#be correct; other characters insisting on thusly so much that there's no indication the writers are even aware of any other possibilities | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

autumnblogs · 3 years

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Day 10: I think the true purpose of this game is to see how many qualifiers we can get to precede the word "self" and still understand what we're talking about

https://homestuck.com/story/1642

I don’t think anyone has said much about Calsprite. There’s not much to be said. I’m pretty sure, based on the Juju rules, that this Lil Cal probably doesn’t count as the real one - supposedly, any version of a Juju from a Doomed Timeline doesn’t count as the real thing? In any case, it’s a very mild comfort that this being isn’t a source of even more power for the already arbitrarily powerful Lord English.

Another thing that I think is interesting to note is that Dave’s use of iPhone technology marks him, in my opinion, as a poseur. While I am by no means advocating against buying from Microsoft’s competitors, but Mac vs. PC is one of those parts of my childhood, and as an actual IT Professional I’ve learned more than a little about the way that they brand themselves and the history of Apple’s struggle for market share - Apple doesn’t advertise its products as computing alternatives, or as productivity software, or whatever - Apple sells a lifestyle. Apple products are styled as the sexier, more cerebral, more artistic, more individualistic alternative to Microsoft’s products, a computer not for the Office Drone but for... well, the Hipster. Hipsters have stopped really being a thing, or at least, nobody calls themselves that any more.

Like the vast majority of subcultures, I suspect the hipster subculture has kind of been swallowed by time, its symbols expropriated by Capitalism, its center hollowed out and its aesthetics packaged for mass production, as the cynical and jaded approach to popular culture of the hipster, along with its more enthusiastic counterpart “the geek” (actually pretty well personified by John!) became more mainstream - both stereotypes are probably a part of Homestuck’s general commentary on fandom. Fandom is something I think Homestuck talks about, but I don’t think it’s something Homestuck is about in quite the same way that it’s about, say, Narratives, or Reproduction.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/1643

While Homestuck has been a story that involves some time loops, Act 4 is where it really gets off the ground as an actual Time Travel story. The thing about Time Travel stories, like the thing about Cosmic Horror Stories, is that once a story starts having Time Travel, or Cosmic Horrors in it, it’s that genre forever. This is why DND, for example, is part of a cosmic horror story, because something like 20 years ago, an adventure writer decided that there should be the Far Realm, and now it casts its sticky pall over the rest of the game’s setting.

Homestuck sidesteps this issue largely by involving all of the genres that do this to a story, and just kind of blending them all together into a genre-busting stew. Homestuck is a superhero story. Homestuck is a creation story. Homestuck is a theogony. Homestuck is a cosmic horror story. Homestuck is a time travel story. And so on and so on.

https://homestuck.com/story/1657

And so began one of the greatest partnerships in the history of Paradox Space.

Also of note is that Terezi compares Dave to fire here, not the first or the last bit of symbolism linking him to that element. It’s pretty strongly linked, in general, with The Hero, in kind of the same way that the color Red, and the Sword is in these sorts of things.

Dave fits the Classic Hero Archetype a lot better in a lot of ways than John does, and Bro has been training him for that role since birth. On a much larger scale, Lord English has decreed from his position as the overlord of Paradox Space that Dave is the Hero who should defeat him.

https://homestuck.com/story/1663

Friendship proves once again to be one of the most powerful forces in the universe, changing John’s direction, and steering him away from disaster.

https://homestuck.com/story/1667

Not much to say about this conversation, but the transition between Karkat’s explanation of the Veil and the beginning of [S]Jack: Ascend is smooth as fuck.

https://homestuck.com/story/1670

Our very first self-indulgent author self-insert; the Fourth Wall is explicitly identified as a Fenestrated Plane. 1 Point for the Narrative Contrivance hypothesis.

https://homestuck.com/story/1692

Dave actually does care immensely. Not only does he spend a ton of his time being overshadowed by cooler more powerful men like Bro, and John, now Dave even has to spend his time being overshadowed by cooler versions of himself - and that goes in both directions - both Davesprite and Dave seem to think that the other is the more real, more cool Dave!

https://homestuck.com/story/1710

As a Light Player, Rose is preoccupied with Meaning. She sees it everywhere, and she certainly sees where it is not (at least when she is not Miserable with a capital M). Meaning and Value - Fortune - is not intrinsic to this item, but it is instead bestowed upon it by the fact that Rose loves it, and by the work that Rose put into it. The Rabbit is a labor of love and a treasured belonging, and the Love in the Rabbit is the Light that the Seer Sees.

https://homestuck.com/story/1714

I’m pretty sure that John and Kanaya only talk to each other about twice in all of Homestuck, which is a bit of a shame! John and Karkat are really a lot more alike each other than either of them is comfortable admitting (which I think is probably why Dave is attracted to Karkat). By the transitive law of friendship, it seems to me that John and Kanaya would probably be pretty good friends. On the subject of the other diagonal line in the quadrangle of friendship, I wonder if Rose and Karkat talk to each other pretty much ever?

https://homestuck.com/story/1715

The clear indication here is a parallel between Dave and Sollux, but like a lot of things that probably didn’t go as intended with the Trolls, nothing much ends up materializing from it. I suppose that by fucking off to do nothing for the rest of the adventure, Sollux gets to live Dave’s dream for him, so there’s that.

https://homestuck.com/story/1720

Adorable. This is one of the happiest little moments in the comic.

So often, characters are cut off from one another by moments. They just miss each other, or literally can’t understand each other because of supernatural shenanigans, or can’t communicate with each other on screen because of the way that communication can’t happen unmediated in Homestuck.

And even when they can talk to each other, often the awkwardness and pain of communicating with other people, of trying to get them to understand you the way you actually are, instead of only seeing you one certain way, is too great, and communication proves impossible.

But here, Rose and Dave don’t need words to hang out.

They shut up and jam.

(It’s also incredibly sweet that Rose‘s actual in-person esteem of Dave is so great that she cannot restrain her own thought process. For all her joshing, she really does think Dave is cool.)

https://homestuck.com/story/1722

Also incredibly sweet that Rose’s first order of business as soon as they’re done playing around is to destroy that goddamn puppet.

https://homestuck.com/story/1754

Just missed him.

https://homestuck.com/story/1775

I wish not to contemplate the implication that Homestuck Sprite Mode Legs are actually wafer thin.

https://homestuck.com/story/1812

Nearly as soon as Rose has awoken and absorbed herself from the Doomed Timeline, she gets down to business alchemizing a lot of dangerous and powerful artifacts in preparation to fuck shit up. I’ve never thought about it much before, but I think it’s not hard to say that the memories she absorbed from the other timeline cause Rose to embrace her more reckless and less charitable side. She comments on her own dangerous pursuit of power, and then immediately ignores that train of thought.

https://homestuck.com/story/1836

Dave sure is fixated on bottoms.

https://homestuck.com/story/1852

Note to self. Come back to this.

So far, the only thing of note is the number 12, a portent related to the victors of Homestuck, if only coincidentally.

https://homestuck.com/story/1857

Dave’s sincerity senses are tingling. Maybe it’s an instinct since he and Roxy are pretty similar people, maybe it’s just because Dave himself is not nearly as insincere as he wants to be.

Dave’s anxiety about being watched is also probably best exemplified by his insistence on hiding his eyes behind glasses.

https://homestuck.com/story/1887

Adorable!

I wonder if Andrew already had the sprite designs for these squirts, and their names picked out at this time.

The hair and accessories are certainly correct.

https://homestuck.com/story/1895

Before I get too much further into this sequence, I’d like to pause and take a second to just appreciate this prose. The style is captivating.

The shipping pun is also pretty good.

https://homestuck.com/story/1903

BladeKindEyeWear has already done a pretty good job explaining what the Ultimate Riddle is, so I won’t belabor it too much more than he has here. The Ultimate Riddle itself is, “What Will You Do?” And the answer to it is, “Do What You Will.”

Do What You Will isn’t just the inscription on AURYN, it’s also an extremely old phrase intended for spiritual enlightenment, historically first formulated by Saint Augustine in his Sermon On Love, where he puts it thusly, “Love, and Do What You Will.” The Love that Augustine is talking about is not Romantic Love or even familial love, but Universal Unconditional Love - goodwill toward everyone and everything, to have one’s Heart’s Desire be that everyone should flourish and be happy.

Another formulation, the Wiccan Rede is, “An It Harm None, Do What Ye Will,” perhaps a more detached, declaration. In either case, the Will here is not talking about merely chasing simple wants, but an invitation to follow one’s true will, not to respond to simple passions, but to take voluntary action in accordance with who one is as a person.

https://homestuck.com/story/1905

threatening.............

https://homestuck.com/story/1922

Jake Harley begins a life of serial abandonment.

https://homestuck.com/story/1930

I really should have brought this up first when Rose and Davesprite went back into time, but this is about the time Homestuck starts to get lousy with all kinds of alternate selves, Dream Selves, Doomed Selves, and so on and so on, and from a narrative frame of reference, they’re actually all literally the same guy - the actions of one version of a character inform us about all versions of that character.