liqdrababbles - Tumblr blog

[liqdrababbles]

I made this drawing like (I think) a month ago and ngl.. I'm still not sure if it's finished or if it looks good..... but I kinda like it and I'm tired of editing it, sooo...   

👱‍♀️✨💅🐍💕

I think it's the first drawing where I've used so much pink or pink-adjacent colors... as a person who officially doesn't like pink stuff, this was quite an achievement for me

[liqdrababbles]

hello again... august-september were a total (traumatic) chaos for me so that's why I was inactive for a while. My brain is still kinda foggy and english is a bit hard for me when that happens, but I will try to be active... again (following me on any internet website is seeing how I disappear frequently... and then I appear again, say I'm going to be active, and then some shit happens again in my life and I disappear... again)

[liqdrababbles]

I have been reading a bit on the OTW elections and the whole Tiffany G thing, but most of all, I've been reading comments from people supporting Tiffany saying that she just wants to clear AO3 from all the CP (child pornography) content and I don't know who needs to hear this but:

If someone comes to a predominantly QUEER space (like AO3) and tells you that censorship is necessary to eradicate CP... it's not actually CP they want to eradicate...

I've seen this type of discourse about Pride and about queer literature and queer movies and queer communities. It's a tried and true technique of the right and conservative movements.

First, they say there is a DANGER to the community through CP and they conflate the actual threat of CP in the community (we all know someone who thinks that writing a love story between two characters who are 16 is CP...), and make you believe that censorship is the only way to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. And since most people are (rightly) mind-bogled at having to explain that of course they don't support CP content, they bow down and accept the censorship for the greater good, without anyone actually trying to have a conversation about what qualifies as CP (which needs to, you know, actually involve real children and not fictional characters who are 17 and losing their virginity with their crush in a Mature-rated story about high school football and first love based on the author's own experience of losing their virginity at 17 to their crush in high school).

Then, they tell you that there are other forms of DISTURBING CONTENT, and what they really mean is porn that THEY find disturbing, for ex, (and I kid you not, I have seen comments like that) porn featuring disabled characters, which they consider to encourage the exploitation of vulnerable individuals, or BDSM porn (which supposedly encourages violence and lack of consent), or rough p*rn, or any kind of porn that isn't two (preferably white and skinny) able-bodied people doing it missionary style while lovingly gazing in each other's eyes. SO TO PROTECT VIEWERS, that needs to be banned as well.

And then, they tell you that even that sanitized version of porn is still porn and that people under 18 or under 21 or under whatever age they consider too young to view anything sexual regardless of the fact that not all countries have the same law about the age of maturity, should be free to surf the site without having to *gasp* filter out properly tagged works. So TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN, every explicit content is censored.

And then finally, when all that is left is a sanitized, white-washed, ableist, puritan type of content featuring General-Audience approved gay works of two nice men or two nice women holding hands and chastely kissing each other on the lips... Well guess what? :) CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE EXPOSED TO QUEER CONTENT SO WE NEED TO BAN THAT AS WELL, and since we've basically done purge after purge before and there are still a handful of people on the website, well surely they won't mind/care anymore, will they?

It's not just a slippery slope, it's something that has been done time and again, and that is why censorship on AO3 will never, never have a positive outcome.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[liqdrababbles]

(the actual focus of this post is Nepeta, but I'll mark this under "troll biology" because my headcanon extends to all wigglers)

(important note: actually, the most possible theory is that Nepeta's tail is a fake one / a costume / part of an animal she previously killed, since it's not seen in her dream self and because of how its color matches her cat hat -made with the pelt of one of her prey-... but I'll totally ignore this and go for a biological explanation because fuck yeah science)

--

There has always been a debate about whether Nepeta's tail is a fake one (costume), a prosthetic one (built by Equius), or a real real troll tail. I didn't had a theory of my own about this... but a few weeks ago I was looking at pictures of caterpillars and trying to draw wigglers / grubs... and this idea just hit my brain:

Nepeta's tail is a real one (like, biologically it is part of her body)... and is covered in setae, the insect version of "hairs". 

The word "hair" is incorrect when applied to insects (and trolls are an insect-like alien species, they have many characteristics similar to irl arthropods) because hairs are morphologically different from setae and are considered a characteristic of mammals and not arthropods. I usually use "hair" when I talk about the trolls in Homestuck just because it's a much better known term and people can tell right away what I mean, and I also think the setae on the trolls' heads have evolved in a way that its structure is relatively similar to human hair... but not identical.

But well, going back to Nepeta:

Perhaps it is a vestigial (but abnormally elongated, a mutation) body part, previously fully functional (normal) in her larval / wiggler phase, where she possibly had some urticating setae too (modified setae with venomous spines). This can be seen irl in many hairy caterpillars whose bodies are covered with urticating setae.

I think ALL troll wigglers (not just Nepeta) have their body covered with small setae, and there are 3 areas that stand out regarding the concentration and length of these, especially the urticating ones: the head (initial troll hair), the "back" (dorsal side) and the "tail" (which is just the final part of the abdomen). These 3 areas are usually the most susceptible to direct/frontal type attacks, and surprise attacks from above or behind, so it is logical that these are the most protected.

Some of these setae have defensive functions (venom. On contact with them, the predator would experience itching, inflammation, burning sensation and pain), others have secretory functions (pheromones, chemicals that allow a wiggler to attract a lusus and modify their behavior so that they sees the young troll as a creature to be cared for and defended), and other simpler setae just have basic mechanoreceptive functions. Lusii and other trolls would be immune to wiggler venom.

Normally, trolls lose this "hairy tail" during metamorphosis, but in Nepeta's case it was retained and became longer while her body grew, coincidentally looking a bit like a cat's tail. I don't think her tail is still dangerous after her metamorphosis, but perhaps some of the setae still produce very very smaaaall amounts of venom, so it's best not to touch it (perhaps it causes just a temporal slight itch on the skin. It's not a problem for other trolls, but surely for human skin).

[liqdrababbles]

several of you: yeah Roxy being bilingual really makes a lot of sense! especially since she used troll terminology before me, who had TOTALLY FORGOT this detail: ............... of course.......... I especially considered this detail when I was writing that post.... yeah........ 100%...........

[liqdrababbles]

One of the things I love about Roxy being raised by carapacians, is that these carapacians quite possibly spoke alternian (since they served The Condesce, and she was obsessed with recreating Alternia, so she surely tried to make troll language the official language of the whole planet) and english (because surely a large part of the surviving human population never assimilated the new language, so the carapacians also had to use english to talk to humans and learn how to use many human tools scattered all over the planet).

...so, it is very possible that Roxy knows how to speak both languages too (and maybe a bit of some ancient carapacian language, sometimes used when they are not talking to another species).

I imagine Roxy as someone who "speaks average english and suddenly starts mixing up some alien words and making weird troll noises." Maybe the carapacians focused on educating her mainly using english because they knew she is human ("small human = human language = many humans use english")... but a child absorbs everything that is normal in their environment, so I can imagine Roxy learning all those "weird words and sounds" too and their meanings.

So yeah... while Dirk grew up alone and therefore it is difficult for him to speak and understand others through speech, Roxy can perfectly understand others (including trolls) but sometimes it's hard to understand her due to the occasional mix of languages ​​and accents (also, troll language must sound incredibly wrong with human vocal cords).

Quite possibly in her teens (thanks to chat conversations with Jake and Jane) her mind focused better on english as her main one, but I can imagine her mixing stuff when she's anxious, excited, or just happy (and I also imagine Roxy as someone who tends to speak VERY fast, so it is probably very difficult to communicate with her face to face).

[liqdrababbles]

Homestuck has a bunch of different species (humans, trolls, consorts, cherubs, carapacians, lepreachums, denizens, horrorterrors), each with their own cultural details and complex biology, some even with their own alphabets (for example: the alternian alphabet, or the ancient hieroglyphs in the frog temples).

... and yet, they all use english as their main language or seem to know basic english stuff...

Obviously, this was a "cheap" solution (both for the reader, who does not lose information this way, and for the characters, who should not spend time learning a new language and being confused), necessary in an already excessively complex story... a story that was also known for doing illogical or weird stuff all the time. The fact that everyone speaks the same language is not the weirdest shit on the table. Many things in Homestuck are interesting because they have no explanation and are like "they are this way because it looks cool". 

However, I was always surprised that this whole language stuff wasn't simply explained with an element already widely introduced at that point in the story: the game (Sburb/Sgrub).

Despite being an incredibly powerful thing that can alter reality, destroy and create planets and universes, and "create gods"...  Sburb/Sgrub also behaves like a very standard videogame.

In many irl online games you can adapt the language to the player's preferred option, so it is logical to me that this also applies here: in each new session, all characters with "NPC functions" (consorts, denizens, carapacians, lepreachums) are able to speak the main language of the players. This becomes even more possible if we take into account that the mechanics of this game can intensely affect the normal biology of the players (for example, the whole God Tier stuff, conditional immortality, and the Sprites)... so something like "the game can completely transfer the knowledge of a specific language to the NPCs so that the players can talk to them" is not impossible.

So, in the human session, all the "default" species present in the game can speak english, while in the troll and cherub sessions they can speak the corresponding language of these players.

However, here we run into a problem: trolls and cherubs also speak english.

I REALLY doubt that these 3 species had a convergent cultural evolution regarding language, even more considering the troll alphabet, clearly different from the human one. My theory in this regard is that the trolls and cherubs sessions were initially configured in their own languages ​​(with sounds and words totally different from the human ones), but later, when starting the whole mix of different sessions due to the events related to Lord English and Jack Noir, the language was “fixed” (both in the NPCs and in ALL the players... again, it is a game that can alter biological processes and previously it was shown that it can transfer knowledge as well, as happened with the Sprites) to english, to facilitate communication with the species (humans) that would be decisive in the end of the game.

(as an important side note, it is very possible that the cherubs did not even notice this change, knowing english for as long as they could remember. The cherubs session was the most chaotic, and the one that was most influenced by external factors, long before it even officially started)

Within Sburb/Sgrub, space and time work differently. It is full of paradoxes and fixed futures, and there is “something” in the innermost of its mechanics that has knowledge of past, present and future events. The game was able to "predict" which of its versions/sessions was going to be really successful (Sburb, alpha session), and knew that several players from other sessions were going to join it, and therefore it made the most "ideal/fair" adjustments (set the language to english, also the main language of the humans who created that specific session) in the way of facilitating all the events that led to this future.

However, I think that introducing all this knowledge in the cherubs and trolls did not delete the previous language, it simply changed which was the main one, without altering the other. Humans remained the only species that did not learn a new language thanks to Sburb/Sgrub, being able to learn other only by traditional methods of study and practice. ... Anyway... it is a theory that I really like because I can imagine some very stressed and frustrated trolls, trying to understand where that Jack Noir came from and what the hell had just happened, and suddenly they realize that they can automatically understand and speak a language that was totally unknown to them before.

[liqdrababbles]

I don't really have a problem with a lot of things about The Game/Sburb/Sgrub not being explained in the original webcomic (and neither do I expect or wish them to be explained in the future). Part of the charm of Homestuck and its entire universe was the large number of mysteries that it left open... a feeling that everything was part of something much bigger, powerful and transcendental. An almost (or directly) “real” divine force...

However, it will always stress me out that I feel the carapacians had a lot (A FUCKING LOT) of lore / historical fantasy potential. And I don't mean just the carapacians who played small or middle (or big) roles in Homestuck, but ALL carapacians as a species and society.

Being a basic constant within The Game and all the sessions (as well as creatures with consciousness, relative will of their own and language), the carapacians were involved in many ways and many things were explained regarding this species and how their actions moved / allowed the development of the normal mechanics of the game. Their role (both within the game and universe, as well as analyzing it at the level of the narrative) as [species] characters was "simple" and they fulfilled it excellently...

...but...

Sometimes I wonder... is there something beyond all that "battle between forces of light and darkness" basic stuff? ... is there a more complex connection between The Game/Sburb/Sgrub (/Skaia) and the carapacians?

Did the carapacians, as a species, exist before the game creation... or did their existence begin with the very origin of the game? ...and taking into account the high frequency of paradoxical existences that appear in the story, and the chaotic way in which time and space operate in The Furthest Ring...it even matters if they existed as a species before or after the game creation? Does the game have an “origin”?

Did they always live in The Incipisphere (Prospit and Derse), or did they have another planet(s) of their own before? ... Was The Incipisphere always part of the game? Or was it a "real" element assimilated into the mechanics at some point?

And why the carapacians and not another species? ... how are the Consorts related to them (at a biological, cultural and historical level)?

Maybe the carapacians were involved in the creation of the game... and the whole war between Prospit and Derse has a deeper meaning behind?

Are they aware that they are just some creatures destined to be created over and over again in each session, just to be at war and serve as one more element of complexity in the game's plot? Does that war have something to do with the fact that some of them are aware of this stuff?

I know that the most possible answer to ALL this is: "you're overthinking it too much. They are just some living NPCs created by The Game because it was necessary to have some NPCs with complex functions in the story. They have no past of their own beyond what is necessary for the plot". For a game (... “a game” ...) that creates whole universes, this should be easy... a species whose only function is increase game complexity and fulfill certain predetermined roles, not much meaning is needed beyond that. Also... I don't think Andrew went too deep into the details and implications when he was writing this base part of Homestuck.

But idk... sometimes I like to think that there is a story far beyond the obvious, that they are a species with a much deeper, more complex history, and strongly connected to the origin of the game... and that at some point, their destiny was tied (voluntarily or not) to this infinite cycle of destruction and creation.

(btw, as a final comment... it's a crime that the carapacians didn't have their own language -not human, not troll- in the webcomic... but this is another topic that I'd better talk about another day, this post is already quite long. I have a draft about it but I haven't had enough energy to finish it)

[liqdrababbles]

-coming back from a long and unplanned hiatus due to depression-

[liqdrababbles]

x I plead the fifth

[liqdrababbles]

although the troll language in homestuck is most likely just a slightly different version of english that uses another alphabet... this option is boring...

give me a totally different complex language, full of horrible screeching and intimidating noises

[liqdrababbles]

...ok tumblr doesn't allow to post this kind of stuff here (nsfw art stuff)... but I can post a cropped-censored version... and the links to the full drawing

on Twitter

on Newgrounds (slightly better quality)

[liqdrababbles]

if we analyze the facts... the only reason Dirk is going to reach adulthood and generally have a “““decent””” health level despite his poor diet, stress level, self-destructive tendencies, and damaged skin (sun damage, many hyperpigmented areas on the upper body)... is because of the whole god tier stuff

[liqdrababbles]

every time I write a long headcanon I can only imagine the 9856348952634 spelling errors that I may have written or that perhaps some paragraph concluded somewhat loosely

...english is hard...

[liqdrababbles]

a (not so) “short” headcanon about Dirk and Dave and their different scars 

(ngl at first this was going to be short... but apparently this is my destiny every time I try to translate my thoughts)

⚠ CW(s): brief mentions of suicide attempt, self-harm, self-destructive behaviors, and child abuse (non-sexual) ⚠

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Recently (...well, not so much...) on twitter I talked about how much I love (and at the same time it's pure torture) giving small details to Dave and Dirk's skin (spots, freckles, acne, scars). I love it because I feel like they look kinda sexy that way and it matches a lot of headcanons I have about Dave and Dirk's childhood... but it tortures me because every new drawing I have to remember to put every detail in its right place

Dave is especially hard to draw at times due the large number of scars I imagine he has. His childhood was full of fighting (training) against Bro, and I don't picture Bro as a particularly careful person when it comes to sword fighting. Let's consider Dirk's sometimes intense/obsessive nature, and mix it with Cal's negative mental influence, and yeah he's the worst choice for determining proper limits when fighting a child. The apartment where they both lived was not a very safe place either. As we saw at the beginning of Homestuck, the area was full of sharp weapons stacked (often in unexpected places, tending to collapse easily).

However, I can't imagine Bro putting Dave in mortal danger. I think he was careful enough not to inflict life-threatening/fatal wounds, but was also aggressive enough to sometimes inflict superficial wounds on him. The goal was not to incapacitate, torture, or kill Dave, but rather to teach him how cruel and aggressive the battlefield could be, and to teach him to be prepared for anything, including pain.

With this I'm not trying to justify what Bro did, I'm just analyzing a bit his way of seeing his own actions. The way he raised Dave was horrible and totally counts as child abuse. What's more, one of the things I always find surprising is how Bro managed to prevent Dave's training/injuries from drawing the attention of the neighbors or Dave's school teachers... I guess it was a combination of rehearsed lies, intimidation and/or bribery.

But well... concluding: Dave's skin is full of quite noticeable long scars, randomly distributed throughout the upper, middle, and lower part of his body. I tend to change some between ideas, sometimes because I forget them or sometimes because I'm thinking of some AU... but I always try to be constant in the ones on the face: two on the nose, three on the right side of the face and three on the left side (between his eye and jaw), and one on his lip (left side)

(btw, important fact to mention: although in my headcanon Dave has a certain kind of albinism, this is not full and it mainly affects his hair and (kinda) his eyes. His skin is very light and somewhat delicate, but doesn't have the exact color or behavior of a skin with complete albinism. I didn't try to be full accurate in these details)

Now, by comparison, Dirk is "easier" to draw, at least if I only consider the scars. Although Dirk's childhood was full of more dangerous confrontations (killer drones), he had the help of his robots and he's also incredibly good at sword fighting (in my headcanon, better than Dave). His scars from drone fights are relatively few and vary between cut scars and bullet scars, not too prominent (also, I imagine his skin less delicate than Dave's skin, having a more efficient healing regarding wounds)

However there are 2 groups of scars that I like to highlight when drawing him: a long scar that goes all the way around his neck, and many small scars on his hands.

The scar I draw on Dirk's neck is from a wound prior to his first decapitation in the webcomic. I still can't decide if it was the result of Dirk trying to hang himself or trying to cut his own throat... but it's definitely from a (failed) suicide attempt.

I imagine this event happened a few years before the first time he is featured in the webcomic, so maybe it happened when Dirk was 12-13 years old. I like to think that all of this was very much tied to Hal's existence/birth (either as a "cause" or as a "consequence"), but I haven't fully decided on the details.

Although sometimes I want to draw obvious self-harm scars on Dirk, I admit that the subject makes me a bit uncomfortable (drawing it myself, I have no problem seeing it in other people's drawings), especially when the scars follow a certain pattern / organization in the skin. So I don't think I'll do it in the future. However, I like to think that some of his scars are "self-inflicted" in a more indirect and random way. Maybe by hitting things in moments of negative emotions/anger, doing especially intense and long fights against his robots, or almost suicidally starting a fight against a drone. All situations where Dirk would normally follow a strategy or be more careful / know the limits of his body... but he decides to ignore all this and just indulge in pure self-destructive actions. I imagine that some scars are more directly self-inflicted, in moments of extreme dissociation while handling sharp objects, perhaps grabbing them directly at the cutting edge.

This is part of the explanation for the scars on his hands. Although part of them are due to minor accidents while he was building robots, many of them were caused during times of heightened emotions, depression, anger, or extreme dissociation. Dirk started wearing gloves to protect his hands from further damage (and later, to avoid questions about it).

[liqdrababbles]

I don't know what magic the whole concept of Dirk being kinda gross+feral has that makes my mind go BARK BARK BARK OH YES. Like... omfg mi man grew up in absolute isolation using movies as a source of information, there is no way this dude looks or acts like an average person

(-in my personal headcanon-) the only reason Dirk looks "relatively normal" when he's around others is because he tries VERY hard to be. My dude be like "ok I have a basic concept of what a normal person looks like and I'm definitely not one of them but now I live with other human beings (...and I care a lot about them... and I want to be part of this group) and the movies taught me that people on average reject weird gross dudes so it's time to try to be normal"... but I can imagine how "trying to be normal" definitely makes things worse on many occasions

i want to hear ur nasty dirk ideas..............

Hehe. I've got a few in the same vein as my last post about dental stuff. So. Considering his solitary life I'd imagine Dirk would have to learn to treat any injuries and illnesses all by himself. Specifically I'd like to draw him treating his cuts and bruises, stitching his own cuts… possibly using very dubious methods when he's younger and less informed. Lol honestly I wanna use that all as an excuse to practice drawing gnarly stuff like infections and rashes.

Getting even more SPECIFIC and UNSANITARY with these ideas... Dirty little toddler Dirk. Ok. Like. If Dirk grew up like a "feral infant", where would he have learned to keep himself clean as a kid? I'd imagine little Dirk would be very often sick (especially if any contaminated seagulls get too close). But even after he starts taking his lengthy showers… his skin has to be in bad condition lol. Too much water damages it.

While I'm at it, have some more random headcanons. These headcanons are less nasty and more just kinda unfortunate, relating to his relationship to injury and body modifications. I'm putting them under a read more because this post is getting long oops.

I like to think that Dirk would grow to find it particularly easy to damage and modify his own body. Not only because he'd HAVE to learn to treat his injuries and illnesses on his own from an early age, but because I think he'd suffer from some form of bodily dissociation. One major cause of this is his habit of maintaining his dreamself by dissociating from his earthly body. The other would be a lack of human contact.

Before sburb, if his only "contact" with other people is seeing them through screens, often in scripted scenarios (like movies and shit), his perception of personhood is skewed through imitating whatever performance he'd consume in his youth. As an addition, I don't think Dirk would have any strong need to keep himself presentable. Nobody is there to see. There also isn't anyone to freak out when he gets badly injured (and thus Dirk wouldn't necessarily learn to freak out about his injuries. a caregiver's response to injury is how children learn how to react to them). Depending on what sort of media he'd watch, he might even grow up thinking that getting badly wounded and scarred is unremarkable.

And yeah, that is also probably the biggest reason I like to think about Dirk being into heavy body modding lol. His habit of being crafty with robots & puppets extends to himself and he is disconnected enough from it to find his own skin easy to experiment on. I mean, he's already gotten himself tattooed in canon, why not go further and get piercings and scars.

Copypasting a related thing here -> "I have this dumb comic idea related to that [scarification Dirk] where dirk just gives this lengthy presentation (to any of his friends ig) about the best tools for cutting his skin and cauterizing it. How he first started with heated needles but because carving his skin took too long he started using cuticle clippers and a lighter. And like hes telling this all like Wow I am so insane. These are the talks of a madman except thats the appeal of it because he finds the idea so ridiculous."

[liqdrababbles]

...SORRYNOTSORRY my hand slipped

Dave “I hide my eyes because their color was one of the reasons other kids bullied me, and I express too many emotions through them and that makes me vulnerable… also the sun hurts me sometimes” Strider

Dirk “I wear those sunglasses to avoid the intense sun, and also because Hal is in them… but then I found out that I need them to be around others because apparently my gaze is too intense and threatening and some people have confused my way of looking at them with a murderous intent” Strider