#chronos is the exception

[a-drama-addict]

when the art block starts

[the-east-art]

Trying to figure out a design for Ayla that I don’t hate. I’ll probably do something else with her hair since Marle has a ponytail.

[homestuckreplay]

There Was Actually No Need For The Steed

(page 1669-1683)

After a flash heavily featuring former fourth wall owner Jack Noir (see p.955), we cut right over to the scoundrel who stole this wall: a stylized drawing of noted Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie. So that I can make this clear distinction, I’ll use ‘Hussie’ to refer to the actual author of Homestuck, and ‘AH’ to refer to the author-insert character we see here, who’s intended as a representation of the real author but isn’t literally one and the same.

AH is drawn wearing green, which I’ve said before is the most important color in Homestuck – the generic Sburb color, the first color we see, the color of our protagonist’s shirt, the color circling links in the adventure map, and more. The logo on the front of AH’s shirt is a white sword with oily black wings, reminiscent of the crowsprite prototyping for enemies on both Prospit and Derse. The logo on the back AH’s shirt is also the seal associated with Problem Sleuth’s typewriter, or his ‘most powerful set of keys in the universe’ (PS 1511). AH uses Jade’s scribblepad (p.1373) as a drawing tablet, Jade being the kid who’s closest to the fourth wall. Disturbingly, Lil Cal is on AH’s side of the fourth wall. AH’s office is also shown with a heavy blue filter, as though the room is lit only by the computer, and they’re drawn with incredibly bad posture. Finally, there’s the statement that their side of the fourth wall does not have an off switch (p.1672). Overall, this characterizes the fictional AH as a talented but overworked and tortured artist whose entire life is their work, possibly due to external forces, and who is closer to their characters than to people in the real world.

I definitely think it’s significant that this fourth wall sequence happens one page after Jack and the Black Queen’s fight destroys two of the other walls in Jack’s cubicle of vigilance.

@sincerelywasserious said the other day, before this update dropped:

‘if the fourth wall is the wall between audience and actors, maybe the second and third walls are between actors and behind the stage? So now our actors have access to what’s going on behind the scenes and not just what’s in the play?’

and they basically called it!! All of these walls have multiple views – Jack can switch them to see different areas of the Incipisphere, and the Black Queen can also switch them to appear suddenly to Jack. And the first time we see this cubicle is also the first time we see AH’s fingers (p.953-4), because those walls can also show that view. Now that those walls have been destroyed entirely, we can’t just see a viewport, we can actually go to the space ‘behind’.

AH’s fingers on page 1674 are identical to those from the earlier Jack pages, although it’s worth noting that here the fingers are typing in the narrative text, while previously they were typing character names and commands. In general, the boundary between author and readers is a lot more flexible in this AH section. In one instance, the narrative text contains a command: ‘> MSPA Reader: Shut the hell up.’ (p.1675) and in another, it contains instructions to whoever is supposedly submitting commands: ‘(Type "==>", I am about to make a joke.)’ (p.1677). And of course, there’s a lot of first person ‘I’ pronouns here, while the second person ‘you’ pronoun refers directly to the reader instead of to the player embodying the character. Readers aren’t actually submitting commands for this section, so this is essentially AH talking to themself.

As well as AH’s characterization, the MSPA Reader is given a distinct personality. Their commands (our commands?) tell AH to ‘Go back to work’ (p.1673), ‘Do something less boring’ (p.1675) and ‘Stop being a wiseass’ (p.1679). However, they’re kinder when we actually go back to the story, politely asking ‘Can you show us what’s going on with John again?’ (p.1680) and saying ‘That sounds like a good idea.’ (p.1681). This suggests a world where AH and the readers are aligned on wanting to make the story work and to progress John’s adventure, but hold different opinions on the specifics of how it’s created.

Another line reads, ‘If this website becomes any more self-aware in a playfully self-deprecating yet weirdly self-aggrandizing manner, you're going to go drown a bag of puppies in a sewer.’ (p.1682). Speaking as a MSPA reader, I can tell you that I’m actually not gonna do that no matter what happens in Homestuck, and wouldn’t even make a joke along those lines, as I’m not directly susceptible to a command prompt. I think this is an assumption about the readers’ sense of humor, and suggests the type of person this story is apparently being written for – which doesn’t reflect the diversity of a fan community of hundreds of thousands of people.

But the line’s broader sentiment is essentially, ‘people aren’t going to like this section, and by mentioning that in the text directly, I’m shielded against that criticism’. It’s actually identical to John drawing a Squiddle on Rose’s birthday note and adding the caption ‘(crappy, sorry)’ (p.1091). I think that works can comment on themselves in interesting ways, but that this line comes across more defensive than as exploring this theme. I also think that the author self insert isn’t the worst part of this section by a long way. At the end of the recap, AH mentions their ‘cool horse painting’ which appears in the background of their Photoshopped study. This references a real and ostensibly true blog post from Hussie, found in the Collection at /blogspot/need-for-steed – and it’s a post that makes Hussie look really bad in terms of their respect for other people’s art, time and money. This story has now been incorporated into Homestuck itself, and all of AH’s hints that MSPA readers are in the wrong for expecting too much from them as a creator really fall flat when juxtaposed with a story about how poorly Hussie treats other creators.

AH’s defensiveness doesn’t come from nowhere. I know that a lot of people have strong negative feelings towards direct author inserts, which if I had to guess, comes from a similar place as the dislike of fan-insert OCs in fanfiction, or reader insert fics, or the concept of self-shipping in general. Two opinions on this I’ve seen expressed are seeing it as an ‘amateur move’, assuming that somebody doesn’t have the skills to make a story work internally without resorting to these external ideas, and not liking it when people have a high opinion of themselves and see themselves as ‘important’ enough to be in a story. For sure there are probably lots of other reasons too that aren’t coming to mind, though.

Personally I’m not a purist about the rules of stories and I don’t believe in cringe, so, neither of those arguments ring true to me. In Homestuck, the fourth wall has always been very malleable and this insertion was definitely foreshadowed. So I’m open to it, especially if it goes on to serve a role in the wider story. But fan reactions to author inserts, not just in Homestuck but in media more generally, is something I’d like to learn more about, particularly as it relates to the idea of parasocial relationships. So I might do some actual research on this topic and come back to it in a little while.

A few miscellaneous thoughts on this section. Page 1678 features AH surrounded by a swirling sky and a bunch of Homestuck characters, but where the fuck is my best friend the Peregrine Mendicant? She is easily more important then Mom or Bro and you can’t tell me otherwise. I also have this instinct to read way too much into the joke on this page, especially this line: ‘I WEAVE THIS AUDACIOUS COCOON OF EXQUISITE LIES. AND WHEN IT HATCHES A GREAT MOTH OF TITILLATION WILL AWAKEN AND ROAR AND BEAT ITS WINGS’. I would love so much to think that this joke actually contains hints to the plot of Homestuck, and that the ‘great moth of titillation’ is a reference to Jack, because like, he’s got those big wings and was definitely being dressed up like a doll for the queen’s entertainment.

There’s a new cursor on page 1681, AH’s computer cursor, bringing Cursor Count to three along with the player’s cursor (p.6) and the Sburb cursor (p.139). There’s also a statement in the recap about commands being ‘authored by WV’ (p.1674), which almost positions him as a co-author in what’s already an author insert section.

And finally, the simplicity of the question ‘What do you want me to draw?’ (p.1679) reminded me of another question once posed in the narrative text: ‘What will the name of this young man be?’ (p.1). These direct questions are rare, and they make a nice symmetry between the start of year 1 and the start of year 2 – especially given that the answer to both questions, in text, is ‘John Egbert’.

[pre-rendered]

i mean,, very obvious that i got too inspired by katy's saints & martyrs,,, but a 1020 chronoverse where crono is lobotomized but marle is alive and a beautiful 36 years old queen and well the shits in cross also is still happening so norris and glenn are here too--- i cant shake it off, its so peak, it might as well be canon to me

[inner-aurora]

"HELLO!" "NICE WEATHER WE'RE HAVING!"

Well - this is a fanart of Zoah. Drawn with the purest and most innocent intentions. I............. I'm..... *sigh* Shameless.

[t4tails]

finished batman vs two-face! that was fun :) pretty similar to the first, though with a less interesting yet better paced plot. honestly william shatner did a pretty good job as harvey, his voice for two-face was especially nice and a bit surprising because i didnt think theyd make him actually do that lmao. harley & hugo stranges inclusion were fun too, and its sad to know theyll never make another one of these due to adam wests passing (actually, this was a post-humous release) because id have loved to get a couple more with some random old hollywood stars being forced to voice scarecrow or poison ivy lmao

[d8tl55c]

[ask-pokecats]

(@askappos) Appos@Bella "Hi!" the Silvalleon greeted the Pokemon, with a lightly wagging tail. "Can I have a basic bitter curry please? I have a bag of stardust with me to pay for it!"

So, a basic bitter curry? Comin' right miup!

Bella goes outside to cook the curry. It's the same as the previous one, except she puts Rawst berries on it.

There ya have it! Enjoy, mrow!

Obtained: A Bitter Curry

Bella obtained a bag of stardust from Appos.

[ @askappos ]

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

The diffriders are so fucking fascinating to me specifically flare trooper dumjid bc like. You take a dragon mercenary who has seen war and has actively watched many comrades die. His whole thing is that he’s a perfect guard and thus the only one who survived, leading to a fucked up conception of himself as above death. And then you have him possess the body of some kid who presumably agrees to let him see earth bc That’s His Favorite Card And He Thinks He’s Cool and who’s probably like 12 (sorry saori I have no clue how old you are I’m just guessing based off taiyou + hiroki) and just. Walk around on earth (where are saori’s parents btw. Like you could say this about most vanguard characters but where are saori’s parents/guardians/friends do they know what “saori” is up to?? Does anyone who knew him pre-diffride realize how different he’s been acting?). Play a card game where he commands his dead comrades bc shiranui is paying him (which. How is he paying him, earth currency or cray currency? And what IS cray currency for that matter?). The only thing he likes about earth is the music but he is specifically cursed to keep having his headphones break. When a unit who’s diffriding a human dies in the human’s body, both the unit and the human die on both planets, and besides the money dumjid is only on shiranui’s team bc antero/miguel DIED, a fact which he’s fully aware of and iirc derides him for (may be wrong abt that one though). He constantly tells people to die when he’s cardfighting them. He is laid-back about vanguard and doesn’t care much until he loses a cardfight and because loss and death are inextricably linked in his mind he proceeds to get Super Fucked Up About It bc he’s built his entire self image off being The One Who Survives and losing the cardfight is akin to confirming that it’s possible for him to die & he especially can’t accept that Some Random Humans have the ability to take him out. Sometimes he shows his opponents the battlefield and the bodies of his comrades and they really don’t seem to devote much thought to it (like. What??? I get that chrono & friends love vanguard and chrono does address it a little bit but mostly iirc just to say “I don’t think that’s what vanguard actually does/that’s not OUR vanguard”). He’s affected worse and worse with each loss and joins a group trying to end the world to get revenge on the humans who’ve beaten him (iirc unclear whether he knows the success of the destruction of the earth will destroy him too). He becomes the last of the original diffriders - chaos breaker dragon doesn’t count he was diffridden during U20 - to remain on earth, a point which he makes sure to bring up as proof of his superior survival abilities. The kid whose body he’s possessing expresses that he’s not happy about the way dumjid’s acting and dumjid doesn’t give a shit and continues to puppet his body around. Just, everything about him as a character is so fascinating in a concerning way and, like shiranui, he brings up the fact that vanguard is Real in a way that the earth characters don’t really consider - yes they have strong imaginations and genuine attachment to their units, but ultimately they’re playing a card game where even if cards get sent to the drop/damage zones they can come back for the next battle* whereas on cray they’re fighting Actual Battles and the units that die die For Real And Permanently. Unlike shiranui, who eventually began to see vanguard as a method of reunion with his dead friends and decided that what he’d been told about earth vanguard being a direct cause for his friends’ deaths might be wrong, Dumjid never changes his view on earth vanguard after “experiencing death”, so when he finally loses and goes back to cray he’s essentially dragged back clawing and screaming. I don’t know, there’s just something about him that’s sooooo soooo fascinating to me

[a-drama-addict]

yuo should yap about chronos i want to know why he is everyones specialest guy ever

OHHH the real chronos lore. Okay okay he’s my special guy because he’s fucked in the head

Chronos was my most popular oc in terms of follower/mutual appreciation, pretty sure it was because he had huge tits long hair and moustache. There was a big thing that his powers was stored in his moustache and that he was popped outta the womb with it already grown

chronos was also my first case of yapping i think. posted screenshots and talked about his relationship with the bull a lot. kinda my standard for an oc now if im invested but that was rare back then

He’s also just the hottest guy oc i have does that account for anything. Oh and trans. Hooray!

MY HANSOME MAN

[the-lumiose-goodies]

”Oh hello there,” Cherry happily greets the meowstic before looking back at the large screen “that’s your friend running for mayor right? It must be a lot of work being in a band and running a city. are you helping her with her election campaign?”

I know I have mixed feelings 'bout it, but it doesn't mean I'm not gonna help at all. Of course I'm co-writing her speeches, and of course the ad that you're seeing on screens was my doing... but I don't have much skills.

But...the people seems like it. Renée's support has increased, but still not enough to surpass our current mayor...

[ @ask-gimmiventures ]

[incorrect-undertronic-quotes]

Chronos, drunk: You know how animals have a tastebud for water but we don't? Cider, also drunk: Why didn't we put a dog on the Ghostbusters team?

[vaniliens]

Yk i downloaded emulators and roms so i can have something to play when im offline but they drain your battery so much & i swear im only ever offline when im away from chargers so this feels stupid!!!!

[dabihaul666]

EXCEPT shigchrono poster iris e gif "u, u keep talking"

[ask-the-shiny-pokemons]

(Ask-Eden)Alaxia@Edin: the mew floats by with a smirk “in a band huh? Must be interesting.” He stops next to the meowstic and raises a brow “You must be really close to those in your band. Tell me, have you ever been with one of them romantically?” He gets a cheeky expression “Not trying to be rude.. but I am being nosey about it, yes~” he crosses his arms and smiles once more “Or well. Maybe not. Considering the band is still together. I imagine a break up would’ve been nasty~”

You can tell 'im, Edie. I'm not gonna listen anyway...

Oh, kay...

Edin deep breathes and makes an a bit awkward smile.

Well, I had a date with Noelle before she actually falls in love with Rimi. I began to love her at first sight, but she's not.

Unfortunately for us, we hadn't talk for a long time, and when we were together for a band meeting, she was trying to avoid me, haha...

After our time in Gala, we're finally found common ground and sometimes talking to each other after that. She still call me a "stinky" but with the lighthearted way.

[ @ask-eden ]

[squishosaur]

what sort of ending are you wishing for event and glorious masquerade running at the same time is actually probably the worst thibg to ever happen to me btw guys