#NOW. i will admit I'm still rereading the later parts of the comic

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Hey, I was just reading your idea for the ending of Homestuck and I noticed that in your write-up Davesprite died, which I found very interesting. I have always thought that Davesprite's survival sort of combated the idea of being bound and doomed to the Alpha Timeline, and the fact that he made it to the end was thematically consistent with escaping the narrative. What is your opinion on Davesprite, and what do you think his purpose in Homestuck is?

I really disagree with this idea that the "point" of Homestuck is to "escape the narrative," as if the characters discovering a means to unstick themselves from the alpha timeline (which is defined as "the timeline that brings about LE", and thus, has always been set up to be something that must be refuted for a happy ending) is not, in fact, part of the narrative. I think people tend to forget that John's aspect, Breath, is literally about choices and freedom, making the Retcon abilities a natural final culmination of his aspect, and that to master these powers, John was required to finish his planetary quest.

Or that when Dave and Rose discuss how much they don't want to finish their quests, the two of them are at their lowest emotional points (Rose having just gone sober and procrastinating talking with Kanaya, and Dave having just been reminded of his lost childhood innocence to the point he broke down crying). The point of them saying they don't want to continue their quests isn't "yeah, man, we're people, we don't have arcs, it's dumb to do quests" - because, again, finishing his quest is what grants John the ability to choose a new future. The point being made by Rose and Dave's reluctance is that self-improvement is hard, gruelling, unpleasant, and uncomfortable - that Rose doesn't want to do hers because it's painful to acknowledge that she was, indeed, a kid who needed guidance, and not the know-it-all-adult she was trying to be, and that Dave doesn't want to do his because it's easier to give up on it than to grapple with his feelings of inadequacy - easier to be a side passenger in his own life than to fight for a better future. We aren't supposed to agree with them that shirking their character arcs is cool and fun.

"They're escaping the narrative" doesn't actually mean anything... it's an odd battle cry that I believe arises from the HS audience's general unfamiliarity with postmodernism (and the fact that the story makes a hard swerve after Game Over in terms of themes and character arcs, which - given the context of Hussie's life and internet presence during and after - is pretty obviously the result of balking at continuing HS for any longer than they had to). Homestuck's storytelling methods, including its meta-ness, usage of the author as a character, etc. etc., are actually quite standard for that genre - having characters be genre savvy enough to comment on the tropes they see and act in defiance of them isn't new, Homestuck didn't invent that, and still counts as being "a narrative." It'd be "escaping the narrative" if John got his powers, grabbed everyone, zapped them away to somewhere the audience couldn't follow, and then the comic ended like that. But that's not what happened.

If we actually go back and look at Davesprite, his baggage is pretty consistently about the fact that he's not "the real dave". When Jade complains about Davesprite, Dave immediately goes "omfg, this is about him being salty he's not the real dave, isn't it". But that's not all that's in play with Davesprite, because Davesprite is a Dave, and thus a way for us to peer into Dave's psyche. Remember what I said earlier about Dave's reluctance to finish his quest stemming from his worries about inadequacy? That comes up again from Davesprite. The reason Davesprite is so concerned with being not the "real" Dave is because he thinks it's proof that he's inadequate (and, by extension, that the people around him are better off without him around).

DAVESPRITE: maybe she was that desperate to finally get away from me DAVESPRITE: between you and me john DAVESPRITE: i didnt really handle things with her as well as i could have DAVESPRITE: oh well maybe real dave will treat her better DAVESPRITE: or not i dont know DAVESPRITE: i did her a favor cutting bird dave out of her life

You know, because he's a kid whose brother was constantly physically abusing him under the guise of him not being strong enough, and Hussie outright says that know-it-all-ism, intellectual assertion and superiority, and mansplaining are traits Dirk tends to have at his worst. A huge amount of Dave/Davesprite's baggage is having spent so much of his life being made to feel less than Bro and not good enough, and then Bro died before Dave could get any closure on that front. And now, as a self-fulfilling prophecy, Davesprite's self-loathing and baggage cause him to ruin his own relationships - thus "proving" that he wasn't worthy of having them.

JADE: jeez you sure have some issues JADE: honestly it has become very tiresome listening to this sort of thing JADE: i thought davesprite had problems JADE: his issues i could kind of understand JADE: i thought you might be different, being the alpha dave and all JADE: but no JADE: you might be even more messed up inside than he was!

Therefore, Davesprite's character arc isn't about how "the narrative" has "doomed" him and he must "escape it," it's about how he (and Dave) need to address the root problem - their self-loathing and unresolved childhood trauma - and move past it. It seems to be a Knight thing to struggle with self-loathing, as Latula and Karkat have deep inadequacies and insecurities too, so addressing these emotional problems is literally part of Dave's arc set out for him by SBURB.

Moreover, Ultimate Self is in play, and in general, the comic has suggested that every iteration of every character is an extension of the original character multiple times. It's not just Dave and Davesprite who conflate themselves and play with the idea that they are ultimately the same guy - the Dancestors see their Alternian counterparts as being extensions of themselves, for example, and Heart players are explicitly said to have journeys of splintered selves, which can also be caused by certain classes in other aspects. What this concept of Ultimate Self brings to Dave/Davesprite is twofold:

First, it means that which Dave is "real" is moot - they are both equally real, and equally relevant, because they are facets of the same ultimate person. I think there's a reason that the person who brings up the Ultimate Selfhood spiel in the truncated ending we got is a mixture of Nepeta (the Heart player I think was intended to achieve Ultimate Selfhood in Hussie's original planned ending, since that's so Rogue of Heart) and Davesprite, who explicitly says that his baggage has been resolved by realizing that he's a part of this greater whole - in other words, finding acceptance with his place in the world, and with that acceptance, finding within him the well of strength needed to go fight LE (or, symbolically, to fight for a future free of what LE represents - which includes the shitty stuff that Bro imposed on him).

Second, what it means is that Davesprite dying (and getting to join the Game Over crew in killing LE) is, at worst, a bittersweet ending. Part of the Ultimate Selfhood spiel is that ALL characters will eventually reach that enlightened state as a final culmination of understanding their aspect (read: completing their personal growth journeys), so as long as a character survives the ending (which I believe all of them were originally intended to do), then eventually - even if off-screen - that character will remember being their other iterations, and doing the things their other iterations did. In a sense, all the dead ghosts from the bubbles (besides the dancestors, who are an antagonistic force overall) get to live on through the surviving cast.

So what I've given to Davesprite in my ending is this: he talks to Nepeta and is told about Ultimate Selfhood, which comforts him WRT his place in the world and helps him deal with his feelings of inadequacy - we see him dead in the bubbles, where he and (Dave) get to fight/talk and complete their character arcs by reaching an understanding with each other - and then we find out that he died by playing a vital role in the fight against the Jacks, a kind of culmination of his acceptance of himself and his duty to choose a brighter future, which isn't fully a sacrifice/death because there's an explicit understanding that Dave will one day come to be Davesprite and (Dave) as well.

And then Davesprite and (Dave) go to fight LE, because LE is the villain of this story. He directly symbolizes immaturity, cruelty, and the worst parts of society - a child who deliberately stunted his own emotional maturity via greed, selfishness, and ambition, combined with the worst aspects of Equius (a casteist), Gamzee (a religious fundamentalist), and Dirk (Bro).

Let's not forget that Bro became as bad as he did because he was under the influence of Cal, and that an aspect of Dirk is literally part of LE. (Dave)'s arc - his reluctance to fight LE because of his self-loathing - has a clear trajectory of picking up his sword to fight LE not because the game or Grimbark Jade are telling him to, but because (Dave) decides that he deserves to fight for a better future, one where the things LE stand for are consigned to the void. Even if (Dave) himself is not able to directly enjoy this future, post-retcon Dave will, and via Ultimate Self, so will (Dave) and Davesprite, in due time.

As God Tier!Calliope says, and as I believe is how we should view the struggles of those who wind up in the dream bubbles:

CALLIOPE: you don't need to do anything. CALLIOPE: be who you've become, and who i didn't. CALLIOPE: consume the fruits of an existence i could never understand. CALLIOPE: live.

The dead, doomed, and irrelevant - including Davesprite and (Dave) - are the ones to fight and defeat LE, and by doing so, they symbolically render him "nothing more than a bad dream". Moreover, Caliborn explicitly says he's orchestrating his own defeat: if Caliborn has it his way, then everybody loses. Game Over was part of Caliborn's plans BECAUSE it would render everybody dead and in the dream bubbles, where they'd be in position to fight and kill him. This is the ending he's chosen - one where nobody gets to survive, and his servants, the Condesce and the Jacks - get to impose their will on what remains of the new world.

What he wasn't counting on was that the Heir of Breath would gain the ultimate power of Breath - the power to choose something new. Using this, he's able to create a timeline free of LE's will. He isn't escaping the narrative, but he IS shaking off the alpha timeline - symbolically, shaking off the shackles placed on them by cruel ancestors, creepy uncles, abusive guardians, and messed-up society. These survivors are then able to fight and defeat LE's living servants, thus clearing the path for a new universe free of his influence.

(Dave) and Davesprite dying, fighting LE in the bubbles, and being sucked in by the black hole are part of the ultimate sacrifice, a culmination of their arcs and a will to defeat the cruelty that defined so much of their lives - and that is what lets them reap the Ultimate Reward.

[kryptonitecore]

Reread: Spotlight: Drift

I’m afraid this is going to contain some early-continuity-Drift slander.

Alright, the age of Furman is over, may the age of McCarthy begin. Based on the opening of this comic, I can say that McCarthy is more enthusiastic about incorporating female characters... So long as they have slightly improbable boob windows and are never named.

I joke, but I’m really not a huge fan of parts of this book. The initial concept, the idea of a ex-Decepticon knocking around on an organic world in disguise, is actually pretty interesting and Drift is a character I like in later series. I had heard he was unpopular/controversial when first introduced and I will admit I had assumed this was somewhat of an overexaggeration or a case of 'it's new, so it sucks'. Now, however, I can kind of understand why some people responded so negatively. The claims I’ve always heard about early Drift being ‘your horrible fan character’ (thanks, TFWiki) were not that exaggerated.

In theory, this book centres around Drift meeting the Wreckers, them being troubled by his past, and him eventually earning a second chance. In practice, it becomes a bit of an extended fan-boy session. The central conflict is mostly handled through a brief private discussion between Kup and Drift, with Kup rapidly coming around. At my most cynical, I would say that McCarthy obviously hoped that the popularity/fictional reputation of the Wreckers would rub off onto Drift, essentially trying to take him on a shortcut to canonical cool guy status.

Drift is recognised immediately, because apparently no one else is a neutral with a sword. Perceptor, in particular, is used to praise Drift a lot: he calls his body ‘extraordinary’ immediately after meeting him and is apparently so incredibly moved by Drift's rescue that he goes through massive personality and atittude changes as a result... Kup, meanwhile, is supposed to be the Wrecker who gives Drift a harder time, but it feels insubstantial. It does not take long for Kup to decide that not only should Drift be given a second chance, he should be part of the new Wreckers unit, even though I don't think he's even an Autobot at this point.

To summarise, a lot of the issue is focused on showing off how special the central character is. Now, that is admittedly a lot closer to the character-driven stories I anticipated from Spotlight issues, but in this case it feels so focused on trying to make Drift seem impressive that it falls a bit flat: he’s great at everything, everyone likes him instantly, he immediately gets to hang around with the Wreckers, and yet he’s still the underdog, somehow. I actually enjoy Drif, but this is a pretty rough introduction. I suspect that McCarthy goes in a different direction in the Drift mini-series and his later work, as that seems pretty well-regarded, so I'm looking forward to reading that instead.

[uno-writing]

AHHHHHHH this is unrelated to uno but my friend and I dared eachother to read something thatd make us cry, and I made her read the boxer and I'm on the floor sobbing over gourmet hound 😭😭 neither of us have done any work for like two days we're just binge reading

This is like, exactly how I felt when I was reading uno, but to a less extreme degree. Any of y'all felt uno legit messing with you mentally? Like actually I should've taken a break while reading it but I just read it continuously over thee days straight and was mentally and emotionally exhausted for a week after lol. I always stop rereading when the joker arc starts up bc I honestly can't handle it 😅

ik people call uno cheesy and it is, but what I felt while reading it was so intense. Ive felt that way over a precious few pieces of media. And it's so strange. I can't find a pattern at all. It isn't very well written, and the storyline is vaugely problematic, and tbh I've seen better world building, but I still love it. Same for other media I've loved, I can admit that I've read better, but I still, for some reason, resonated with these totally random (?) ones the most

If anyone's slightly curious the other works I've loved as much as uno (I call these things soul art make fun of me) are eleceed by jeho son and ZHENA (available on webtoon), the poppy war by R F kuang, his dark materials by Philip Pullman, and the Percy Jackson series and the heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan (pls don't pick on me lol). Ofc there's been stuff that's sent me into various states of existencial crisis but the characters from these works have literally always stayed with me

And Ik no one can psyco analyze me with these bc there's no way someone here has read them all mwahahaha *knocks on wood*

This was nothing really just a random baring of the soul to people who might relate 🥴

- Boba anon 🧋

Oh my god the mortifying ordeal of being known what have i done this is too personal ahhhh I'm to emotional rn I'm deff gon regret this later

UnO definitely delves into many serious topics. Like thinking back about the comic and everything that’s happened is definitely intense.🍿🥤🍭🍬🍫🧋🥨🥬🍦🍧🧊🐇🍩🥖📦🌻

I also gotta say that UnO has been one of my longest lasting passions (idk if that’s the right word lmao). I first started reading it around the time John’s ability was first revealed (i gotta admit, that was the only time of my reading uno that I’ve come close to being a jimp lmao) then I put it down for about a year and I came back and that kept happening to this point. Like most stuff that I completely put down I don’t pick up again. I could probably count on one hand the content that I’ve put down and picked up with the same passion.

I love UnO so much. Like I think that’s part of the reason I have so many criticisms about it just bc it has so much potential bc it’s already amazing with all of its flaws. I don’t think I’ve consumed a piece of media that I’d consider ‘flawless’, but UnO is sooooo close to being perfect in my opinion. The criticisms I do have are things that would be so easily fixed.

And dude, you’ve already issued the challenge. The psychiatrist anons are gonna flock to you now. You did not learn from my mistake lmao It's like self fulfilling prophecy now. You're going to get psychoanalyzed

Now they're not gonna do it bc I said this with such confidence lmao

[e-102]

I've been enabled, here's my top 5 favorite (DC) comics I read this year:

Zatanna (2010)

I love Zatanna as a character wholeheartedly, and this comic of hers was a lot of fun! but it kind of lacks conflict which is why its the least favorite of my favorites. I've seen people criticize this one for lacking pay off but to be honest I never minded, it made me smile. Although I'll admit the latter half of it was better than the former. Milk Wars

I picked up milk wars after reading mother panic (more later lol) and I wanted to know how some characters got from where the were to where they are. What I got was complete insanity, Milk Wars is WEIRD! But the first time I picked it up I was absolutely floored, its clever and strange and its completely crazy.

When I finished reading it I couldn't stop talking about it to my friends, and it made me pick up a lot of the other comics that were featured in this crossover! After doing so I picked it up again and reread it, and its still really good (and still kind of confusing hahaha)

Eternity Girl

Eternity girl is heavy, it hits that sweet spot in comics where they seem to reach out beyond the pages and grab you. I felt connected to Caroline Sharp, and in the beginning I believed in what she wanted, and that was difficult coming to realize that what she wanted was destruction. Eternity girl is extremely competently written but that feels like an understatement. I recommend everyone read this one.

This is a great comic about beginning again.

Mother Panic (all of it)

I love Mother Panic, its another heavy story. It shines light on the parts of Gotham that the bats seem not to inhabit. I picked up Mother Panic because I thought her design looked cool and then the more I found out about Violet Paige made me love her more. Violet is an interesting character, she stumbles into heroism while pursuing a grudge, and she never really embraces it, which is pretty fresh when you mostly read about heroes with good hearts.

When first reading the original comic of this characters conception I found that the quality dropped insanely bad when the artstyle changed, and then got really good again when it returned to the more gritty less cartoony style, and that detracted from my experience a bit. But as much as I felt her part in milk wars was inoffensive I thought the comic Mother Panic Gotham A.D. was great.

Without going on for too long this is probably my favorite among favorites, but it wasn't the best comic I read this year.

Shade The Changing Man (1990)

I picked up Shade the Changing Man after reading Shade the Changing Girl! And as much as I really really enjoyed the latter, I've been floored by the former.

BUT THE THING IS: I still have not finished reading this comic! Sorry for being fake as hell! I'm still making my way through. But for now as of issue #7, my opinion is that there's something special about this one. Its smart, its grounded. Everything about it feels real, which is amazing considering the story is about madness beyond comprehension.

I cant fully describe this one, maybe ill talk about it more some day when I finish it. but for now ill leave the disclaimer that its dark, in the story issues of racism, pedophilia, and many other triggering topics are included. They aren't the focus of the whole story (as of issue 7) but they are elements in individual issues.

As a side note i kept this to five comics to avoid going on for too terribly long, and i narrowed it down to dc comics because thats a majority of what i read. Maybe i’ll post about some other comics i liked, but for now i’ll only torture my followers with these.

[theshinsun]

brace urself, this is for the writing meta ask: 2, 6, 7, 14, 17, 19, 20 (if you need a direction for this... I always wanted to hear more about Bring Me Roses), 21, 22, and 24 bc i'm nosy and still very into your craft. thank you buddy!!

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

I'm so excited/terrified to finally start my knb college AU. I've been sitting on this idea for almost two years I'm so ready but at the same time I'm so not ready.

The gist is it's every single self-indulgent, chaotic, projection-ridden idea I've ever wanted for these boys all rolled in a big ball of shenanigans and character growth. It's a beautiful mess and I can't wait to make it happen as soon as ANR is done.

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

This is gonna come right the fuck out of left field, but I love writing Himuro. I have so much fun writing just... snark, and that boy is the perfect outlet, there's no bottom to that salt mine. I remember getting a similar kick out of writing Tsukishima in the past, I just live for sassy dialogue. It ain't much but it's honest work.

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

My style is very present, I think (which is funny bc there was a time I never would have considered writing present tense) focusing on what's happening and how it makes the character feel in the moment. I like to write specific, detailed imagery, but I try to keep it short and relevant to the scene, so I can move along and focus on what's important. I wouldn't call it fast-paced, exactly, but it is pretty to-the-point. And I think, based on the feedback I've received, that people who read my fics might agree with that. I've heard that my writing is very personal and character-driven, and I think that might be a byproduct of the time I spent writing in first person. Now I write almost exclusively third person limited, but I still like to get in the character's head and tell the story from their "point of view", I guess. 

14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?

It depends almost entirely on how quick I'm able to come up with a pun lol. Sometimes a fic has a title before I've even written the first sentence, sometimes I have to scramble for something, anything in the last few seconds before I publish it. A lot of the time I'll have a working title like "that one really fucked up aokaga oneshot" for pretty much the duration of writing a new fic… and a lot of the time I'll end up using song titles, even though we're past the days of writing songfics. 

17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?

I think, to a degree, people get different things from my writing than I intended -- which is good! The way a piece of writing can be interpreted completely differently depending on who's reading it is one of the best things about being a writer tbh. I think people might be surprised, though, how different my fics often turn out from how I set out to make them. These days I've usually got a pretty detailed outline for what's going to happen, but even with all the preparation in the world, sometimes a fic will take a sudden detour I didn't expect, or something I wrote before will take on new meaning and change the direction I meant to go in. This definitely happens more with my longer fics, but there are times even with oneshots where I look back at what I set out to write, and what I ended up writing, and they're completely different.

19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)

I tend to write a lot of scenes with characters talking while in the car (cars are an intentional motif in ANR, but in something like GWGE there's not actually a lot of narrative purpose to this) I don't know why, maybe because it's a convenient way to have characters talk one-on-one, or maybe it's because I've had a lot of meaningful conversations while riding passenger, couldn't tell you, but it's cropped up more than once in my current fics and will probably feature in some of my upcoming ones (the college AU strikes me as a likely candidate), and I think it's worth taking note of.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

SINCE you mentioned Bring Me Roses, and I never really get to talk about it, pls allow me to go on a lengthy tangent about my most underrated fic of all time. (Like 90% of the reason it's still incomplete almost two years later is because the response when I posted it was so underwhelming, but I still stand by it. Someday I'll finish it, hopefully, if just for myself.) 

I'm so fucking proud of the language in this one. It's not perfect, by any means, but the imagery in my opinion is very strong, and almost every line of dialogue is saying something without really saying it. There are frequent allusions that something happened to Aomine's mother, relatively recently, and that Momoi is worried about him overworking out of grief or guilt, but none of those things are ever actually stated. There's also some pretty heavy implicit flirting between Aomine and Kuroko, even if it's a bit unusual and they're both playing it coy at this stage, the chemistry is there and the interest is mutual. And of course, because it's a florist AU, the flower symbolism… I spent so long researching bouquets, plant husbandry, how to prep and preserve cut flowers, and of course… flower meanings. The main ones that keep getting brought up are dahlias, which have just as many negative connotations as positive ones, including betrayal and instability, but also dignity, creativity and change, and come in a variety of colors shapes and even sizes (Islander or "dinnerplate" dahlias were definitely going to feature in part 2… as well as the connection between them and Aomine's mother). I know a lot of these things might not hit as hard because there's no actual payoff (yet), but still, in terms of "show don't tell" and setting up things to come, I don't think I have a single better example in my fic repertoire, I really went all out with this.

It's a shame I never got to follow through, but I got the impression that there just wasn't a lot of interest, and even if that alone is kind of a dumb reason not to continue, after I worked so hard to pull off what I did, the lack of response really killed my motivation. (I wonder sometimes if it would've been better received if it was an AoKaga fic… actually, I don't need to wonder, I'm sure it would have been, but that's not the story I set out to tell and I'm not going to change it.)

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

Oh, I'd love to do some of my fics as comics. I even tried it at one point; GWGE was going to be a comic originally, before I decided a multichapter fic would probably be less exhausting (the first couple pages are still floating around in my art tag somewhere, though this was back in high school so the quality is… heh).

22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

Yeah… I reread a lot. Usually while I'm working on a new chapter, I'll go over the ones that lead up to it to make sure I don't repeat the same phrases too much and that the continuity lines up, and I'll also admit to going back and just reading my own fics for fun. Sometimes the only one who's written exactly what I want to see is me. 

How I feel about them depends on the fic… some of my older ones are a mix of nostalgia and cringe tbh, but there are some I still genuinely enjoy revisiting from time to time. 

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Oh hell yeah. For… better and worse, honestly. I feel like I've lost some fluidity and confidence in my writing, and it sometimes turns kind of stilted, so I try to overcompensate which results in pretty jarring changes of tone, but at the same time, I've gotten much better with rhythm and syntax, my grammar skills are always improving, and I'm able to incorporate a lot more intentional meaning and subtext without always stating things outright.