#(now the question is Will he Recognize Homestuck)

[chrisrin]

awww yeah he’s fuckin’ runnin’!!!

[ot3]

What Is ORV?

The number one question I get asked on this blog, now answered better than ever. Today I am going to formally introduce you to Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

To start off this recommendation: ORV might very well be my favorite thing I've read. Ever. If I could only reread one thing for the rest of my life it'd be this webnovel.

My elevator pitch is this: something with the cosmic-scale goofy video game nonsense and intricate setting comparable to Homestuck in its prime, paired with the deft emotional poignancy and emotionally-driven fights of Mob Psycho 100, topped off with the sort of compassionate and heartwrenching metanarrative of Undertale.

ORV is a love letter to it's own readers. ORV revels in the joy of losing yourself in fiction, even when it's the kind of fiction that tends to be considered lowbrow or worthless. It's something that dances the delicate line between recognizing the difficult nature of using media as escapism without condemning it. I've rarely seen anything else that accomplishes everything it sets out to do in its narrative with such remarkable precision. Frankly if you're reading a tumblr media recommendation post in 2023, I can almost guarantee ORV has the kind of meat you're looking for in a narrative, whatever that may be.

The story follow the antics of protagonist Kim Dokja, a 28 year old office worker on an expiring contract, whose only real joy in life is reading his favorite massively long and massively boring webnovel. One day, the novel’s events - worldwide deathmatches aired for the entertainment of mysterious higher beings called ‘constellations’ - begin playing out in reality in a sort of reverse-isekai. Kim Dokja, the only longterm reader of this webnovel, finds himself uniquely poised to succeed based on the advantages given to him by his knowledge of future events, but the webnovel’s actual protagonist, Yoo Jonghyuk, is a violent monster who will stop at absolutely nothing to complete his goals, no matter the cost to anyone else. Kim Dokja finds himself in a delicate dance of guiding the events of the story to play out more favorably than the version he read while trying to avoid being massacred in the fallout, all while trying to see it through to the story’s end. 

Below the cut I'll go into a more in-depth (but non-spoilery) explanation of what exactly makes ORV so unique and worthwhile, and what you're in for if you choose to read it.

Clocking in at 550 chapters, and over 1.3 million words in English, ORV may seem incredibly daunting to dip your toes into, but I assure you it's worth every moment. I would read 1.3 million more words if they had them for me. Here are some things about ORV I consider to be selling points, not necessarily in any particular order:

The tone. Its funny, for starters. It is extremely funny, which is very high up on my media priority list. In ORV, there will be incredibly grim things that make you laugh, and incredibly cringe and silly anime bullshit that will hurt you as heavily as any other media you’ve seen. I always love this kind of tonal whiplash when it's well executed, and ORV probably executes it better than anything else I've seen to date.

It’s got fun and fascinating worldbuilding mechanics. the core concept being ‘reality now operates on the rules of a shitty novel’ means that the worldbuilding doesn’t have to function logically, it functions thematically. It’s explicitly stated in ORV canon that some of the internal rules governing this new reality are objectively really stupid and illogical, but they just have to roll with it because that’s what was in the book, and i think it’s a really enjoyable way to do it. This may at first sound like a copout to excuse bad worldbuilding, but I promise it isn’t. The worldbuilding is actually incredibly deeply thought out, but it doesn’t exist for the sake of rational function, it exists for the sake of furthering orv’s thematic arcs. The rules by which this universe operate do a magnificent job of strengthening the core concepts the authors are exploring.

It plays with the trappings of isekai/litrpg in a really thoughtful way. These are genres I'm not super familiar with, so I can't comment on this point too heavily, but with my limited knowledge ORV feels a lot less of a deconstruction of it's genre and more of a celebration/interrogation of it. Despite that, it's still accessible to readers such as myself who are not super familiar with these genre conventions.

It deals with morality in a really wonderful and nuanced way. there are almost no characters in ORV’s extremely large cast who are just explicitly morally condemnable, and almost every conflict allows you to understand exactly why the antagonists believe they’re in the right by opposing the actions of our protagonists. The central conflicts are never pure right and pure wrong; they’re always about contrasting goals, conflicting worldviews, and different priorities between ends and means. this makes the conflicts all feel so much more dynamic and engaging than those where the only stakes are physical harm.

The characters interpersonal relationships are some of the most interesting I've ever seen. ORV is very slow burn and it takes a long time for a lot of these to come out of the woodwork, by design, but by god once they do they fucking hit. Similar to the plot conflicts, the interpersonal conflicts also almost never occur where there’s one side clearly in the wrong. The characters are almost all genuinely attempting to do their best by each other, and the tension comes from the ways in which human communication is fundamentally imperfect and part of our feelings and intentions get lost in translation. it’s very heartwrenching and heartwarming to see unfold, in equal measure.

Following from that, it’s a narrative that really meaningfully prioritizes non-romantic relationships over romantic ones as the central focus. Orv is about love, but not about romance. Obviously there’s shipbait and the ot3 is real and good and my friend but if you’re looking for deep complex platonic, (found or otherwise) familial, and antagonistic relationships that never get ruined with forced romantic arcs, we got em baby!

The pacing is unlike anything i’ve ever seen before. from a purely technical standpoint, it is genuinely a fascinating case study in how to execute a narrative that is almost constantly escalating without exception. there is very little downtime or breathing room in orv, which is insane for something that clocks in at over a million words, and somehow, it still works. i’ve never felt more like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water than i did when i was reading orv and i can’t believe they pulled it off. it’s so interesting to read something like that.

It is a tragedy without resorting to cynicism and a very adult narrative that’s really steeped in childlike wonder. I’m a big fan of cartoons made for children. Cartoons made for children are some of my favorite things to watch, but of course children’s media will always be simplified and not very relatable to an adult audience. ORV is very much a serious and heavy adult narrative, and a deeply tragic one at that, but it never delves into torture porn. It’s a very compassionate piece of media overall, that holds a lot of reverence and sympathy for the ‘naive’ optimism of children that gets stripped down over time. if you, like me, feel more like a grown up child than an adult some days, I think it’ll hit for you.

It is extremely cathartic and meaningful. I am not exaggerating at all when I say that reading it gave me the closest thing I have ever felt to any sort of spiritual breakthrough. It helped unfuck my head a ton during some very grim times and i think the perspective it offers on the value of human life and our relationship to storytelling is a really really good one.

And if my word isn't enough, here's some reviews from satisfied customers. With that, I'll leave the rest to you, and hope you one day reach the end of the story.

[rancidrubysoho]

oh wait i can force people to hear about the comically self-indulgent Homestuck/DC AU here. but i'm gonna do it under that funny little line break. first up is June Egbert as Supergirl. i hope this makes literally any sense

CHAPTER I Supergirl: Up In The Sky

on the distant planet Krypton, twin babies were born. the latest of the House of El, and the last Children of Krypton; Jun-El and Jad-El. not long after, the planet was besieged by the intergalactic warlord Her Imperious Condescension, and by the time the battle had clearly been lost, all that Jun-El and Jad-El's parents could do was launch them into space, hoping against hope that they'd land somewhere safe, and good.

Jun-El did. his pod landed on the outskirts of Smallville, Kansas, and was found by a human couple; Jameson Egbert and Latula Pyrope. not knowing what else to do, and knowing they couldn't leave the baby behind, they took baby Jun-El with them, and raised him as their own. they named him John Egbert, and raised him alongside Latula's daughter Terezi.

for years, John knew nothing about his unearthly heritage. he assumed his family was flesh and blood, and it was only on his thirteenth birthday that anything seemed different. however, as soon as John turned thirteen, he began to change in ways he knew weren't right-- he's getting impossible powers, strength and speed he can't understand. it's only so long before his parents reveal the truth, and tell John about where he truly comes from.

as a teenager in Smallville, John rarely used his powers... but time after time, he found he had to use them. his parents-- his human, earthly parents-- had instilled him such a strong sense of justice that he couldn't bear to see people suffering when he knew he could do something.

and so, with the cloth he'd been carried in as a baby resewn into a costume, John became Superboy. after high school, he goes into journalism, and ends up getting a job at the Daily Planet... all the way over in Metropolis. at twenty-two, John is new to the city, new to being a superhero, and starting to really question the way he feels about himself... and whether he wants to be a Superboy at all.

at the same time, Jad-El-- unbeknownst to John and the rest of the world-- had landed somewhere much worse. on the edges of an American military base, Jad-El was found as an infant and kept captive for twenty years, experimented on and isolated in a cage for twenty years straight. finally, as an adult, Jad-El escapes from captivity, and turns her angry, terrified eyes against humanity as a whole... Metropolis first.

when news hits the Daily Planet that a Supergirl is attacking the city, John doesn't know what to do-- but he recognizes the symbol on her suit as the same as his own. she's not just Kryptonian-- she's family.

after a massive fight through Metropolis, John is able to calm Jad-El down, and the two vanish. the public assumes that Superboy defeated the invader, and hasn't been seen since. some fear he's dead.

meanwhile, Jade Egbert moves in with the rest of the Egbert family. now with a proper tie to his Kryptonian heritage, John has a new resolve to fight for truth, justice, and a better tomorrow... and a new lease on her own life. with the support of her family of two planets, and her friends at the Daily Planet, June Egbert is back from the dead and bigger than ever as... SUPERGIRL!

[meruz]

im gonna reply to some asks but not that many bc the last time i tried to type up one of these posts i accidentally closed the tab and lost like several paragraphs so now im scared

lots of heavypaint questions

@porch-gremlin

its the fan tool on heavypaint!! which is a free drawing app that i love a lot. and the fan tool is my fave its kind of a crutch actually im trying to use other tools gkfdhgsdg but its so fun i can do a whole painting using it exclusively. heres a video of it in action while i mess w the configuration options. u can slide the noise jitter up and down so its more or less streaky hehe ^^

thank you!!! heavypaint ROCKS!!!!! I love it... its like the only art program ill be a shameless shill for lol

also im flattered you think of my art while playing splat...i should draw more splat i feel like i havent done enough.

my phone!! I have a samsung galaxy note 20 that I am still not done paying off LMAO.... but I've been a galaxy note user for years. combined with heavypaint its a shockingly good mobile sketchbook.

I'm sorry it's crashing on your tablet... I don't have a tablet so I don't really have an advice. Unfortunately because HP is a small dev app it can be kind of finicky... especially in between updates. I think if you reached out to vaughn ling/heavypoly he'd probably respond though! he seems to keep up with the community pretty well.

@hellisrealsign nice nice.. I'm glad our tastes match up a little! hopefully that means you don't mind my frequent fandom jumping LOL. I promise to always be true to my homestuck-loving infinity-train-loving self.

LMAOOOOOO I HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD TIME? (covered in blood)

idk is it worth it to read any shounen manga for female side characters?????? (??) HEAVILY DEBATABLE. on one hand the casual observer would say no but on the other hand femslash shippers are the strongest people on god's green earth and will endure great tortures for paltry table scraps.

I think mha is a good manga but it's still a shounen, some of the tropes they squeeze the girls into kind of suck. I can kind of put my annoyance aside because regardless im still a big fan of cool fight scenes and the power of friendship but I think your mileage will vary depending on how much tolerance you have for that kind of story...? There's an awful lot of chapters afterall. I will say this: though toga and ochako aren't the main characters they're not in the background either. the path of their relationship spans multiple arcs across the entire manga and is both plot relevant and relevant to the greater themes/thesis of the story. it's pretty clear that the mangaka and editorial team are dedicated to giving these characters the time and page space to play out. it's not perfect but thats better than a decent amount of big shounen femslash in my opinion? shrugs

Thank you! for both the compliments and the concern. but I want to assure you that... to be perfectly honest I don't think I'll ever stop posting my art regardless of AI. I don't want to make this into a hot take like this is an entirely personal opinion and I don't expect any other artists to share my position but: Everything about my art that I consider valuable is inherently impossible for AI to replicate and everything about my art that is replicable and monetizable is not something I'm interested in owning or protecting. (this is also why at the end of the day i dont really care that much about art theft, tracing etc. and i think 90% of the time style theft is just silly)

I believe art should be freely shared and to restrict that is to make art into a product which is morally despicable and moreover uninteresting... to me. lol. I DO RECOGNIZE HOWEVER I'm very lucky to have both more of an online audience than I even want + a fulltime job that takes the pressure off any of my other art to make money. it's totally valid for other artists to have differing opinions on this especially depending on personal circumstances. AND also I make art that is primarily a product above all else for work everyday so im a hypocrite but. yeah thats my two cents.

I love posting art online LOL. I do it because its fun for me.

HAPPY NEAR YEAR!!!!!!!!!11111111

[captorations]

tw: animal death (nonviolent, elderly.) long post which also features kittens named after TLT characters, to which the warning does not apply.

this is Twilight. he was named for the streaks of orange on his belly, which were even more pronounced as a kitten. not for the vampire series, thank you very much; that nonsense didn't take off until a few months after i named him. he was chosen to be a ten-year-old's first pet because his response to being picked up by a human, as a recently-captured feral kitten, was to purr. not stress-purr, either. his default response to any kind of attention was to purr, absurdly loudly, and this never changed at any point in his life.

he could be grouchy and unpredictable at times, and he never cared for other cats in his space, but he was quite content to live his life alongside mine. he was never a lapcat, preferring instead to curl up somewhere nearby and burst out into purring if i so much as looked at him. i learned his language, able to determine the difference between and meanings of his vocalizations, and he learned mine, responding to his name and offering attention when i was upset. one of the first times Twilight ever came up on my bed with me, when we were both very small, was after a nightmare. sure enough, he was often at my side as i struggled with constant nightmares throughout last year.

but, well. you read the warning. he passed in february, peacefully and painlessly. i miss him dearly. he was my companion for what will for a few years yet count as the majority of my life, and i will always be grateful to him for waiting to go until the evening my partner arrived back home, so she could be with me when he went.

he was, and i recognize that i am quite lucky to have avoided it for so long, the first lost loved one i've had to grieve. and i did grieve. i always will, a little bit. i may have cried while writing this. that's one of the reasons i didn't talk about it here until now.

the other reason is a happier one. i wanted to have good news along with the bad. and i do!

of course i'd thought about what i would do when Twilight passed. my plan was to find a bonded pair of adult cats in need of adoption. but then, as Twilight started to inch past the division between "old cat" and "elderly cat," my partner happened to befriend a feral breeding pair and work to socialize each year's kittens to, hopefully, make it more possible for them to be domesticated by someone else. no TNR programs out there in the sticks, and it wouldn't be ethical to try to domesticate the feral adults.

so. when Twilight passed, and once i had recovered from the worst of it, our attention turned to this year's kittens. it wasn't by any means a guarantee. we couldn't steal them at the ideal age, as the mother was clever and cautious, and taught them to be the same. all the more so because my partner had stolen one of a previous litter to be her mother's pet.

there were so many factors going into this. how many kittens would there be? how many would, and unfortunately this was something we could do nothing about, survive long enough to be socialized and captured? would they like us? would we be forced to make a heartbreaking choice, leaving one or even multiple kittens to remain wild, with all the danger and hardship that entails?

well, the answers to those questions are, in order: two, both, yes, and no. in other words, everything went perfectly. and i'm very glad it did, because i can't even pretend i didn't practically fall in love with them on sight.

i honestly thought my partner was messing with me when she reported a black cat with gold eyes and a grey cat with silver eyes. that couldn't be real. there was no fucking way the universe was handing me two kittens that perfectly match major characters from the locked tomb series, i.e. the most powerful influence on me since homestuck itself.

but no, that's what actually happened. and even though the grey kitten's eyes eventually turned gold too, it hardly mattered, when their personalities started lining up with the characters they resembled. i didn't plan to name my next cats after tlt characters. in fact, i'm a little wary of giving animals the names of characters at all, even derivatives thereof; i prefer to appreciate them as their own selves, not a reflection of another.

however, i make a policy of not ignoring serendipity. we captured them effortlessly, mostly thanks to my partner's work in socializing them. both my partner and i had name ideas, but we agreed not to discuss them until the kittens had been examined by a vet, both in case of health concerns and to confirm genders. sure, gender is fake, and even faker for pets, but whatever.

the vet visit was yesterday, and as we suspected, both are female. so, after comparing notes and compromising on names, i present to you: Nona and Millie, respectively.

i actually had planned to name the black kitten "Hark," but my partner convinced me otherwise, and honestly she's right. Nona suits her better, in personality, in her capacity for violence (against toys, neither has scratched or bitten us even once since capture) hidden by a meek and easily spooked front, and in her habit of following Millie's lead but sometimes wandering off and trying new things and/or getting into trouble. i'll get over the weirdness of the directly copied name soon enough. it's already led to fun sentences, like "Nona spent the entire ride home hiding under a towel." (Nona likes to hang out under things. Millie prefers to climb things. in my partner's terms, Nona is a bush cat and Millie is a tree cat.)

meanwhile, Millie is a double reference. she's mostly named for Camilla Hect, but also for the Millie from warrior cats, who is one of the MVPs of the series, fight me. as mentioned, Millie usually takes the lead between the two. she's a little more cautious about new things, but will accept them after Nona inevitably tries them first. she defaults to protecting Nona when they're both spooked, taking point in the defensive huddle.

please appreciate Nona hiding in the top right photo. she is a black cat who knows she's a black cat, and acts appropriately.

they've adjusted incredibly well. it took about a week for them to be indistinguishable from domestic-born cats, at least when they're around me. my partner handled socialization, getting them accustomed to humans enough that we could capture them with minimal stress. i'm handling domestication, the process of guiding them through their new environment and the expectations of exclusively indoor, household animals. (these expectations are: being cute, not causing too much chaos, keeping us company, and seeking attention at whatever frequency they choose.)

we're both very good with animals, but i have the advantage of being raised by two veterinarians. so even though they were almost four months old on capture, older than is recommended for domestication attempts, i was pretty damn sure i could pull it off. and i did, not least because they're both very smart and adaptable in their own right.

so! thank you for reading this absurdly long post about the personal life of an altogether fairly generic tumblr user. as a reward, you get a video of Millie being annoyed at Nona for going somewhere she can't follow. (note: when Millie goes somewhere Nona can't follow, Nona gets sad and upset and meows pitifully about it.)

[maddstermind]

we're doing it man, we're making this happen

Care to elaborate? XD

Have you ever read Homestuck, Saph? That's what the title is a reference too lmao. I'll go stand in front of the firing line now.

But anyway. It's not a Homestuck story, it's a sorta. YA/NA eldritch horror story called The Conspiracy Gang. It's adapted from a roleplay me and my friends did/are doing (with their permissions). I haven't gotten very far in it yet, sadly, but I'm not giving up!

Here's a lil excerpt:

     The most important thing in common the two had, however, was their shared interest in the occult, cryptids, and just about any other strange mystery the world had to offer. At age nine, Max saw a picture of Mothman and decided that was what they wanted to be when they grew up, and they've been working towards it ever since. Their desire to discover the bizarre often led to them believing too easily — luckily for them, Lizzie was always there to balance the scales. While she also had a keen interest in the weird, she was more skeptical, thinking things through more thoroughly before deciding whether or not to believe them.      Together, the two had spent their years of friendship exploring the hidden town of Saint Hazel, following every possible lead in hopes of finding any scrap of strangeness in the sanitized town. They'd had their fair share of successes, even if it was never anything as grand-scale as Max hoped.      Attentions were grabbed by the cafeteria doors slamming open. A student came running in, a streak of blood trailing down his chin and onto his uniform, but he seemed to not be paying it any mind. Rather, he was dead-set on getting across the cafeteria, and even jumped up onto and ran across one of the longer tables as a shortcut. He was ramming through the doors on the other side of the cafeteria in a matter of seconds, leaving a whirlwind of confused students in his wake.      The confusion didn't last long, however. The doors he had initially come running through were now being closed by a tall, shaggy-haired boy in an unkempt uniform. Everyone recognized him before he even turned around: Trent Burke. All the unasked questions were answered instantaneously, and as he stomped over to a corner, the room spotted blood on his shirt and knuckles.

(whoops that wasnt so short lmao. Max is my character from the rp, Lizzie belongs to my friend Teeth and Trent to my friend Connor!)

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 20 of Gideon the Ninth

Right, so, let me see if i can summarize what happened here:

Teacher: No! You must absolutely under no circumstances ever do soul siphoning down in this laboratory, because there are terrible evil necromantic monsters down here that will possess you and do Bad Shit!

*24 hours later*

Dulcinea: So this puzzle in the lab that's maybe full of spooky necromantic monsters requires that you soul-siphon your cavalier *eyelash bat* Would you do it for me? *dimple* Pretty please? *lip pout* Palamedes was too chicken to do it *eyelash flutter*

Harrow: Palamedes was here first? I have to do it. I have to beat Palamedes. Are you ok with it, Griddle?

Gideon: Of course I will almost die for you, you just had to ask.

I have serious questions about everyone's motivations, and like, basic ability to do cost-benefit analysis

Although it sounds like from what Harrow said that Dulcinea underestimated how hard this would be when telling her what Palamedes had said about it. Or, Palamedes underestimated when he was telling Dulcinea about it, but I think that's less likely, even if Palamedes actually did say anything to Dulcinea about this at all, and I think there is some chance that Palamedes never actually did that

So... new wild Dulcinea conspiracy theory: Dulcinea is trying to kill Gideon for some reason. I can't think of any reason why, but we also don't know the whole Space Jesus lore yet, and Dulcinea seems to recognize Gideon's eyes from somewhere

On the topic of Space Jesus, "yes I will die for you without question" is, in fact, Very Jesus, which I hate to say, since that's my least favorite thing about Jesus

And the thing that Gideon notices

Not even some comment about Harrow being naked, which, honestly, would have been in-character, I think

I think Harrow might be with me on this latest conspiracy theory, actually

Yeah, I think Harrow is starting to suspect that she is evil now

Also, let's just talk about this Mean Girls reference, for a minute. So far, for the modern memes, if I've been keeping track well enough, we have "I studied the blade", "resting bitch face", "light is the paper-killer", "that's what she said", and now this one. But look. "I studied the blade" and "resting bitch face" are both just objectively funny phrases, they're not like, only funny because they're references to something, that's how they became memes in the first place, someone said the phrase and everyone else said, "yeah, that was pretty funny" and it wasn't a reference and you didn't need pop culture context in order to get it. "That's what she said" is also not a reference to a pop culture event, I'm like 1000% sure that every language in existence probably has a way to say "that's what she said" that has the same social context and implication, that kind of humor is probably pretty universal. And Palamedes wasn't making a joke when he said "light is the paper-killer", you could argue, from an in-universe perspective, that he just happened to phrase it like that for whatever reason, in-universe, there's no reason this has to be a reference to Dune. But this Mean Girls reference is meant to be a joke and is actually not funny on its own unless you know that this is a reference to Mean Girls and remember the particular scene that it came from. And if the epoch that's being used here is just the regular AD epoch that we use and it's now 10000 AD, a movie that came out in 2004 is just not going to be in Gideon's cultural experience. So what in-universe thing is Gideon actually referencing? Why is this funny from an in-universe context? I think if you're going to do stuff like this, you kind of have to go big or go home and do what Homestuck did and actually create a corpus of in-universe references and in-jokes and memes for your characters to refer back to. Otherwise it doesn't work. Actually, this is something I'd love to see from basically all spec-fic: in-universe pop culture, in-universe memes. Pop culture has been around for a very long time, memes are just a subset of jokes and have probably been around forever, I enjoy the memes here but I'd actually rather read about brand new memes that originated in this necromantic space feudalism universe somewhere than old familiar memes from a movie that came out almost 20 years ago. Even on Pluto, Gideon had magazines, surely there are other kinds of slightly higher-brow magazines and books and so forth that could generate all kinds of references and memes. Maybe the book would have to spend a few words to explain some of Gideon's jokes, but I honestly would like to know what people joke about in this cultural context, I think it would do a lot to bring the setting to life

Another side observation is that Dulcinea has another key that they do not have, but does not have the one key they have found already. IIRC, Palamedes and Camilla had multiple keys, and obviously Palamedes does not have the key that they retrieved in this chapter, because even if Dulcinea is lying about talking to him, I do believe he would not do this

Also, Dulcinea mentioned "thalergy" at some point in this chapter, I think saying that Harrow would have to siphon that rather than thanergy. I can't find the root of this word, the best I could come up with was this maybe, which is not like, super helpful? I guess maybe thalergy is like life energy as opposed to thanergy, which is death energy, and Dulcinea could provide thanergy because she is dying but for the thalergy Harrow needs to siphon Gideon, or something?

Please, I'm dying to know the rest of this sentence, of all the things I do not know in this book, this is now the one I want to know the most

[traanarchist]

Review of The Best™ Car Seat Headrest Album, How to Leave Town

As a certified Car Seat Headrest Homosexual™, I am contractually obligated to have at least one hot take of my own to add to the pile that is CSH Discourse. Luckily for you, it's not only correct, but also pretty chill compared to some others I've seen in the abyss that is r/CSHFans.

As somebody who isn't a huge fan of the numbered albums (The first four albums Will made), I split up CSH's discography into two parts when thinking about it as a whole: the big (in both size and scope) albums, and the smaller ones. I consider Twin Fantasy (Both Versions), Monomania, How to Leave Town, Teens of Denial, and Making A Door Less Open to be the 5 "big albums". I don't declare this with any authority, just that I find it easier to think of these 5 as the more focused and more album-y albums than something like Nervous Young Men or My Back Is Killing Me Baby.

Anyways, the reason I say all this is to say that, of the 5 "big albums", my favorite is How To Leave Town, which I feel like is one of the more underappreciated albums of his discography, and especially out of those 5. Why is that?

The Vibes

As with most Ephemeral things, be it gender, sexuality, or the fiction ideas you get while stoned out of your mind at 1 AM, vibes are very hard to explain. For me, How To Leave Town just has an energy about it. It's dark and melancholic but also bittersweet, depressing but hopeful. It carries the ambivalence that I get when I'm sitting on my bed, just thinking, and I suddenly feel my perspective switch and suddenly look at a part of my life in a completely different direction. When I listen to the 5 Minute Long instrumental intro to the first song on How To Leave Town, The Ending of Dramamine, I start to feel this weird pulsing feeling in my chest, like the onset of an anxiety attack, but not in a bad way. It's not that I feel sad or happy or any emotion, it's that I just feel. And that's really cool. Am I reading too much into my own reaction to some weird electronic beats? Yup, but it's very based pog of me to do so.

The Lyrics

Will is a goat lyricist, and I feel like he represents that nowhere more so than in How To Leave Town. The Ending of Dramamine has my favorite verse pretty much ever:

And in the sky, there is a place Where it's warm, and you're there And I've got the power now Yeah, I know what to do To make you feel something besides pain 'Cause it's the love That we've come to expect, to deserve And then we fuck and it's nice It's not a complicated mess And my back doesn't hurt And your head doesn't tell you to kill yourself So we smile and embrace Until we don't know who we are

Like this is a major mood ngl. Will is able to build a story of leaving home and being in this place of extreme change and how that makes you question everything around you, not through plot points but through lyrics that create that emotional response.

You can drive across the whole thing in four days if you really wanted leaving custom thank you notes in all the houses you ever haunted

in this whole solar system we've only met one type of life it's the living kind of life and it's not one I recognize

Of course, change isn't always bad! In You're in Love with Me, How to Leave Town gets a fully happy song, where Will happily sings about falling in love, as well as when he had a dream where Obama came to his birthday party. It's weird and silly and sweet and I love it so much.

The Instrumentals

I'm not a musician, and I don't know shit about music theory, I just sing and listen to a lot of music. However, even I can tell that man oh man, the synths in this album slap, along with all the other instrumental work. Can I say anything beyond that it's really good? Nope!

The Conclusion

I'm planning on using this blog (when I'm not reblogging Homestuck Fanart) to just post little essay thingies like this on albums I really like. Please add any albums you think I might like in the tags/comments (do people use comments on tumblr? I'm very new to this) or just send me an ask and I'll post some tiny thoughts about it if I get the time to listen to it! Anyways that's it peace out gamers

[tranquilspot]

John: Open Pesterchum.

I don't have much to say about this page, except that it's well animated, the chat window is minimalist and the app design is realistic and nice.

I used to have Pesterchum installed on my computer, but I got bored.

There was (is?) an option that allowed you to encounter a random user. It was pretty neat but other than that I didn't know anyone so I ended up deleting it. I think they disabled that option too.

John: Open message.

Our first pesterlog, how exciting!

I mean I know by heart its content but regardless it is pretty cool. (sorry, I can't put the text both in indented and chat I had to pick one)

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:13 -- TG: hey so what sort of insane loot did you rake in today EB: i got a little monsters poster, it's so awesome. i'm going to watch it again today, the applejuice scene was so funny. TG: oh hell that is such a coincidence i just found an unopened container of apple juice in my closet it is like fucking christmas up in here EB: ok thats fine, but i just have one question and then a word of caution. have you ever seen a movie called little monsters starring howie mandel and fred savage? TG: but TG: the seal on the bottle is unbroken TG: are you suggesting someone put piss in my apple juice at the factory EB: all im saying is don't you think monster howie mandel has the power to do something as simple as reseal a bottle? EB: try using your brain numbnuts. TG: why did the fat kid or whoever drank it know what piss tasted like TG: i mean his reaction was nigh instantaneous EB: it was the 15th day in a row howie mandel peed in his juice. TG: ok i can accept that TG: monster B-list celebrity douchebags are cunning and persistent pranksters TG: also fred savage has a really punchable face TG: but who cares about this lets stop talking about it TG: did you get the beta yet EB: no. EB: did you? TG: man i got two copies already TG: but i dont care im not going to play it or anything the game sounds boring TG: did you see how it got slammed in game bro???? EB: game bro is a joke and we both know it. TG: yeah TG: why dont you go check your mail maybe its there now EB: alright. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————

I really like how the conversation keeps diverging and converging back together, it's funny ans realistic. Never saw that movie, I saw Beetle Juice though! Why is Dave so obsessed with the idea of having piss in his juice? I guess with the environment he lives in, he's gonna be wary of everything and anything. I think his room is Bro free. "why did the fat kid or whoever drank it know what piss tasted like", the same reason I know what cat food tastes like: kid self-experiment. Though it could have been a mean prank or an accident, the piss one I mean. The cat food was on purpose. Tried recess grass too. Pretty meh. "try using your brain numbnuts" *chuckles* kids when they try to insult someone.

"his reaction was nigh instantaneous" acting is hard dude, especially when you're a kid. I can testify, I participated in my bro's short films. No I won't share them, those worms will stay in their can. "fred savage has a really punchable face" I have not enough info to give any opinion on the matter. I usually suck at identifying/knowing actors in my own country, but american ones? Forget about it man. By the way pretty pompous to call yourself "americans" like you owned the whole continent. Do I look like I call myself "european" on a daily basis? Starting now I'll call you "statians" or something like that. No hard feelings~

"but who cares about this lets stop talking about it" Homestuck if its characters stopped rambling.

*roll credits* (You guessed it, I don't recognize any of those names either xD)

"man i got two copies already" Dave is smart so I don't think he's talking about the server and client discs here, but rather his copy and his bro's. "but i dont care im not going to play it or anything" hmmm not sure if he genuinely doesn't care or if he's trying reeeal hard to play it cool and keep down he's looking for a chance to stick his nose in the Sburb session. Kinda hard to know for sure, 50/50.

"game bro is a joke and we both know it." I third that. "why dont you go check your mail maybe its there now" The boy, is on a quest. And ooooh man a long one since he won't acquire the other half of his mail before a long time. So this is my first post with a Pesterlog formating. Lemme know in the notes or via message what you think about it: Do you want me to keep this format, the whole pesterlog + quotes? Or only quotes + the page so you can follow on your own device the conversation in parallel. —>

[29pageshomestuckeveryday]

Homestuck, page 2,179

Karkat: Be the other asshole.

You are now the other... oh. Oh god. You decide that we could probably stand to delay this guy's introduction a little longer. Why don't we see what someone else is up to. Anyone.

Author commentary: Ah yes, the old "let's get to know this guy, wait, oh no he sucks, let's not just yet" gag. Except Equius doesn't suck at all. He does the opposite of that. What shall we derive from everything in this shot? One worrying detail that jumps out is the lusus's black eye, which presents the alarming possibility that he may be the victim of Equius's domestic abuse. The explanation turns out to be more innocent though. Dude is just really strong. The cool kids recognized right away that this lusus design is based on a Humanimal, which were some bad and weird comics I used to make. Just buff guys with animal freak-bodies that almost always had udders, despite always being men. The anthro porn art, which Equius regards as classic, absolutely exquisite masterpieces and priceless works of fine art, also reference my older work. I used to harvest pieces such as these and write very academic reviews and critiques of them. Some of them are pasted directly here on his walls, with a little obscuring of certain anatomical features. Much later, John's oil retcon further obscures a questionable portion of the piece on the right. The speech bubble in that piece, which is native to the original work, says "I love being STRONG," which perfectly captures the spirit of Equius as well as the rather eclectic body of subject matter his character is based on.

[npclibrarydump]

my mini love letter to fandom:

my friends who have never actually read homestuck arent surprised when i text them "happy 4/13"

my dad has listened to me explain the premise of trigun (and why he would enjoy it) three times this year alone, and still asks the questions and prompts me to go on.

my brother comes to me with his cringe web-novel-reader creative writing projects because he realized i also write. and he values me at least minimally as a judge.

i have a valentines card from my then gf (still best friend now, and this was like 5 years ago) where she jokingly wrote "you are my tord, am i your tom?" because i made her read dear starboy with me and we cried together, even though she had no clue who the characters were. weve still laughed about it from time to time.

my mom has finally learned to recognize hatsune miku and points out if she happens to see t shirts or something on the rare hot topic trip

[generalzar0ff]

re: your post about todd in the shadows and cj the x do you think maybe the fact that both of those creators are men of color and know those people personally better than you do might lead you to question your own views on the subject or nah

While this is a good point, and I do recognize this fact, it also feels like a “I have [insert minority here] friends” defense. To be fair, I’d actually say that the fault isn’t completely on Lindsay Ellis and Sarah Z if Todd and CJ are aware of what their friends have said. If they are aware, then I’d say it’d be a wise decision to try and distance themselves.

There’s also another scenario where all these people have discussed the controversies in private, and have come to an agreement that it was a mistake. While that’s all well and good for them, and makes your point stronger, the way Lindsay and Sarah handled their controversies [from what I can remember; I’m tired and it’s been a while since I’ve read up on them] wasn’t the kindest to the communities they offended. [Yes, I know ‘offended’ has connotations to it, but I’m not trying to mean it in that way.

All that being said, there’s also the possibility that CJ and Todd aren’t aware, which, now that I think about it, I think might be unlikely because… it’s the internet.

The more I talk through it, the more you actually seem to be right about this. However, that does open up some questions about all parties involved. Lindsay Ellis seems a bit more well-rounded to me despite her anti-indigenous statements and I feel like she would be capable of change. Sarah Z, on the other hand, has enough issues with her to the point where I’ll never like her. [Keep in mind, I actually used to!] With her nonchalant attitude toward the prosh1pper problem, though, it makes me slightly speculative of CJ the X. I’m not accusing them of anything, but it was disappointing to see that, in my opinion, he handled the topic of inc3st irresponsibly in his most recent video.

While I did have a few qualms with your argument at first, it was definitely a good thing to consider, so thanks for the ask. PS: sorry for the homestuck leet speak shit, I’m trying to avoid creeps finding this post lol

[izzet-league-mad-scientist]

Get ready folks because my thoughts are immense, my writing hand is itchy, and classpect thoughts have been on my mind

So, an interesting thing I want to write about and for other people to recognize has to do with the Knowledge classes in Homestuck, the Seer and the Mage. Now, we've seen significantly more of one than the other, but looking at every member available and contrasting the two can lead us to some very interesting conclusions about the knowledge classes- namely, their penchant towards self-destruction.

We see it most clearly in the Seers available, our wonderful disasters Terezi and Rose, but even the less-seen characters like Sollux and even, surprisingly, Kankri, can give us more insight on to how exactly this functions. The key thing to understand, and the main point of this post, is the relationship of this self-destruction to the aspects of the classes in question, or specifically, how Seers self-destruct by turning away from their aspect while Mages self-destruct by engaging too much with theirs.

To begin with our key examples, we have Rose and Terezi, Seers of Light and Mind. Rose's self-destruction, therefore, would be in the turning away from the Light, which we can clearly see in her actions. Going grimdark, embracing beings quite literally the opposite of light, and acting in a blind rage without regard for future consequences. Alcoholism to escape from the constant pressure of the future, to blur and dim the Light and the knowledge that comes with it. Terezi, on the other hand, would have to turn away from Mind, the aspect of decisions, which is also clear. It is her doubt over her decision to kill Vriska that sends her spiraling into her own hole of self-destruction, not trusting her own abilities and skills anymore. She begins to knowingly make wrong decisions, unable to stop herself, exemplified in the entire Gamzee situation as well as having Aranea heal her eyes. It is her doubt over the decisions she's made and the role that she plays that drives her to this.

Mages, on the other hand, embrace their aspects too much. Sollux is obsessed with his own doom from the first time we meet him, constantly expressing his own nihilism over his future and circumstances. He doesn't believe that he can escape his circumstances, that he could ever be anything but doomed. In pesterquest (not canon technically but what even is in this goddamn comic), we see his perspective on his situation in Alternia elaborated on, and it is in the bad ending that we see him accept his own doom to be a weapon for someone else's hands, even when given his own freedom and allowed an escape.

Even the Dancestors follow this trend, though of course to a looser degree given their lack of presence and stereotyped characterization. Kankri, the Seer of Blood, actively sets himself apart from others and pushes them away, denying himself the connections with others that Blood interacts with. Meulin leans too hard into the identities she has, creeping others out with her obsession with shipping others and devoting her entire being to being a follower of Kurloz.

Finally, I'll add my own situation to the pile, as a self-professed Mage of Light. I can't help but obsess over the future, and when the future seems to lead in a direction I don't like, that can really take a toll on me. I'm always examining what I'm doing, what I will do, and what I have done, constantly trying to find the best path for everything, to the exclusion of anything else. My mind gets so full of thoughts and ideas that by the end of the day my head is splitting and I'm too burnt out to think, leading to forgetting or ignoring important things and obligations. As much as I know I have these behaviors, it's hard to stop thinking of too much, all the time.

Now of course this whole thing is to be taken with a grain of salt, it's theory over the magical titles of fictional characters, after all, but it's an interesting trend to examine nonetheless and also I have to get it out there or I'm never going to stop thinking about it.

[framecaught]

Cataloguing Homestuck’s Art Styles

Hussie deploys a number of distinct art styles throughout Homestuck, each serving different purposes in the narrative. A number of these, especially those mentioned in the published book series’ author commentary, have been catalogued in the Homestuck wiki [1]. These officially named styles are well-known enough to appear in quora answers. However, Homestuck employs a much larger variety of stylistic manipulations than explicitly mentioned in the book commentary or wiki. While scanning through the comic again for this project, I wanted to catalogue the rest of them! 

This post constitutes a working list of all distinct art styles present in Homestuck. I’ve chosen not to include the distinct styles of the fanartists/outside artists who contributed to the comic; that will be a project for another day. As far as I know, this list only comprises the different styles Hussie develops throughout the comic. I have tried to bring a degree of specific formal analysis (also known as art-historical language) into my description of each style.

1. “Classic” Style

Page 1 of Homestuck

Page 1349 of Homestuck

Page 4227 of Homestuck

The “Classic” Homestuck style appears on the first page of the comic. Although not officially described by the wiki, it is widely understood as the comic’s typical graphic norm. Characters have simplified faces and clothes, and they frequently lack arms. Elements are often outlined in a black stroke, especially to differentiate them from other adjacent, similarly-colored elements. In more colorful panels, scenery may be made up of solid blocks with bright colors. Sprites (base character illustrations) and elements are repurposed from panel to panel in new combinations. Homestuck even takes up the repurposing of sprites as a gag, as in page 1349 above where the ability to flip one’s sprite allows Noir to regain his lost wrist barcode.

This style obviously shares characteristics with Hussie’s style in Problem Sleuth. General characteristics that frequently appear in Hussie’s art are present, such as circular faces and rounded edges on quadrilaterals. The Classic Style umbrella actually covers the broadest range of visuals out of any style catalogued here. The uber-simplistic sprites, such as John on page 1, have typically been lumped in with, for example, the illustration on the cover of Homestuck Book 1, or the two other examples I pulled for this post. So, in the Classic Style, characters can sometimes appear with arms, sometimes without, and in outfits of varying detail, but they retain the same facial features and simplistic quality. The circular facial shape is especially characteristic of this style, along with the lack of a neck. The neck-less quality, static poses, and simplistic detail chiefly differentiate some instances of Classic Style from Hero Mode, though there are still some grey areas.

2. Scribble Mode

Page 1931 of Homestuck

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This style is recognized by the Homestuck wiki, which describes it as emphasizing “a particularly silly/stupid moment in the story, particularly those to be imagined by a character.” That is to say, this style often denotes imagined scenarios which do not actually occur in the comic but instead in a character’s imagination, and especially those which form the butt of jokes. It is also employed simply to highlight silliness. This style is constructed to appear as if the author has “scribbled” rapidly between the outlines of forms to fill in color, creating gaps in those forms. Generally, strokes are made to seem more careless, and less detail is used. While the style is meant to mimic a scribbling motion, it does not always end up crude or parodic. For example, in this “charming vignette” (in Hussie’s words) depicting the Mayor’s dream, the scribble style actually illustrates a remarkably beautiful and almost impressionistic series of panels. Although the dream vignette has certain obvious scribbley elements and certainly depicts an imagined scenario, I would argue that it combines aspects of both Scribble Mode and Hussnasty Mode (#4 in this post) throughout.

I have also identified two distinct styles within the Scribble Mode umbrella. One always uses a thin, apparently single-pixel-wide black line to outline forms, while the other uses a thicker stroke for both its filling and outline. You can see the difference between these in the four examples I’ve pulled; they are sometimes even combined within one single Scribble Mode panel.

3. Hero Mode

Page 1815 of Homestuck

Page 2063 of Homestuck

Hero Mode was officially named as such by Hussie. The Homestuck wiki page describes it as cropping up to “emphasize a particularly epic moment in the story.” Hussie originally called the style “action panels” before hitting upon the current name, emphasizing the link to action scenes and dynamic poses. Along with dynamic posing, characters are drawn in greater detail and tend to have elongated limbs. Some crossover can be seen between Hero Mode and Hussnasty Mode. I would argue that characters in Hero Mode usually retain the original style’s characteristic lack of a neck, while Hussnasty Mode often adds one. Compared with the Classic style, Hero Mode always adds arms. The degree to which Hero Mode drawings include the “hatching-type effect” characteristic of Hussnasty Mode varies from panel to panel. The difference between Hero Mode and Classic Mode can be observed clearly on these two pages, where Damara shifts between the two styles at the behest of Scratch, who asks her to “render [herself] in a more symbolic manner.”

The wiki asserts that “Hero Mode dispenses with the black outline that typifies sprite-style animation and scribble mode,” but I don’t think it can actually be characterized as the only lineless style. Scribble Mode and Hussnasty Mode also sometimes feature a lineless graphic style depending on which part of a character is being depicted, or the need for a line to differentiate two features of a similar color. A willingness to move between lined and lineless blocks of color characterizes Hussie’s art as a whole.

4. Hussnasty Mode

Page 2805 of Homestuck

Page 2976 of Homestuck

This art style is also named by the author. In his commentary on page 2805, he writes: “Someone asked me what I called the style, and I replied by naming it "Hussnasty Mode" myself, because well… it's a bit nasty, isn't it? Kind of raw, a little over-illustrated, and making use of a lot of jagged aliased pixel edges for a hatching-type effect. It was sort of the point to make it a little nasty, kind of aggressively incongruous with the other styles previously established.” This quote sums up the style’s characteristics pretty well. Hussie also describes how this style is more naturalistic, or less symbolic, and was meant to work in direct contrast to the extremely symbolic RPG Sprite Mode. He writes that “drawings like this are introduced in contrast with this simple RPG sprite mode, which was also established very recently as something that Homestuck was "allowed" to use as a stylistic presentation of characters and settings… Every time HS does something like this, it's widening its own umbrella in terms of what it's allowed to do stylistically, which includes dramatically simplifying and abstracting its forms. Which implicitly asks another question: Can HS "allow" itself to go in the other direction? To render characters with higher degrees of definition, regardless of congruity, and freely navigate this full artistic palette at any time, resulting in sharp stylistic contrast and a certain amount of visual thrashing? The answer to that question, almost immediately after it's asked in the form of dropping RPG-sprite Rose into a standard panel shot, is yes, HS can do that, and clearly it WILL do that.”

5. RPG Sprite Mode

Page 2804 of Homestuck

Page 2824 of Homestuck

Despite being officially described by the author, RPG Sprite Mode hasn’t gained much representation as a distinct style (it does not have a wiki page, for example). This style appears after Homestuck’s first walk-around game, now incorporated as a style for static or gif panels. After their joint introduction, this style is juxtaposed against the Hussnasty style. The quotes pulled above in the section on Hussnasty Mode nicely describe the contrast between these two styles and their greater impact on Homestuck’s graphic norms. RPG Sprite Mode always shows characters from an aerial view, mimicking the style of the first walk-around game, which in turn mimics a wealth of RPG sprite games (such as the original Pokemon games). Sprites from these sorts of early games can be characterized by their almost pointillistic use of individual pixels to carefully construct forms.

6. Terezi’s Perspective

Page 2756 of Homestuck

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This style hasn’t been officially described yet. It only crops up as a representation of Terezi’s perspective, conveying some of her experience tasting and smelling colors. While it only appears a few times in the comic, I think it is uniquely visually interesting, and it includes “blurring” techniques which are only rarely employed in the rest of the comic. I’d guess that the effect is created by layering low-opacity strokes over one another and then sliding the different layers’ opacity up and down.

7. SBAHJ Style

Page 8 of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff

Page 3451 of Homestuck

The SBAHJ comic, featured both within Homestuck and as a spin-off, has its own recognizable style. In the first few pages it has a lot of commonalities with Homestuck’s two versions of Scribble Mode, but later takes on distinct characteristics. It can be characterized in part by its image clipping, an effect where an element is made to look like it has been selected within a square box (in MS Paint or Photoshop) and dragged around the page with little care for the size and accuracy of the selection box. Commenting on page 3451, Hussie describes this effect as follows: “In the SBaHJ comics, one of my cool tactics—which I'm almost positive I invented as a sequential artist—was to elaborately render someone ‘turning around’ by taking one shot of them and gradually altering the pose by crudely rectangle-selecting pieces of their face and nudging them around until they're facing the other way in a totally unconvincing and utterly hideous manner.” Different from Scribble Mode, the SBAHJ style also frequently features blocks of color that appear to be filled with the “paint bucket” tool. When the paint bucket tool is used to fill anti-aliased stokes, it creates a small transparent space between the filling and the original outline, visible in the SBAHJ graphics. Finally, SBAHJ comes to include image compression and glitching, created through “deep frying” compression techniques. Overall, the breadth of manipulative techniques made apparent to the viewer in SBAHJ is much greater than any other style. SBAHJ panels are reproduced wholesale or hyperlinked in Homestuck, but on these two pages Gamzee is also drawn in the SBAHJ style.

8. Caliborn’s Styles

Page 5075 of Homestuck (hyperlinked in pesterlog)

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While Calliope’s in-world art was contributed by Shelby Cragg, Hussie gives Caliborn has three styles of his own. The first is his “angular” style, which Calliope aptly characterizes on page 5109 as containing “inscrutable squiggles” and demonstrating a “penchant for arbitrary, completely baffling straight lines and right angles, almost as if trying unsuccessfully to begin constructing a grid.” The second is the style he uses in Homosuck, which retains elements of his original “baffling right angles” but generally takes on the black outlines characteristic of Homestuck’s Classic style, while employing even cruder detail. Finally, after reading a “How to Draw Manga” book, he develops his “manga” style which uses black strokes, somewhat messy coloring (usually with the paint-bucket tool), and shows an attempt at naturalistic representation despite a complete lack of understanding of human anatomy. This style is specifically meant to emulate manga styles, so it features the characteristic white dots as highlights in the eyes, among other features.

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As becomes apparent through Hussie’s commentary, the different art styles employed in Homestuck do more than just emphasize certain moments; they form part of the comic’s visual language and ask us to question our understanding of graphic representation. The scope of this post also illustrates the attention paid to Homestuck’s visual elements throughout the story’s production and within its readership, even if these visual distinctions have received less attention in scholarship. Despite the variety of styles, we can see Hussie’s characteristic artistic tools, techniques, and sensibilities reflected across the comic. 

If you find any styles recurring in the comic that I haven’t mentioned here, feel free to shoot me a message! Again, I haven’t included styles from other contributors; only those developed and drawn by Hussie.

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As we approach the close of the semester, I’ll probably be putting out one more post sometime soon! If you liked this post, you can follow the blog on tumblr for updates or, if you don’t frequent tumblr, sign up for the mailing list to receive an email whenever I publish a new mini-essay!

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[1] These include Hussnasty Mode, Scribble Mode, and Hero Mode.

[rosemary-is-in-pesterquest]

ooh! I have thoughts on Eridan!

okay so, to me, Eridan ties into this thing that homestuck has going on with a lot of its more morally grey characters... the question of how responsible young people are for their negative qualities and actions, and where the age threshold for personal responsibility is.

the characters in homestuck all straddle this line between being young enough to consider them victims of the forces that influence them, while also old enough to understand what they're doing and how it affects others... especially because a lot of these kids come off as really smart for their age, and very precocious. we've all been through phases in our lives that make us cringe, not because we're ashamed of something harmless, but because we recognize that we had absorbed something harmful, and took longer than we wish we had to unlearn it. it could be as simple as being kind of a jerk in a misguided attempt to seem cool, or as dramatic as actually hurting someone in an attempt to remedy one's own insecurities by putting down others to seem better by comparison... but how far can you push that before people aren't willing to forgive? before people abandon the notion that better guidance and more appropriate role models could reform someone? and it's especially interesting when you consider how old homestuck's core audience might've been when they first encountered this story, and how it affected their perception of the characters if they saw them as peers, rather than as children from an adult's perspective.

so to talk about Eridan, I wanna frame this in terms of his classpect, because it actually goes a long way towards contextualizing his behavior. Eridan is a prince of hope, meaning that he destroys hope or uses hope to destroy... and this can be seen in practically every conversation he has. if Eridan is contacting someone, it is because he expects something of them. advice, or consolation, or a solution to a problem he's having... it's always something. when he contacts Kanaya, he wants her to auspistize between him and Vriska. when he contacts Feferi, he wants her to give him encouragement, and maybe date him when he asks. and in every case, the way he demands these things by being rude, whiny, or self pitying, makes people reluctant or unwilling to give him what he expects. he destroys what he hopes to obtain.

it goes deeper than that though. Eridan has absorbed this ideology of sea dweller superiority from living on Alternia... and he actually takes it way farther than it even makes sense to. the aristocracy on Alternia use the lower class for all sorts of menial work that they feel entitled not to have to do themselves. they might have the ability to freely cull individual low bloods for any reason, but eradicating all land dwelling trolls would leave a lot of unpleasant yet necessary tasks with no one to do them. I don't think Eridan actually wants to live in a reality where sea dwellers have to pick up the slack of doing things like sanitation work, or construction or something... but another concept that is heavily tied to the hope aspect is delusion. Eridan is exaggerating. he's trying to agree with Alternia's ruthless class structure so hard that it's actually kind of absurd. but Feferi calls him on that... she says she thinks that he self sabotages on purpose. because he knows, at least in some capacity, that the consequences of getting what he "wants" would actually be really uncomfortable to live with.

so not only is Eridan's goal to destroy... it is also a false goal that he constantly undermines. and all of his waffling between grandstanding and self pity destroys his romantic prospects, which are what he actually seems to want the most.

if you look at the way Eridan pursues relationships, he actually makes a lot of logical sense, but not a lot of emotional sense. he's idealized the act of perfectly filling the relationship requirements of each quadrant. he wants Feferi to be his matesprit, which is purely based on the fact that she's high enough on the hemospectrum to be an appropriate match in terms of status. he wants Vriska to be his kismesis, and Kanaya to be their auspistice, and there are hints that Karkat might've been someone he was considering for moiraillegience, though it wasn't emphasized as much. and there you go! his goal is specific, but it's based more on ideals than on the actual needs and feelings of the people involved, and it's totally self centered... he always wants them to cater to his own needs. the reason why he gets as nihilistic as he does on the meteor, is because all of his endeavors to achieve these relationships are falling through. he feels like he has no hope of mending his existing connections, because he still only sees them in terms of people either giving him, or not giving him, what he wants. but the rest of their race is dead. as the last twelve trolls in existence, they only have each other as romantic options. and as Eridan gets more and more desperate, he gets more and more demanding, which is the exact quality that drives everyone away from him to begin with, and it culminates in him having a "if I can't have what I want then nobody can have any of their hopes either" meltdown.

to backtrack a bit, I wanna reconsider questions such as, when is a kid old enough to be held responsible for their own negative qualities? like... when are you comfortable with ceasing to blame environmental factors? when are they just a bad person? is it after they've refused a certain number of chances to make better choices? when do they reach an age, or level of bad behavior, that makes you think they can't be helped to reform from these negative qualities? where does an adult lose their patience for the idea that a kid is just a victim of their upbringing?

obviously Feferi is Eridan's peer, but these are basically the questions she grapples with when she talks to Eridan. it's like growing up next door to a kid whose parents have some aggressively wrong-headed political stances. as you grow, that kid might mirror their parents' way of thinking... and by the time the two of you are in your teens, it's hard to ignore how much of a jerk that kid is becoming. but you've seen them at every step of their development. you know where it comes from. maybe theirs is the dominant political belief in the community, even if your own parents aren't like that. maybe you wonder if you would've agreed with them if you grew up under their circumstances. you've felt the pressure, but you haven't lived in it like they have, and maybe if they just had the chance to grow up under different conditions, they wouldn't be this way. and you are aware that you could be an influence on them... maybe they need you to help them see another perspective. you always got along so well as kids. when did things even change? and that's kind of where I imagine Feferi is at when we're introduced to her and Eridan. it's a crossroads between believing that you might still matter enough to them to change their outlook, and the persistence of their ingrained beliefs. it's tiring to do that kind of work, over a long period of time, to minimal results. when is the appropriate time to give up? in this way, Feferi's own hopes for Eridan fade over time. she says at one point that she was mainly acting as his moirail so he wouldn't try to underfeed her lusus and kill the land dwellers that way. she's not sure how serious he is, and she can't take that risk. deep down, I'm pretty sure Eridan knew he was never actually going to commit a genocide... but his need to grandstand, and legitimate belief in his caste superiority, had convinced Feferi enough that she still felt obligated to manage him as though he was a real threat.

these characters are thirteen years old. they're right at the edge of childhood and adolescence... right at the age where children aren't quite so innocent. they want to assert themselves. they aren't mature, so there's a lot of responsibility that they still shouldn't be trusted with yet, but they've become aware enough to feel like that's demeaning, and to want to be taken seriously. in an effort to make people acknowledge them without looking down on them, they'll try just about anything. they don't have the experience to know what they're doing yet, so it doesn't always work in their favor, and that's frustrating. you can see bits and pieces of this in homestuck's characters. like with the way they try to paint themselves as an authority on something, or shit talk each other in order to emphasize their own strengths. it's a really interesting theme, because homestuck pushes some of these young characters really far in terms of how bad the things they've done can be, or how much their lived experiences have taught them that what they're doing is acceptable. they can be really self aware in some ways, and come off as really childish in others. it's hard to know what you'd do about them in real life... and your answer changes depending on your own age and perspective. it's a really cool gray area to poke around in, and homestuck is excellent at it.

wtf I like Eridan now

[peachy-artist]

Time for me to write an essay on Mallek and MSPA Reader’s relationship. Hiveswap Friendsim spoilers down below!

So, actually, I’m not done talking about this yet and I need a distraction from all this stress life is forcing me into, so let’s talk about this some more! Let’s do a full-on analysis of Mallek’s and MSPA Reader’s relationship!!!

(these tags are from this post by the way; please give the artist some love for good art and making me think on this)

I’m going to try to go through this chronologically, but it’s Homestuck and you know how that goes.

When MSPA Reader first meets Mallek, he literally takes their breath away. Of course, the joke is made that the MSPA Reader can’t catch it now because they drove away and their breath is miles away by now. But, take the joke away and MSPA Reader is looking at Mallek, unable to breathe. This could be for two reasons: they’re fearing for their life as they have been kidnapped by a blue-blooded troll (understandable) or they immediately got attracted to Mallek (also understandable). I’ll be honest, I think the former is more likely as MSPA Reader actually mistakes Mallek as an indigo blood at first, but let’s just put all clues on the table, just in case.

But wait!! MSPA Reader spends quite some time talking about Mallek’s appearance right after. There’s not much of a need to do this. Right after stating that Mallek’s “straight chillin’”, they could have shown Mallek’s image to show what he looks like. Describing it in text means that the MSPA Reader themself is thinking about it. So maybe it’s not so unlikely that MSPA Reader is immediately attracted to Mallek after all.

Let’s get the counter-argument out of the way. Mallek could be checking you out because he thinks your a robot and MSPA Reader is brainwashed into friendship and will befriend anything that moves. But consider...MSPA Reader could be mistaking their attraction for friendship because Doc Scratch messed with their head. Who’s to say that MSPA Reader wouldn’t recognize their attraction for something more if they had a clear head?

Let’s consider this textbox. Mallek comes in the 11th volume. MSPA reader has spent some good time in Alternia and should know by now that nobody blends in. By this time, they met Chahut. They met Azdaja. They met Zebruh (oh gosh, Zebruh...). They met Kuprum and Folykl. In a world where everybody stands out, everyone blends in. So why would MSPA Reader have noticed someone like Mallek. One word. Attraction.

Okay, I do actually think MSPA Reader is leaning in because they think Mallek thinks they’re a terrific friend and they finally found someone who understands. But, I think that actually helped boost up MSPA Reader’s romantic attraction to him! Once they started thinking “*gasp* maybe?”, it’s hard to let that connection go, even after being shot down.

We’re not discussing much on Mallek’s part right now because his main attraction to MSPA Reader at this point is thinking that they’re a robot. But, like I said, we’re putting all clues on the table.

All right, now we got the two different long endings. I’m gonna go with the bad one first, where MSPA Reader lies and says they’re a high-tech robot.

HAHAHA, MY HEART STOPPED AT THIS PART. Okay, but for real. There is NO reason for a flirty smile if you’re just interested in cracking a robot. And it could be that the MSPA Reader is misinterpreting it. But then the questions stands as to why they see it as flirty. Is it because they themself are attracted to him? Le gasp!

Even the MSPA Reader feels that Mallek was hitting on them. And note that they didn’t do their usual “I just want friendship, bud!” Instead, they’re bewildered and confused and in love. 

Do I need to explain this one? I don’t think I do.

Nice choice of words, Mallek. Thank you for proving my point further.

More focus on his appearance that would only be necessary if MSPA Reader is attracted to him HMMMMMM...

Okay, bad ending done and clues have been put on table. Now to turn the magnifying glass to the good ending, where MSPA Reader confesses that they are not a robot.

Okay, I know the MSPA Reader has this super power to make even the most inhibited people open up, but this here is a clue and on the table it goes! Mallek takes MSPA Reader to his special place after just meeting? HMMMMM...

Yeah, Mallek could have easily went, “Well, you’re not a robot. Bye!” There was no reason for him to keep hanging with MSPA Reader. Unless, of course, he’s attracted to them now. And now that he knows that they’re not a robot, it’s safe to assume it’s romantic attraction than just interest!

More focus on appearance!

MSPA admits to trying to be flirty! This is big, seeing as before, they avoided flirting like the plague. They just want friendship! But they sure seem comfortable with Mallek 👀

Some more focus on appearance! Also, MSPA Reader is touched that Mallek came to save them.

It’s a crime for me to post this text box without Mallek himself. Anyway, MSPA Reader almost drowned and instead of being like, “Man, trolls sure are violent”, they are enamored with Mallek being shirtless and his piercings. 

And here’s the great slip of the tongue. Coolboy Mallek who so flawlessly hit on MSPA Reader in the bad ending fumbled and confessed that they think MSPA Reader is cute. He’s so embarrassed that he flushes, instead of just trying to play it off as no big deal. He’s vulnerable now and is confessing that, yes, the MSPA Reader is cute and he is attracted to them!

He’s stuttering now and trying to change the subject, trying to distract MSPA Reader so they don’t realize he basically just confessed his attraction to them. Also, this leads up to him with a very big moment...

Mallek’s sign!! Mallek gives MSPA Reader one of his hoodie’s with his sign on it. The infamous hoodie that MSPA Reader wears for the rest of this game and Pesterquest. Signs are a big deal for trolls. In Hiveswap Act I, Xefros tells Joey that even using the same typing quirk as another troll is reserved for special relationships. In Galekh’s route, he looks to the matching hoodies in shock because wearing the same sign is a big deal.

Mallek should know this. He’s lived in Alternia his whole life. He knows sharing a sign is a big deal. MSPA Reader also has been in Alternia for a while by now and likely realizes that sharing a sign = a big deal. So Mallek suggesting MSPA Reader wear his sign and MSPA Reader stating that they “can’t think of anything [they’d] like more”? They’re basically matesprits at this point, let’s be real.

Okay, I am no where near done talking about this. I still wanna analyze their relationship in Galekh’s route and maybe Pesterquest too, but this is long enough as is. So, assuming I don’t lose steam, gonna end it here and keep the rest for a part two!