavier with everything he does. Their tale is tragic, toxic, and yet one full of deepest loyalty and love.

Rant over.

[compartmentalisinghmpf]

Commentary #1: Parenthood. Free(?) Will. A Sense of Loss. (And a little bit of gender.)

(Ramble inspired by this image.)

Ok, so one of the most interesting things to me about a!Dave as seen in rng is that he desperately wants to be a dad(bro). To every iteration of Dirk, definitely, even though there’s two more than he expected, and one of them is an adult, and the other is an AI. Maybe even (occasionally, briefly) to the two teen versions of himself - kinda against his own will; definitely against theirs, for the most part. (And yeah, the latter there is probably mostly me getting my own headcanon all over stuff. The a!Dave who lives in my head is mostly rng’s, or at least based on my reading of that, but no two versions of a character, in different people’s heads, are ever entirely the same.)

One thing about Dave’s need to parent that I find interesting is where it comes from. Because Dave, like all the main characters of Homestuck, was constructed, by the game, to play a certain role in it/in its preparation (two roles, actually, because he’s a remake, but we’ll get to that in a later post). And I’m kind of... generally fascinated by characters who do not have free will with respect to some very important life choices, and who are aware of that, and do not rebel against it.

The game creates its players and their guardians, and although it is never stated directly in canon, it’s safe to assume that in the case of the guardians - like Dave here - it implants them with a strong urge or need to take care of “their” kid, the player destined to enter the game - for some value of “taking care”. (The game clearly doesn’t bother giving them anything else to help them in their purpose, and the parenting we see from them ranges, unsurprisingly, from somewhat negligent to outright terrible. But the fact that they tend to be bad at being guardians only underlines how strong the urge to be a guardian to their kid, their player, must be. Almost none of these folks would choose to be a parent, if something hadn’t built the need into their very DNA.)

Dave is a bit of a special case, because (in canon) he never actually meets his kid, because it just so happens that Dirk ends up living hundreds of years in his future. And in rng, by the time he enters the story and finally meets Dirk, he has already spent an entire lifetime (up to his death at age 65) alone.

So he’s a guy who has this strong, literally in-built urge/need to take care of a (specific) kid - albeit with absolutely none of the necessary skillls - who hasn’t ever had a chance to actually do that. It’s a lifelong sense of lack, but one he’s barely even aware of anymore because he’s covered it up with a lot of stuff (some of which perhaps kind of doubled as “taking care of” Dirk metaphorically, emotionally, on some level - like the rebellion: gotta make sure there’s a place for Dirk to live, in 400 years!)

And now he’s confronted with the kid, finally, and something in him just wants the life he could have had, if he had really been Dirk’s guardian the proper way, so, so badly. And it’s not gonna happen, because, well, Dirk is a ferociously independent 17-year-old, and also Dave is, well, a mess, and also, you can’t turn back time (well, you can, actually, in HS and in this story - these folks are all related to the literal god of time of their universe. But it would be a really bad idea, lol.)

There’s a tremendous sense of grief under the surface here.

(There’s also a second source for rng a!Dave’s urge to parent, I think, which is that he himself grew up entirely without family, and - this is strongly implied, at least - didn’t really get much of a chance to be a child, ever. And there’s grief, there, too, but it’s even more deeply buried.)

Last, but perhaps not least, I also find it very interesting to see “a strong urge to parent” given as a central character trait to a male character. That’s still not something you see a whole lot. And yes, it’s not idealised, natural parenthood; it’s a complicated and arguably selfish thing, artificial and broken and incomplete. But it *is* central. I like that. I like seeing a male character deal with that, for a change. Because this is usually an issue given (in fiction; but also ascribed in reality) to Childless Women of a Certain Age.

[tyzias-ennnntykk]

one thing that really sogs my biscuits about the fandom handling of Homestuck^2 is how many people complain that the alpha & beta kids kinda do shitty things or bad decisions in this & the epilogue. as an example yiffany longstocking lalonde-harley's origins.

like lets be real. three of the eight watched their parental figures die at 13, two of which had fairly abusive parents (rose's mom, lets be real, was abusive, if not as much as bro was). one had a parental figure who was largely absent due to dealing with a evil space witch, and another was raised deep under the thumb of that dame space witch. two more never had one to begin with. one accidentally KILLED her own parental figure.

my point here is that at the very minimum these kids had REALLY fucked up lives!!!! and yes, they grew some awareness over their journeys, but thats not enough to truly "deal with" that kinda upbringing. throwing godlike powers on top of that is not exactly helping either!

but returning to my specific example, i think that...bear with me here....yiffany? kinda makes SENSE???? Her name and origin are BAD, DO NOT GET ME WRONG THAT KINDA NAME & TREATMENT IS ABUSE IN AND OF ITSELF. but heres my logic:

Jade, i think most people ive seen agree, makes fairly perfect sense. she grew up alone, wanting connection and family. everyone else settled into found families, and she felt like a third wheel to most of them. she wanted something her own, and as misguided as it may be, a child might be her best hope for that. she jumped the gun, but she was always pretty spontaneous. (most of her moves were based on premonitions, yes, but those in the skaia clouds are notably vague, so she had to fill the gaps a LOT.)

where most people have more of an issue in the parentage is Rose. And i get it. Rose has Kanaya, which was basically one of the two Big Ships of the series (that and Davekat, obv). Not only that, but she was into psychology, and was also often The Logical One, especially in the early and late game of Homestuck. All this adds up to her being Very Responsible about her relationships, especially one that shes so happy in as that with Kanaya.

But is she REALLY? I mean her entire childhood was a series of mind games with her mother, trying to passive-aggressively one-up eachother. Her psychology thing, to me, reads as a tool in this battle: if she can get some psych knowledge, or at least fake it, she can mess with her alcoholic mom better, and thereby "win". next, she goes about listening to dark powers as well as Doc Scratch, in an attempt to hack the game, ending up grimdark. Then, she ends up getting drunk to try and get closer to her deceased mother, and ends up *drunk* on the first date with Kanaya, almost FORGETTING IT ENTIRELY. Then in the postgame, she...basically just serves as another fighter, mostly making goo-goo eyes at Kanaya. Which isnt bad, obv, but i feel like ppl took it to mean she was "past all that".

which is horseshit. her entire character is that she wants to "hack" her way to success, be it in her relationship with her mother (before and after her death), or the game. She wants that extra angle, that extra piece of the chessboard, to use. and i think Yiffy was exactly that...toward Kanaya.

Kanaya, lets be honest, is an easy gal. When Rose was drunk for that first date, and forgot, Kanaya almost IMMEDIATELY forgave her. And even when stuff bothered her, like the grimdark event, Kanaya really just asked Rather Quite Firmly that she stop. And considering her previous crush was as dangerous and chaotic as Vriska, its understandable that shes generally cautious and polite. And, as we kinda see in Hiveswap, Jadeblood culture largely has that kinda approach. Meanwhile, Rose is used to relationships being constantly active, a battle of wits...and Kanaya isnt that. Kanaya is a grounding element in Rose's endless war against whatever.

But then, doesnt it make sense that Rose could tire of Kanaya's congeniality? That she might do something Pretty Wrong just to rile up her wife? Maybe even not-really-cheat-but-kinda on her? and then when Jade comes up saying she wants to have a surrogate mother...Well, isnt that just the perfect chance?

Then moving from there, the name. Both are doing something absolutely batshit for themselves, and they know it. Its the perfect "wrong but it feels so good" impulsive decision for both parties. So why not carry that impulse and maybe some alcohol into the naming factor too? And naming your kid "yiffany" is exactly the dumb kind of joke two impulsive adults who were incredibly online, and barely raised at all, would name their kid in the heat of a bad moment.

Then, of course, the aftermath sets in. They made their bad decisions, and they realize with them come A Decent Amount of Shame. So wrought with shame and still kinda feeling that impulsive wave, they ask for Jane to use her connections to put the child in boarding school, because thats far from Kanaya or any other prying eyes, and hey, boarding school is supposed to be good for kids right? right? And so off she goes to the Boarding School Fridge until we first meet her.

Jane's involvement in all this is i think also well-supported in-text, if still semi-unpopular, but ill include the logic anyways. Look, Jane's a classic case of reactionary, trying to justify her positions and actions defensively until everything breaks down around her and she has to confront the reality. this is why she did the whole "no i dont love you haha" dance re: jake. the initial moment was of course just her momentary fear of, who knows, rejection? the unbearable experience of being known? jake being too sexy? but immediately after she had to double down, and then triple down, and eventually she's just so frustrated, that the only way she can break her own cycle is by lashing out and abusing a substance (unwittingly, but yeah). this same behavior is whats at play here. she reacted to her fear of the trolls after being *literally mindcontrolled by one* and then doubled down by saying "no im just asking questions about their culture", then trying to control it, then trying to control it tighter, then attacking her own friends who go against her, and then starting a literal war against them, and fucking a clown she hates, and abusing her son, and eventually she has a shock collar on a girl who was abandoned by her birth parents, all in an attempt to control shit.

So i think that brings us all up to date on that specific case. but literally, when you think about Homestuck^2 and all the shit where "these characters i love wouldnt do [INSERT BAD THING HERE]" (lookin at you Dirk Defenders) think for a moment: maybe they fucking would??? none of them had good upbringings at all, and none of them can exactly go to therapy. imagine trying to therapize a god. would anyone even be able to be objective about it? no, all of them were left to their own devices, and GENERALLY have tried to do better than those who raised them, but often trip up, sometimes even in near-fatal ways.

And the most important thing to remember is: THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. MAYBE THE PEOPLE BEIN PIECES OF SHIT IS THEIR STORY ARC, AND THEY LEARN AND GROW FROM THEIR MISTAKES EVENTUALLY! or maybe they dont! sometimes thems the breaks. stories dont owe YOU what YOU want from them. dont be a child.

[paintalyx]

top 5 or 10 anime kins :D or fav characters if u don’t kin those many!

i'll admit that i barely know anything about kinning aside from my friend jokingly labeling me as a reki kinnie, but here are some characters that i relate to/used to relate to a lot:

5. kageyama shigeo - mob psycho (not to delve too deep, but "get a hint" scene gave me war flashbacks and "you are the protagonist of your own life" is a quote that is gonna stick with me until i die)

4. uenoyama ritsuka ‐ given (gay. disaster. simp. nuff said.)

3. john egbert - homestuck (i only read the original run but c'mon. he always gets sidetracked, he's the "plain" but "funny" dude and he only grew on me as the story progressed. bonus points since he wears glasses and has an overbite, which were two things i used to be self-conscious about at some point)

2. kyan reki - sk8 the infinity (i have a thing that i'm super passionate about and i desperately want someone to share it with, but very few people can keep up with it. i also get depressed and mopey whenever rsd and anxiety kick in and his character arc really hit home. bonus points since i practically live in hoodies and jackets)

1. kageyama tobio - haikyuu!! (because i too stan sugawara and love hinata. while i got better with years of hard work and struggle, i used to be about as socially incompetent as this poor child when i was his age. i was going through a weird time back when i first discovered haikyuu and i often found myself thinking that if kageyama could better himself and find people who truly care about him, then so could i. he still holds a very special place in my heart)

thank you for the ask!! sorry if my answer is a little lengthy, i love these kids so much (;v; )

[luukeskywalker]

i see so many arguments about whether or not it's okay to like jiang cheng; whether or not he's abusive, whether or not he's deserving of a "redemption" or reconciliation with wei wuxian, whether or not his actions and pain are justified, etc. and because he's such a complicated person, and because we all interpret his actions differently, we are never ever going to come to a general consensus on him.

but i'll give my take on him, because i love him, and i really don't see a lot of, uh, more lenient takes on Why He’s Like That. also i’m putting this under a readmore bc this is literally just for me i don’t think anybody else in the world wants to read this rambling hahaha

anyways!~

the man has problems. lots of them. he doesn't know how to truthfully voice his emotions outside of a frame of anger. he was not raised to be a wife like jiang yanli, he was not taught to perform emotional labor for the sake of his future spouse. he was taught that he is the next sect leader, and that emotions are both his weakness (from his mother) and his strength (from his father). he was brought up from a young age under the belief that there was always an unattainable goal placed right in front of him.

of course that's not all officially "canon", but you can easily see it if you read between the lines. you really can't take anything jiang cheng says seriously. not when he was a kid, and not when he’s an adult, either. and i don’t say this to excuse his actions, or to say that he’s necessarily justified because he had a tough childhood. everyone in mo dao zu shi had a tough childhood, he’s not special for that! but the way he was raised, in my opinion, explains a lot about who he is as a person, and how he interacts with the world around him. again: it doesn’t justify his actions. it merely explains them.

i think he’s terribly interesting. every character reacts to their traumas in different ways - lan xichen covers everything up with a gentle smile, wei wuxian cracks jokes about his own mortality, lan wangji searched out evil as often as he could to make the world a little safer - hell, even nie huaisang adapted to trauma by creating an entirely different persona so that he could gather information and plot in peace. jiang cheng’s reaction to trauma was to take that anger he grew up with, all his frustration at never being good enough, all his worry about his family, all his rage at the people who have betrayed and left him - and he turned it into armor. 

he doesn’t know how to take the armor off. after years and years (thirteen or sixteen, it’s really up to the reader, i suppose), he’s worn it so tightly that he thinks that anger is all he is. everyone else thinks so, anyways, and when have the greater masses ever been wrong in mo dao zu shi?

oh, that’s right, literally every single time. 

call me an apologist if you must but i highly doubt jiang cheng ever actually tortured and killed demonic cultivators that reminded him of wei wuxian. the only time we have ever heard that was through idle gossip, and if mo dao zu shi has taught us anything, it’s that idle gossip is never to be trusted. he tells jin ling to kill wei wuxian in the beginning, but instead he decides he wants to take wei wuxian back to lotus pier. His first instinct is to feel anger, is to lash out. and he was still angry, but can you really blame him? he’s spent so many years with the weight of his family’s death weighing on him - practically all alone - and the man he considers responsible for it shows up out of the blue one night. 

and yes, wei wuxian’s isn’t solely responsible for jiang cheng’s loss. duh. but he had a pretty big part to play in all of it, and trauma can do weird things to someone’s memories. jiang cheng may know on some logical level that his brother isn’t responsible for all of it, but years pass and pain doesn’t really fade as much as it should, and feelings and memories warp into something more easily digestible - it gives jiang cheng something to feel besides conflicting mourning. anger is where he feels safest.

and that brings me to another point - his relationship with jin ling. now, this one is a bit of a hot topic (lol). there’s, afaik, a lot of discourse around whether or not jiang cheng is abusive towards jin ling. and i do understand and see why people would think he is abusive - for all the reasons i mentioned above. he’s a traumatized man who finds comfort in anger. he’s particularly strict with jin ling when it comes to night hunts, especially during that hunt in dafan mountain. he makes threats of physical harm and is pretty much always yelling. i can see why people see these actions and label him abusive.

but i really don’t agree. he is strict with jin ling on night hunts - he’s terrified something will happen to his sister’s child, at the same time he wants jin ling to succeed. who set up all those nets for him during that hunt? clearly jiang cheng. the whole “if you can’t catch something, don’t bother coming home” line dripped with “i have said this exact phrase a million times before and i’ve never meant it” energy, as does every “i’ll break your legs” comment. jin ling himself admits it - jiang cheng has never, ever laid a hand on him! the only uncle to ever smack him around is wei wuxian. 

of course abuse is more than physical harm. but i don’t really think he abuses jin ling at all. jiang cheng really loves jin ling, he cares for that boy more than literally anything else in the world. a scene that really sticks out to me is “who made you cry?!” - he does not admonish jin ling for crying. he wants to know who made his boy upset so he can go beat them up. jin ling clearly knows he’s not in any real danger from his uncle - if he was, why the hell would be continuously disobey him and do shit that directly pisses him off? the ONE time he was truly afraid of going back to jiang cheng was because he’d lied and disobeyed jiang cheng’s direct order. sure he wouldn’t be like, beaten for that, but he’d been nervous as all hell at koi tower, and i’d personally attribute that behavior to guilt. he knew he’d done a bad thing, but he’d done it anyways. 

this post is really insanely long so i’m just gonna try and wrap it up here: jiang cheng is a really complicated and fucked up dude. i get why people don’t like him but i don’t really agree with the sentiment. he’s fucked up and crazy and so is everyone else in mdzs, he’s just the most vocal about it. call all of this fanon if you want, idc, it’s just how i’ve perceived his character after experiencing mo dao zu shi like five times in different formats. his anger is his protection, because nobody else is gonna protect him. he tries to use it to protect jin ling, but to anyone who isn’t jin ling, it comes off as overtly harsh. love languages are hard to understand sometimes. jiang cheng’s love language is more complicated than the entirety of the fucking homestuck shipping chart.

if anyone has even read all of this, why, why did you decide to do that, also thank you? please don’t fight with me on this my mind will not be changed lol

[imperialbogmonster]

Ok, so I can’t be the only person who read Homestuck in high school and latched the fuck onto the Strilondes who’s rereading it and going, wow, my childhood was pretty fucked up. Like, it’s not exactly a revelation for me. Hell, I knew it was fucked back in high school.

Ok, so this was originally gonna be some kind of “fucked up childhood nation represent” kind of deflecting bullshit, but I’m drunk, and to hell with deflecting.

You know what no seven- and nine-year old kids should have to do? Go to truancy court because their mom was too caught up in her new boyfriend to take you to school.

You know what no ten-year-old should have to do? Make sure her little sister wakes up and gets ready for school in time for them to catch the bus because their mom is still sleeping off a hangover.

What no twelve-year-old should have to do? Lie to the school counselor about her home life, because she knows from experience that it’s better than the alternative.

What no fourteen-year-old should have to do? Adjust to moving to a new city, starting at a new school mid-semester, and living with the father she hasn’t seen since she was six all at once while her mother spends a year in jail.

And as fucked up as all of that is? As fucked up and humiliating as it was to watch my mother get arrested for drunk driving with my best friend in the car? As fucked up as all of my childhood with my mother was?

It was still better than foster care.

At least I knew my mom loved and wanted me. At least I grew up in an environment where I could confidently come out at fourteen and it wasn’t a big deal. At least I was encouraged to grow into my own person instead of a clone of my parents.

I’m sure there are good people who foster/adopt kids, but I’ve never met one. I’ve sure as hell never met one of their kids.

You wanna know what foster care looks like around here? You don’t, because it’s awful, but I’m gonna tell you anyway.

It looks like a lock on the refrigerator. Bedroom doors taken off the hinges and removed. It looks like wild-eyed, far-right Baptist nutjobs with six foster kids and five biological ones who view every child in their care as another arrow in god’s quiver for the surely upcoming fight against the forces of hell (and if you’re having trouble believing that, I envy you). It looks like kids being forced to pick the switch they’re going to be beaten with for failing to say sir or ma’am.

I’ve met more than a few of such “parents”, and a great deal of people who were traumatized by them.

I guess I’m glad I got the alcoholic fuck-up who was too mired in her own trauma to realize what lessons she was teaching her kids. At least I know she was trying.

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 3: Insane Mindscrew Haymakers (Part 2)

CHEL: Rose finds a transportaliser platform in the centre of the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: The sylladex misadventures come to something this time. Jasper’s corpse lands on the pad.

CHEL: The dead cat vanishes; Rose assumes it was vapourised but we know better, though we don’t see where it went. She finds an unlocked hub and plugs in, noticing another ominous countdown on the wall, with only three minutes left till the lab will be “UNESTABLISHED”.

Years in the future again, PM beheads the worm creature, which turns out to be a robot. The bunker landed on its side so PM stands on a pile of mailboxes to press the button, which causes more robot worms to emerge from beneath the bunker, pushing it upright, and a propeller to emerge from the top and carry it away.

Dave’s strife with Bro continues, getting more and more ridiculous and animesque, until Dave ends up plummeting down the stairwell. In a realistic work, this could quite easily break his neck, but here we just get some comical flailing and a SBaHJ IT KEEPS HAPPENING macro. Again, Dave looks more angry than afraid.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 8

FAILURE ARTIST: I think Hussie said the Bro slicing the Abscond box is symbolic of the trap of child abuse and shows this guardian fight isn’t like the others but it is still an animesque fight that ends with a fucking meme.

CHEL: Yeah, he seems to be expecting us to pick up on these details which don’t mean anything until he actually explains them, which would be fine and in fact clever if they didn’t conflict so strongly with what’s actually noticeably shown. If he wanted us to take it seriously, he’d have done better not to put the Abscond button there at all.

Rose finds, in the lab, a console showing SBurb sessions in the northeastern US where her home is located, monitoring the time to impact of their respective meteors. There is a large cluster of already-landed ones around her house, with a much, much bigger one centred directly on the lab, with an even bigger one centred on the house. She zooms out, and finds the second-biggest upcoming impact in the world is heading for Texas, while one bigger by an order of magnitude will later land in the middle of the Pacific. "Oh look, up in the sky/ It's a hole about the size of Texas..."

"Circus Contraption - Hot Potato" (Watch on YouTube)

Checking on John’s house, Rose finds it overrun by imps, the building shaking violently. Investigating this, she finds the ogre fight; John is at least getting a few blows in now, but they’re still not doing much good. Nannasprite is able to provide support with eye beams, but the ogres are still standing, and Rose’s attempt to drop a fridge on one is useless too. Nannasprite’s teleportation proves more useful, allowing John to take a flying leap out of a hovering oven to strike with greater force and allowing her to drop a full avalanche of household appliances on the ogre. With Rose’s assistance providing him a platform to bounce off again, John strikes the final blow on one ogre, exploding it into grist pieces bigger than himself, and Nannasprite and John occupy the other ogre until Rose drops the alchemiter on it.

FAILURE ARTIST: Seeing a fight like this not long after the Bro and Dave fight makes it hard for me to take the serious one seriously. John should be dead.

CHEL: John has a backup healer and Dave doesn’t, but yeah, cartoon physics prevail here.

Rose checks in, explaining that Dave’s not connected yet, but that she’s determined that activating the cruxtruder does not actually cause the meteor to strike. John levels up to BOY-SKYLARK and collects tons of grist and boondollars, although he still doesn’t know what those actually do.

You can't wait to find out what amazing items this new supply of grist will be just barely insufficient to produce.

Hehehe. We’ve all been there.

John sees that more grist fell down to the platform below, including one huge piece stuck in the hole leading into Dad’s room.

One of those big SOUR GRAPE ELECTRIC HOLOCAUST FRUIT GUSHERS is jammed in the hole in the platform. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 9

Yes, because Holocaust references are a perfect way to describe candy flavours. Technically “holocaust” can refer to, I quote from dictionary.com, “a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire”, and I’m guessing it’s a parody of all the flavour names with words like “explosion” in them, but, especially when it’s not obviously uncapitalised, that’s very much not what the immediate association of the term is!

FAILURE ARTIST: John asks Nanna why she doesn’t just throw him up to the gate and she says it’s important he build up himself. Though later we do see a character that just jumps up to the gate.

Then we switch to a mysterious castle all in purple. Dad is fighting some imps with shaving cream. A new yet somehow familiar character wearing harlequin clothes watches with disgust both Dad and John on strange window screens.

We cut away yet again to Peregrine Mendicant. PM is still stuck in the mobile station with a letter addressed to David Brinner. There was a real person who went by the alias Doctor Brinner on his Portland-area radio show where he played a mad scientist. Dr. David Brinner is also a comic Hussie made before Homestuck. I’ve never read it myself. I didn’t even know it existed until I googled David Brinner.

Anyway, PM refuses to open this letter and gives stirring speeches that sound like they come from a movie (Kevin Costner’s Postman?) but I don’t think they do.

BRIGHT: PM believes very strongly in the purpose of mail delivery as the bedrock of civilisation. It comes across as funny, but not as mocking.

FAILURE ARTIST: PM then turns to the terminal. Jade appears on a screen shrouded in green static. PM finds Jade familiar. Unfortunately, before PM can converse with Jade, the terminal explodes.

Cut back again to Rose in the lab. There’s lots of cutesy pink little girl stuff down there that Rose decides to ignore. Why is it down there? Did Mom expect Rose to live there one day?

CHEL: I thought it was supposed to signal that Mom was living down there herself.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, Rose also finds a mutant cat.

We cut away again to John contemplating going into his father’s bedroom through a hole in the roof. He decides to do it.

Cut to a fireplace with a portrait of Jade above it. It looks similar to Nanna’s shrine, minus the urn. But Jade isn’t dead, is she? She scampers right into the room the next panel. She arms herself with a huge rifle and tries to sneak across the room. However, her Grandpa appears, shadowed by the huge fire that suddenly lit up in the fireplace. She tries to run away only to fall asleep.

We cut to Dave’s final round - or rather, Jade fighting her Grandpa. Who, in another surprise, is a taxidermed corpse.

She talks to him like he’s alive, though after it, she says he was easier to deal with when he was alive. This disturbing state of affairs is never treated seriously.

CHEL: This, more than anything else, is why we set up the ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY count. Horrible as Bro would be by any realistic standards, at least Dave’s guardian is obviously living and Dave is not merrily talking away to a dead person. We later find out that Jade was the one who taxidermied Grandpa, while she was barely more than a toddler. Not only was she actually able to do this to professional standards, at an age when she shouldn’t have been handling sharp objects at all, but she displays no trauma from it, nor from having had to raise herself. And yet we’re supposed to take Dave’s issues seriously, and to a much lesser extent Rose’s, with no real indication that they’re any different.

TIER: It's one thing when an author's intended depiction of “an abusive household” for the most part flies over people's heads due to the absurdity of the whole situation when it initially got presented, that happens sometimes! Especially when one factors in Bro's total screen time, how he generally ticks the boxes for “absurd but really cool” guy visually, and how late in the game this knowledge was spelled out. It all comes together to make the whole Strider situation kinda come out of left field to judge people for finding the absurd situation funny.

But when it's sitting right next to the arguably worse scenario (stuffed.dead.guardian.) and the latter pretty much never gets brought up while the former gets a big ol’ spotlight shining down on it, yeah that's what the folks call Fucking Weird and in my personal opinion, suspect Ò_Ó.

CHEL: While I can’t really state one way or the other at this point, I do think it’s worth considering a reason that has already been brought up by a non-Homestucker; in the scenarios we’re not supposed to take seriously, the children are girls. I doubt this was even slightly what Hussie intended, but it certainly explains a lot about the fandom’s reactions. The more likely scenario regarding the canon explanation is probably that the ones we’re not supposed to take seriously are not Hussie’s self-insert.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 9

BRIGHT: Not to mention, Jade grew up on an island in the middle of the ocean, physically isolated from any other people and with only an animal for company. There are known cases of children who grew up in similar circumstances in real life. Suffice to say, it generally does not end well.

You could argue that Jade is pretending her Grandpa is alive because she’s lonely and needs the company, but this is in no way implied by the text.

At any rate, Jade informs her grandfather that the rifle she has is perfectly adequate for killing things and she doesn’t need his oversized blunderbuss.

CHEL: To be strictly fair, we do later find out she had some contact with other people, but not in a way which I feel would be a substitute for having a living human parent in the “real” world.

FAILURE ARTIST: With Jade out the door, we go again to PM. They are fine except for some cartoon burn marks and a fire on their hood. The metal snake saves their precious mailbox.

BRIGHT: It earns PM’s affection for doing so.

Back at the lab, Rose utterly fails to ignore the four-eyed mutant kitten. She carries it over to a peculiar machine that turns out to be another Appearifier. This one is locked onto her cat, Jaspers, nine years ago. Not only was he alive, but the younger Rose was holding a psychotherapy session with him.

Rose attempts to appearify Jaspers, but since this would cause a time paradox, the machine leaves Jaspers in place and instead produces a ‘Paradox Clone’, which swiftly collapses into green slime. The machine next to the appearifier sucks up the paradox sludge, analyses its genetic sequence, and spits out another cat, rather more mutated than the last, in a process referred to as ‘Ectobiology’.

CHEL: John’s screen name, we remind you, is “ectoBiologist”, so it seems he heard of the concept somewhere, perhaps?

BRIGHT: On the appearifier’s screen, Jaspers reveals a stunning secret to young Rose, and is appearified to an unknown location before he can clarify anything. Two weeks later, his corpse reappeared. Oddly, the appearifier can’t see his whereabouts for the intervening period.

It can, however, see where his body went when it landed on the pad earlier! Rose appearifies the corpse and hightails it out of the lab, using the transportaliser to make her escape before the meteor can hit.

FAILURE ARTIST: If you click on the pink horseshoe that appears at the end of the Rose: Fast Forward To Now flash, there’s a little animation of Rose enjoying Maplehoof. I guess she’s making up for the loss of her precious Jaspers.

BRIGHT: We make a brief detour back to Jade, who’s searching for Becquerel. Two new things about Jade’s mysterious abilities: One, Becquerel is invisible to them. Two, this is unusual enough that it used to disturb her. Becquerel appears briefly in the background, and there’s clearly something strange about him…

CHEL: Additionally, it was clearly his face that was carved on the pumpkin we saw earlier, and he looks canine but it’s hard to make out details at this point...

BRIGHT: But before we can find out more, the comic jumps back to John.

Now in his Dad’s room, John is struck by an unwelcome discovery — there aren’t any clowns. Not on posters, no figurines. His father’s briefcase, rather than being full of the tools of a street performer, holds only boring papers and spreadsheets. In fact, the room is pretty boring...like his Dad is just a normal businessman?

"[S] John: Examine your dad's room." (Watch on YouTube)

FAILURE ARTIST: I wish more had been made of Bing “Douchebag” Crosby in this comic but that’s just me being an old movie nerd.

BRIGHT: While John attempts to recover from the BSOD this causes, his father breaks out of a jail cell armed with a safe. This is watched with displeasure by another black figure in brightly-coloured clothing, whose name is not Spades Slick. (He likes the ring of that, though.) No, he’s Archagent Jack Noir, and he oversees the affairs of a dark kingdom through three fenestrated walls.

CHEL: He usually has a fourth one but it got stolen.

FAILURE ARTIST: Those fingers typing the name Spades Slick are a suspicious color...

BRIGHT: He also despises the jester outfits everyone has been forced to wear, and refuses to don his comical hat until the Queen hijacks his fenestrated wall and orders him to wear it. The wall cuts back to Dad, who has now disarmed an especially burly-looking agent and is punching him in the head.

CHEL: Jack Noir makes mention of his carapace at this point; I don’t remember if his species is also referred to as “carapaces” in the comic but that’s the name the fandom knows them by. Guess we’ll see if they are as we go on.

BRIGHT: Meanwhile, John opens some birthday presents he found in his Dad’s room! He gets some Fruit Gushers, a very dapper suit, and best of all, an Array Fetch Modus, which lets him retrieve an item from any card in his deck! Of course, this would be too straightforward, so he combines it with his other Fetch Modii until he gets something properly inconvenient.

FAILURE ARTIST: How much do Modii cost and does everyone in this universe have one?

CHEL: The implication is tech like this is how Skaianet made its money, but since we never really see anyone who’s not involved somehow with the game, we don’t really get a good sense of the company being part of the world, so we don’t know. If I had to guess, though, I’d think getting the sylladex in the first place costs a big lump sum and then the various fetch modii cost much smaller amounts, sort of like apps on a phone or programs on a computer.

When prompted, John closely examines the Fruit Gushers box, this flavour being “MASSIVE TROPICAL BRAIN HEMORRHAGE”. Tasty…? John thinks so. However, in the corner of the box is a small, easily-missed logo…

THE HEINOUS BATTERWITCH HAS HER GNARLED CLAWS IN EVERYTHING.

After the destruction of his planet, the disappearance of his father, the appearance of his ghost grandma, and fighting numerous monsters, THIS is what finally sends John over the edge into a full-out meltdown, despite the onscreen caption declaring that THIS IS STUPID.

FAILURE ARTIST: I actually have a box of Fruit Gushers signed by Andrew Hussie.

CHEL: Back on the island, Jade, accompanied by dramatic music, attempts to retrieve a blue package from the ruins, but just as she reaches it, Becquerel appears between her and it, and we snap right back into STRIFE!

"[S] Jade: Retrieve package." (Watch on YouTube)

Becquerel, as we can now see clearly, is an enormous white dog, lacking facial features of any kind and emitting crackling green lightning - worthy of the description “devilbeast”, I think. Jade aims her rifle at his head and takes multiple shots, but none hit. The first heats up and melts into nothingness. When the second is fired Becquerel turns into green fire and next frame he and Jade are both riding on the now-enormous bullet which carries them across the lagoon to the other side of the island. Becquerel teleports the third bullet into space and himself and Jade to the top of the frog building, and he teleports himself out of the way of the fourth, the background flashing through several different locations. Finally, Jade shoots a bullet in the opposite direction with the instruction GO FETCH!, which Bec does, giving Jade time to grab the package. She rewards Bec for fetching with the irradiated steak and announces that he is a GOOD DOG, BEST FRIEND. After dancing around in celebration, she very abruptly falls asleep again, and Bec scoops her up on his back, takes her back to bed, and tucks her in.

FAILURE ARTIST: The music in Jade: Retrieve Package

is another replacement. Currently it’s An Unbreakable Union by Robert Blake but originally it was Mutiny by Bill Bolin. The original is very retro science fiction and the replacement is safari.

CHEL: For the record, real dogs are not horses and are not built to carry people like that, even very small children can damage a large dog’s back by riding it, but given Bec’s abilities, I don’t think that applies to him.

Rose comes out the other side of the transportaliser, she and the cat having both kept their atoms unmingled, and discovers she’s back in the house, in the room she thought was her mother’s bedroom. It seems the cutesy pink bed and stuff in the lab was in fact her mother’s bedroom, and this room is a well-stocked bar.

You decide not to be especially melodramatic about this revelation.

Good idea, Rose; there isn’t time, as the lab is promptly unestablished by a meteor, sending flaming debris flying through the window. The booze-filled room is especially endangered by this, so Rose decides to flee.

John punches some more cards and complains that he’s the one doing the work while Rose is just messing around on her computer, while Jade dreams and little red lights on her bedposts glow. A metal cabinet in the corner of her room has similar red lights on top, and it bursts open, revealing a Jade-shaped robot.

Sudden cut to a mysterious copy of Jade’s bedroom, except with pink walls, in which Jade stands, wearing a golden dress. Back in her real room, the DREAMBOT stands in the same position. The gold-clad Jade is, we find, a depiction of Jade in her dream. Dream Jade tries to get into bed, but complains of a heavy weight pressing down on her, as the robot is copying her actions and is now lying on top of the real sleeping Jade. Instead, she decides to fly, which of course she can do since it’s a dream (and the robot has jet propulsion).

The dream room also contains the blue package, addressed to “GG” from “GT”. This isn’t John’s current handle, but she knows it’s from John, and that she must deliver it to somewhere else without opening it.

Flashback to the previous winter. In a shot of John’s window, we see his calendar and the edges of some of his posters. The calendar is marked with smiley faces in party hats in green, red, and purple, marking Jade, Dave, and Rose’s birthdays, but more noticeably, there are creepy faces with jester hats and huge teeth scrawled on the wall and posters. I didn’t notice it until just now, but there are some purple lines on the arm of one of the poster characters which might just be part of a drawn-on clown outfit but from this vantage point look like self-harm scars. Brr. Ominous.

John at this point in time is going by “ghostyTrickster” on Pesterchum, hence the “GT” nametag on the package. He’s chatting to Jade about having sent off everyone’s birthday gifts, and how he hopes Jade’s will “help you solve those problems you’ve been having lately”. John is embarrassed to realise it will take much longer than he thought for the package to reach Jade’s island, but she assures him it will arrive “exactly when it needs to”.

BRIGHT: With the reveal of John’s previous handle, and from the characters in the Trollslum, we also get the theme of the handle initials being the letters of DNA. (GCAT.)

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade complains about “trolls” and we have the first time this beloved and perhaps overshadowing species is named. However, John calls the “trolls” the r-slur so that’s another point.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 10

CHEL: Also, the trolls are why he changed his handle, in an attempt to avoid them bothering him.

FAILURE ARTIST: We go back to current day. John is peeved at the graffiti on his posters. He thinks it’s the imps. However, we just saw it was there months before. What is going on, hmmm?

Rose decides to name the cat Vodka Mutini. She then talks with John. Rose wonders where Dave is and John figures that Bro is kicking his ass. Considering that this ass-kicking is later treated as serious abuse, this is a callous thing for a friend to say.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 10

CHEL: I’d also say that counts as HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING. There’s not much an internet friend can do about someone’s abusive situation on the other side of the country but they could at least support Dave and tell him to call the police, if it is supposed to be that bad. Or at least, you know, be worried. Then again, Dave might not have told them what the ass-kicking entails, but Rose knows about his brother’s websites, and given that we know Bro made at least one film in which Dave was involved and may or may not have been on camera, and the film certainly would show the state the apartment was in…

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 4

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, when John complains about his posters being defaced, Rose says they always looked that way. John naturally freaks out at this creepy revelation.

We cut to WV. They are trying to get down from the mobile station without sacrificing the MAYORAL SASH. While working the Appearifier, they get John’s present with an envelope addressed to “Mister Mayor”. After WV gets more cable, they rappel down the mobile station with the package under their arm.

Meanwhile, a figure in yellow caution tape watches WV through a sniper rifle. This is Aimless Renegade, a wonderful but forgotten character.

We go back to John and Rose. John discusses the mystery of the defaced posters while he futzes around with the Alchemiter. Rose thinks that John had blocked out the memory of defacing the posters and the revelation that his father isn’t who he thought he was unblocked his memory. She thinks maybe his father thought he was interested in clowns because John drew clowns everywhere. Yet John also wrote “LAME KID”? Maybe Dad should have taken John to therapy.

CHEL: “Lame kid” with arrows pointing down at his bed, to be exact, among other insults, and the clown faces don’t look like the product of someone who liked clowns at all!

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 11 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 5

Yet Dad Egbert is supposed to be the good parent of the group, so here we go with a new count:

RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1

This one’s primarily for romantic relationships, but other relationship fumbles apply too.

Rose thinks that the drawings are the result of John trying to express something subconscious, possibly a repressed past memory. John changes the subject to the upward building process; Rose complains that chimneys weren’t meant to bear such a weight, and considers switching to walls now they can get grist more easily, but she’s running out of time as the house proper is now on fire. John blames Dave, so I think we can assume that either they don’t know his brother forces him into swordfights or they don’t think it’s a problem. Which one is hard to determine.

FAILURE ARTIST: We cut to Jade playing a bass solo so advanced it doesn’t have a bass line. Another Bolin replacement. We find out Dream Jade is in a castle on a planet that’s a gold copy of the one Jack Noir and co are on. While flying around, she sees an inhabitant that looks familiar. CHEL: This is what I was referring to when I said Jade did have some contact with people; she is able to contact the carapaces in her dreams. However, the carapaces are, as we’ve seen from WV and company, somewhat childlike in behaviour, living in a society that’s nothing like Earth’s, biologically not the same as humans so they couldn’t easily advise her if she got ill or injured, and they don’t appear to be able or willing to speak, at least not most of the time and/or in a way the humans could understand, not to mention they would have no way to physically assist her in the waking world so she’d still have to raise herself from a very young age. Hence, why I don’t think they’re a substitute for an actual human parent.

[homestuckcontroversyin2020]

My Opinions on The Epilogues

So I expect that this isn’t going to go over too well, whether it be because I get absolutely zero attention on this post, or for the fact that I’m literally typing up what is probably a hate post that’ll spark up some, “Oh fuck you.” comments. Either way, I don’t really care about the possible hate to be garnered or anything. I’m here to state my opinion on this, and opinions can’t kill anyone when you’re as weak at arguing as I myself am. Now, this isn’t a fucking logical article, I’m not taking time with comprehensive research and making sure I fact check every little detail because that would involve reading Homestuck for and eighth time and re-reading the Epilogues so I have the biggest refresher in the world. I’m not doing that, so take my sub-par rambles.

Preface over, let’s get into the meat.

My original thought when I heard that the Epilogues came out was initially an eye roll big enough to be like when Hulk smashed Loki in the ground. An arch of, “What the fuck, Hussie.” In other words? I didn’t want to read them. I spent the first few days in agony, complaining about how Homestuck was probably just becoming a money grab, and hearing from other people about the content that  came out.

It.. wasn’t as bad as I expected when I jumped into it. People made a bigger deal about them than I thought was even insanely possible. Let me get this out of the way. I don’t hate the Epilogues. Do I think they were poorly done? Yes. Do I think that the writing was subpar? Absolutely. Do I think that fourteen year olds in their bedroom typing away at shitty fanfiction or roleplaying smut on MxRP/MSPARP have a better grasp on the characterization of each individual character than the people who took over and wrote the Epilogues? 10000%. Still, I thought they were a clever addition to alternate timelines. I had heard from a source they were meant to be a satirical take on fanfiction, and was a mocking poke at the Homestuck community... until Beyond Canon came out.

So here we are now with an 18 year old who’s spent their time on this planet obsessing over Homestuck since before they could read cuss words without feeling embarrassed telling you about how they’re pissed off with some small things that are of no value.

I’m an Alpha Kid Stan(TM) so everything that happened to my sweet babies has made me want to blow my brains out over the walls. Let’s go down the line.

Jane, sweetheart? Who hurt you? Now, I’ll be honest, I rushed through the Epilogues in my, ‘fuck I don’t want to read this but I feel like I need to in order to satiate my burning curiosity.’ mode. Jane’s whole... situation seems really fucked up to me. The color of her text in the EPs is another thing that pissed me off beyond belief, and I’m not sure why. The consistency between comic and canon was draining on my nerves. Jane, in Homestuck, is a whiny teen, but in no way do I look at her and see racist Hitler. Also, what the fuck was up with the clown thing? Why did she have an obsession with fucking Jake? Sure, she was into him before, but wasn’t part of her character arch getting over the buck toothed bangaroo? I thought so. I also thought that Jane was, you know, just a normal girl living her best life. She sure complained, but who doesn’t?? The Jane we’re given in the Epilogues seems to lack the internal dilemmas that the dear, sweet Crocker we’ve grown fond of does. There’s barely a hit of self hate, she doesn’t blow up, and sure we could possibly count this to her being older, but, what? She didn’t seem to be pissed off about the entire existence of trolls in Homestuck. Sure, her time with them was minimal and she didn’t really get all the shit through, but she fought side by side with Kanaya, even. I just don’t see it at all.

Jake. Oh boy. This is a big one. In either case, Jake’s whole thing really bothers me. He doesn’t seem like Jake. He seems like a watered down version of himself that doesn’t even make fucking sense? He’s an aloof dork, but he’s not horrendously stupid, there’s no reason to make him an alcoholic, and why the fuck is he an attention seeking slut? Yes, yes. We could blame this all on Dirk but really, what were the authors thinking? They had complete control over what happens in this and they turn Jake into something he’s not. He had other drives and passions than living out his life as the sexy action movie woman we all need in our lives. Jake’s smart to his own degree, stubborn, and kind of a flirt! He’s not insanely oblivious, either. For instance, I recall a specific moment where he insinuates that Jane was having a wet dream about him in Homestuck. I’m not going to find the quote, but I know it’s there. Jake spent time working on the robot rabbit for John with Jade and outright refused help from some outside sources. Jake is smart! He’s got an extensive vocabulary! He’s just a nerd, and he’s more than an uwu gay boy for Mr. Triangles.

Roxy, oh no. This is where I expect to get the most heat. Roxy is a beloved character. The light of my life and the best of the kids, in my opinion. (I’m an avid Dirk Stan, but Roxy has won my heart truly and thoroughly.) I don’t like the whole trans/non-binary thing. Not because I’m transphobic or anything, because I’m absolutely not. It’s because it feels like it just doesn’t fit with her as a character?? Roxy grew up in isolation in a place without humans, you really think she’s going to have an outright conceptualized view on gender roles and norms? Basic fucking psychology would tell you otherwise. This is something that her brain would have trained her to do based on a societal view. I may not have paid a huge ass amount of attention in psychology, but gender is a thing that’s completely up in the air and taught to us. Roxy didn’t have that. You could argue and say that her house has something of the sort that’d lead her to feel that way, or perhaps she’s learned this all off the internet, but her clothes scream femme and she had to make them herself, is all I’m saying. Again, whatever, go off, make Roxy trans. It’s not a huge deal, but that isn’t the only problem I have. Roxy as a character seems to have just lost her spark. There’s little outright love and enjoyment and adoration for her friends that there is in Homestuck. She’s not your hype go get them loving girl. Again, maybe you could blame this on the fact that they’re all older, but getting older isn’t going to drastically impede your previous personality and make you an entirely different person. They essentially turned Roxy into a watered down version of Dave, but trans. It’s like they couldn’t make Dave trans so they just made a new Dave. It’s annoying to me, and that’s my biggest problem. I love Roxy. I don’t care for Epilogue Roxy. If they had done it right, if they had used specific things from Homestuck, if Homestuck itself keyed in on this or ANYTHING, fine. But Roxy was old enough to question her identity, most people do around 16, and she could have had the opportunity to start representing this already. I mean, who was stopping her? Then the baby stuff. Huh? What? Why? Doesn’t make sense, pass. Her bffsy, brother, and person that cared about her most off and yeets himself from the top of the nearest belltower and all she can think about is copulating with John??? Alright, fam.

Onto Dirk. Y’know what? I don’t have many huge problems with Dirk. I found his personality in Meat really funny, I found the death in Candy absolutely soul crushing. Dirk is a good character. I don’t think they did his personality well, but I don’t think they did any of the characters well. Maybe John. Maybe. Dirk really just sounded like a child who wasn’t getting what he wanted, and it was amusing to say the least. He sounded horrible from the way people talked about him before I read it, but I really just found his overzealous ego entertaining. I found the fact that they made him still totally desperate for Jake kind of annoying though. Dirk broke of their relationship. Dirk was the one who took a moment to realize it wasn’t healthy for either of them, and getting what you want isn’t good. Taking over the narrative and making your ex nearly jizz himself in public is hilarious and all, but also, what??

Alright. Alphas. Let’s move onto Betas.

I skipped a lot of it, not going to lie. Rather than breaking it down for each character like I did with the Alphas, I’m just going to ramble and see where the wind takes. me.

I don’t ship Davekat. I don’t see it working in a romantic aspect. I see them being bros, and it felt really forced in both sides of the story. The homoerotic tension could maybe be smelled for a mile away, but lets not forget something very important. Dave has shown interest in women. Dave was interested in Terezi, he called Roxy and Jane hot, he totally fucking jizzed his jeans for Jade. The fact that so many characters in the Epilogues were exclaiming that Dave was gay, and Dave himself leaning towards the sentiment, didn’t seem to really match up. Dave’s not just pretending to like chicks either, he’s definitely interested in them to the point of being genuinely flustered and embarrassed (I.E The Hot Mom conversation.) So, I don’t really enjoy that. I think the economy shit is cute, his alternate counterpart seemed to have a good hand for business according to the spiel that was made about him, I liked it.

Rose? Didn’t pay a lot of attention to her. The drug abuse shit really pissed me off. Rose in general really pissed me off in the Epilogues. 

John is a can of worms. His characterization was done well, but I guess I just don’t see the point in the two timeline deals. Also, why did he have sex with Terezi? Why was he so much of a baby when the rest of the people around him apparently seemed to mature? Who knows. I sure as hell don’t.

And... then there’s Jade. Poor, sweet Jade. She’s been done dirty almost as much as Jake has, if not worse. She has a dick for one. Yikes. She’s extremely sexually driven, which isn’t something I can see for canon Jade who just wants to hang out and vibe. She’s also so fucking insistent with the “uwu lets date Dave and Karkat” shit that it drives me up a fucking wall. Jade, you should know better! You dated an alternate version of Dave! You dated the OG motherfucker fresh timeline bitch who lost everyone, and sure he was depressed, but I think if I remember correctly you know about all of this???? Hmmmmm!!!! Big questions. It almost leads one to believe she’d know better than to enter into a relationship like this with Dave since it could be emotionally unfulfilling. :))))

Anyways, this entire thing is a can of fucking worms and I don’t suspect I’m going to use this account often aside from shitposting, so have this one uneducated article and if you made it through it and agree, disagree, or what have you, don’t be an ass in the replies? I get it, I’m opinionated and should probably shut my mouth, but it’s the internet and I don’t really care at this point.

[awkwardtaco056]

so now that i’m no longer in the Hell that was school and after finding the lovely blog @endcringe i’ve decided to talk about my own experiences with cringe culture, bullying, and why it’s Really Bad to not let people enjoy inherently harmless things, especially neurodivergent people (read more because this is gonna get long and triggering at times, TW for mentions of bullying, suicide, child abuse, a brief mention of incest shipping. I won’t be naming any of the peers that I discuss my experiences with, because my point with this post is Not to “cancel” anyone, I just want to speak out on my experiences)

I’m neurodivergent; I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 8 years old. I didn’t know a lot about it, and a family member even painted it as “oh it’s nothing blah blah blah just apply yourself more. Because of this, I had no idea about the concept of hyperfixations until I was in my late teens. Due to that, I would obsess over random things and my family would shame me relentlessly for it. My mother said I had an “addictive personality” and that she feared I’d end up a drug addict or alcoholic because of it.

I look younger than what I am, I’m short, and small. AKA, the perfect candidate for being picked on by people bigger and stronger than me. People made fun of my art when I was around 13, but fortunately that was an instance where spite fueled me to improve drastically. However, just because I happened to take the shitty comments and have it fuel me then does NOT mean bullying people will have that effect all the time. At some point someone put my old South Park fan art on a cringe blog. I was temporarily hurt, and a little angry, but I realized that if someone was making fun of a 15 year old’s art, they probably didn’t have much going for them in life, so I moved on.

Fast forward to high school. Everything was horrible and I’m not exaggerating when I say I barely made it out alive. I was living in an abusive household up until January 2018 and I found comfort in many different interests. I’ve always found great comfort in music and the arts in general. In 2016, I drew a picture of a mermaid. I was inspired by the chocolate opal gemstone, and I thought it’d be fun to draw a gay chubby mermaid with dark skin and a rainbow tail and freckles. Junior year was lousy and I wanted something that sparked Joy. I was immediately told that “scientifically, mermaids wouldn’t look like that. Mind you, my take looked like this:

Obviously I wasn’t going for realism, I just wanted to draw a cute mermaid. However, they continued to tell me that they wouldn’t look like that, going as far as writing so on the back of said drawing. When I got angry at her for taking it too far (as I’d established before that I didn’t like it when people wrote on my art without permission), they got angry back, accusing me of being unable to take criticism. Heated by the accusation, I went as far as asking my art teacher if it was fair for them to say that, and she said no, stating that constructive criticism would be talking about how I could improve my lineart and coloring in the digital version. I took her actual helpful criticism and since then have improved Drastically in digital art. Even with that being said, I found myself hesitant to participate in things such as MerMay because I was leery of hearing that peer berate me for having cartoony mermaids. 

 During high school I grew to love many musicians, a lot of emo/alternative stuff, a couple being Twenty One Pilots and Melanie Martinez. I love how unique TOP’s style is, their open discussion of mental illness, and as someone who had a rough childhood, I connected with every single song on Cry Baby. It was like nothing I’d ever heard. I started listening to mashups featuring all these different artists I love, adoring how they could change the tone and sound so drastically. A peer Bully of mine in junior year condemned these two artists, declaring that they made “Bad Music” simply because it didn’t fit their tastes. They’d throw my drawings on the ground, write over them in pen, steal my headphones so I couldn’t listen to music, push me around, complain that mashups sucked and gave them a headache, and in general shit all over conetnt that was actively preventing me from committing suicide. 

Some family members were no better. Once high school hit, I began listening to Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, and My Chemical Romance. Their deep complex lyrics stuck with me. I would write down quotes from my favorite songs and thanks to hyperfixating, I remember each studio album in order My mother resented when I fell in love with the “Emo Trinity” because “the Columbine  shooters were emo and that event traumatized me” Despite that, not only did the Columbine tragedy occur in 1999 and none of the bands got together until the early 2000s, but I have a pretty good feeling those groups aren’t For gun violence. The other side constantly criticized the fact that I love FOB, P!ATD, and MCR because I’m black and “why must you listen to that white people music.”

 I grew fond of Dan and Phil in high school (and I’m still a fan to this day!), I loved Phil’s kindness and positive aura and I deeply connect with Dan’s sense of humor and personality. Their content made me happy during some very dark times in my life. It’s November 2017, I’m over a close peer’s house at the time, and notice PINOF is upon us. I drew the PINOF whiskers on my face, my plan being to quietly watch them in the corner of peer’s bedroom on my phone through headphones, the others were doing their own thing and I knew they didn’t like them, so I thought they’d respect it if I silently indulged in it. Unfortunately, the complete opposite happened. I was immediately shunned and locked out of the bedroom, told that I’d only be let back in if I washed the whiskers off because “absolutely not”. Me, being stubborn, washed them off temporarily but drew them back on in the room. Life during then was especially bad for me, as the abusive household I was in was getting worse. They noticed, of course, and even though all I wanted was to enjoy this small tradition in a time during a deep depression, I was immediately shoved out the room and locked out, only to have said peer’s family members notice. I’m a relatively shy person, so this was honesty a really harrowing experience that had a lasting effect on me. 

I grew to adore Sanders Sides as well, but the moment I found out most of my peers didn’t like Thomas, I was terrified.  I stopped watching Dan and Phil’s content for months and shied away from other fandoms too, only occasionally indulging in times of complete solitude. One time when said peers were due to visit my house for the first time, I saw the Phandom and Fander stuff I’d hung up on my wall in my little sanctuary that was my bedroom (it was the first time in years I’d had my own room), and I was filled with panic and fear. I took them down and hid them away, genuinely terrified of what they’d do to me if they saw. It’s still incites so much anger in me to this day because they turned around and ended up shipping incest, but somehow liking D&P and Sanders Sides was So. Much. Worse.

They were baffled by my actions, despite having humiliated me Twice by going on a private blog of mine separate from everything so that I could fully indulge and laughing at everything on there, once at a peer’s house, once right in school. I don’t think they realized how traumatizing it was to have a large group of people in public laughing at something I was deeply self conscious about for all of my life. I put on a brave face at the time, but ended up crying in the bathroom after first period began. I continued to be treated as lesser until things came to an ugly head August 2018 when I ended up in the hospital because I nearly attempted suicide. Years of child abuse, bullying, and being deemed “cringy” made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be alive, that everyone would be happier if I were gone.

After arguably one of the lowest points in my life, I cut them off and slowly began to embrace the Real Me. I started letting myself enjoy the things again, made true friends and even found love, my first boyfriend ever at 18. I still get choked up retelling it, but when PINOF 10 dropped, after he found out how much I’d been hurt over the incident in 2017, I was greeted with a photo of him with the whiskers on his face. I cried for a while, blown away at such a pure act of kindness. He listens to me ramble about my interests, he compliments my taste in music, he watched K-12 with me. 

This got incredibly long, but my point is this: Cringe Culture hurts people. You might think it’s whatever if the Thing doesn’t apply to your interests, but content you’re denouncing as cringy could be something that’s keeping them alive, that one flicker of light in a void of darkness. When I was contemplating suicide, I listened to The Black Parade, repeating Gee’s words to myself over and over, that nothing in the world was worth hurting yourself over. Some friendly joshing here and there is okay, but actively ripping someone to shreds constantly to the point where they have a mental breakdown in front of you and later on plan their own demise is disgusting. Nobody should abuse anyone for having harmless interests, no one. Unless you’re participating in p*dophilic/inc*st/s*xual assault/inherently abusive ships/content and pretending it’s not bad because “Fiction doesn’t impact reality!”, you have every right to like what you like and be happy. Read homestuck. Play Undertale. Draw up the Wildest OCs you can imagine. And stay away from people who try to rob you of innocent fun, life is too short and in this cruel, unforgiving world, you deserve to be happy, whether you’re a 13 year old who draws cute furries, a 16 year old cosplayer on TikTok, a VSCO girl, a 30 year old who writes/draws self insert art or a 20 year old who adores Invader Zim. 

Cringe Culture is just bullying under a different name, and it can lead to many instances of people, especially fellow neurodivergent folk to feel isolated and ostracized. Attempting to bully someone out of an interest they have isn’t going to fix them; it’s more often than not going to cause more damage. I suffer from diagnosed C-PTSD, anxiety, and depression, and sometimes I still find myself trying to over-justify my interests. To all who are roped up in bad homes and lousy “friends” who berate you for your innocent passions, I’m sorry you’re suffering, things will one day get better even if it doesn’t feel like it, and fuck those people. I’d also like to note that sometimes even if it seems more terrifying, it’s better to have one or two close friends you can truly trust than a whole group that walks all over you. You have every right to call them out for treating you poorly, and if things don’t improve, you also have every right to leave.

You have a right to live your True Self.

[rocksinmuffin]

Answering questions under the read more, as one does.

Whom?

Lol i think sometimes you guys forget how old I am and that I did not necessarily grow up watching the same cartoons as you guys because I have literally never heard of this before in my life.

No, not yet. I think I got an OK KO request in my inbox right now but I haven’t written anything for it as of this moment.

Anon I’ll never be straight lmao. But I’ll be real with ya, I never watched the show long enough to form an opinion on him. I know of him but I don’t think I ever saw an episode with that villain, sorry. :/ but out of principle you gotta fuck the lizard. You gotta.

Is this Latin? Anon did you just curse me? Have I been hexed????? My knowledge of Neopets is limited to the time McDonalds had them as happy meal toys.

Hell yeah!!!!! I’ve gone out of my way to not keep up with the news because I want to experience it firsthand but I’m very hype. I always pick the starter based on which final evolution I like best so my opinion might change, but right now I’m looking at grookey 🐵🌱

I’m assuming you’re asking if I write for canon x canon and not just self-insert? I already have a couple times and I address this in my FAQ but I don’t really like writing it as much as reader-insert because I’m a self-indulgent bitch and I want to kiss the robots.

They’re still around; Tumblr search is just garbage and broken and won’t pull any results that are potentially nsfw. You have to get around it by using a browser to go directly to the URL for the tag you want. I go into more detail about this in my FAQ.

But, for convenience’s sake, this link should work for you even if you’re on mobile: https://rocksinmuffin.tumblr.com/tagged/codename-kids-next-door

I haven’t. I tried playing Bloodborne but I gave up real quick because I am Bad At Video Games™️.

I like a lot of different types of video games but bonus points if you can make a customizable character and overall I’m more drawn towards plot-driven games because I like a good story. Say what you want about Bioware as a whole, but to this day the Mass Effect trilogy is my favorite game series of all time and I even enjoyed Andromeda in spite of its many flaws. I like Dragon Age and unpopular opinion but Dragon Age II was my favorite of the series.

Right now I’m playing through Borderlands 2 because I never finished it and I’m having a pretty good time. Other honorable mentions are Titanfall II, the Pokemon series (including the Mystery Dungeon spin-offs), Stardew Valley, Shovel Knight, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Dragonball Xenoverse, some of the Fire Emblem games, Smash Bros, Undertale, OFF, Fable, Far Cry 5 and probably many more.

I thought I was pretty clear about it in the post you’re referencing and I even made a note of it in my FAQ, but yes, you’re correct. I will no longer take nsfw requests for Dib or other characters who are minors in their respective series who never appear as adults anywhere in canon. For example, Dib is 12 throughout the entirety of the series and never canonically grows up, so I will no longer write nsfw for him. Whereas I’ll still write for characters from Homestuck or, like, Teenage Mutant Turtles because there are instances of canon and universes where they are adults.

Keep in mind, you can still make requests for Dib, I just don’t want to write anything nsfw for him. Writing about innocent schoolyard crushes where reader is a child or aging him up for general romance headcanons is fine.

 I used to write these kinds of things without a second thought and I’m not necessarily condemning people who do it because I genuinely believe the people who make these requests grew up with the characters and just imagine them growing up with them (if I thought otherwise this would be a different conversation entirely) but the older I get, the more it makes me personally uncomfortable to do. And that’s that!

You fool, Piccolo always sexy.