#being a weed doesn't altogether have to be a bad thing

[cluster-b-culture-is]

BPD culture is feeling like violets are growing from your knees, like clovers are sprouting in your lungs, like dandelions are blooming around your nails. i want to be pretty, and nice, and smart and kind and funny and thoughtful and worthwhile and enough! but i’m just a weed!

i’m just a weed

.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

This is not me defending Nintendo's shoddy writing when it comes to heavy parts of the Gerudo lore. But I do wonder if some of their really bad missteps are because of their lack of knowledge of Western racial politics. A lot of Japan is still heavily xenophobic, and racial diversity is almost zero, so they might just not actually think about the implications because they just... don't know they exist. It's not an excuse, because Nintendo IS a global company, and there should be some extra research done, since stuff like that is just really fucking iffy. I'm just trying to figure out where that stuff comes from tbh, and why it's still around, instead of being weeded out. So maybe that's a reason, in which case... maybe get some writers who can write depth into their characters.

Hey, thanks for the ask!

So... I feel many things about this, and I completely see where you're coming from, and I think you have hit the nail on the head about why Nintendo do not feel like handling this issue is necessary, or that it doesn't concern them altogether... but I have to be honest, I feel like we give Japan way too much slack on these issues in general, and it's a very common problem (thinking of the controversy on FF16 for just another recent example, or the way queerness is handled in a lot of anime and games). Regardless of, just, the artistic integrity to incorporate the rest of the world as existing alongside you which isn't... mandatory of course, but I believe is important for the sake of honesty: there are japanese people of color, there exists a queer japanese community, and a lot of immigrants living in Japan have to deal with rejection and being considered a second-rate citizen all of the time. Not to mention anything about the new generations of people who were victims of their occupation not so long ago, a subject which is still regularly repressed and ignored by their government (and by the world at large, the US had interests in quieting down some of the worst things they did due to Cold War stuff, and in the West we mostly focused on Germany and collaboration --which makes sense, it's what we knew, but anyway it's complicated and not the topic). This is not a case of mere innocence, it is a case of politically construed ignorance; which is very different, and should not be regarded as equivalent.

But even beyond their own internal socio-political issues, which I am not qualify to speak about beyond what I know from second-hand stories I heard and what I have personally researched, The Legend of Zelda is an IP that is tailored for the West (TM). It is incredibly more popular here than it ever was in Japan. It is a product designed for export. Trying to anticipate what the western market enjoys and fitting right in is part of their responsibilities as a brand if they want to succeed. So, either they did not consider this aspect, which was absolutely something they should be criticized for, as subjects of diversity are hot and trending right now (even without getting into their moral implication) and they did what I consider to be the bare, cynical minimum in this department; or they had an inkling, and considered their choices wouldn't be a dealbreaker. Which... they clearly were not.

Again, I am sorry to be a little cynical here, but while I certainly don't think Nintendo was being consciously malicious here, like making choices to actively play into harmful stereotypes and strict gender roles as some form of active ploy in some sort of culture war, Nintendo is run by conservative japanese men with capitalist interests and a responsibility towards their own government as a major player for japanese soft power. The company will *never* question its own biases, especially if the West just eats up whatever they do and build a human wall of excuses to justify their absence of accountability. This, beyond the game itself which is good and fine and also kind of soulless the more I think about it (in my opinion), is what depresses me and what makes it hard for me to move on: to give them a free pass on these subjects is a choice everyone is collectively making, because it is the Nostalgia and the Childhood and we are desperate for wonder and joy --and it ultimately makes us somewhat toothless as consumers.

And I want to add I am absolutely not immune to this, and it doesn't mean I'm condemning the practice of fandom or the possibility, or even the necessity, of holding several simultaneous truths about a piece of media at the same time and navigating them depending on what is being discussed; but Nintendo is obsessed with controlling its image as a company, curating things as acceptable or unnacceptable as they see fit, approving or disapproving of their consumers' behavior and punishing them accordingly (as well as the rest of the industry *side-eyes the thirty patents on basic gameplay actions*), and it's to say nothing of how employees may be treated beyond the perfectly curated Pikachu yellow walls. This corporate image of being non-controversial is enforced. It doesn't mean I don't admire them for a lot of things, their genuine commitment to game design innovation, their virtuosity when it comes to level design in particular, the way they foster pools of raw talent, their devotion to open up the market to new demographics of gamers, or for the risk they took with the Switch and the wonderful venues it opened for indie devs. I love their games, profoundly, and I owe the company a lot of my joy.

But again, I think it's important to consider several realities simultaneously; and this joy, this goodness, this beauty, while absolutely wonderful and worth preserving, always runs the risk of getting in the way of our discernment in what is getting sidelined.

[ottiliere]

by: lindsay dane davestriderdeathcult4568 and lucy ottiliere

prefacing this by stating the obvious but i know this guy. like this archetype of individual is just so absolutely a guy that exists in droves this guy crawls out of spawnpoints in dirty smokey rooms in literally probably the same apartment complex i live in i think its hilarious and basically am fully qualified to be writing about him. he hasnt known anything better than any of this, probably doesnt think it exists, and more than likely doesnt deserve to experience any of it.

like a solid 30% of this guys conversations with any underage person he's around in public are trying to get them to dip. everyone says he smokes and hey you know what they're probably right but he absolutely dips more than he smokes and he absolutely does classique peer pressure on high schoolers to take some if hes ever in a situation where one is stuck with him. as previously addressed he likes skoal. because the packaging looks like shit. if he does smoke he rolls his own.

terrible skin has not used sunscreen a day in his life spends a lot of time outside in the open sun and totally looks like it you know what this looks like if you know what this looks like. once he thought he had skin cancer and he cut it out himself. it was probably just a mole or something. part of the reason his hair is so stringy and thin is because he doesn't take care of himself, part is because his scalp has been sunburned to shit. the hat isn't an ego thing he isn't insecure about this he just likes it. important to note seriously this guy is basically psychologically incapable of being embarrassed self conscious or ashamed of anything.

absolutely does speed absolutely does speed i no longer have the image of the fucking milk gallon jug of whatever psycho shit that was being advertised at truckers but i think this guy puts it in his cereal for breakfast. does not sleep longer than 20 mins or so at a time, he gets true rem sleep once a week or something maybe. like the idea of having worked as a trucker in the past, that line of work would suit him.

ketamine………like sure coke absolutely coke, but ketamine…….could see it in him to do ketamine. more importantly meth. absolutely meth. maybe not super often when he's younger, but that's where he's headed. i imagine in his early 30'sish is when he gets really bad about this specifically. this is the time shit stops being fun for him fullstop and all of the shit hes been gnawing on psychologically speaking to keep himself from going apeshit gets boring. parallel to canon he was just not supposed to live this long. so he implodes. and does a lot of meth. becomes completely incapable of caring for himself and spirals. you've seen that.

thinks conspiracy theories are funny, so he pretends to believe them. when he's younger this is kind of interesting in a way, because it's easier to tell sometimes that it's a joke of a kind to him. as he gets older it's less easy to tell, and more concerning. i'm not talking about cute conspiracy theories btwlike im thinking like 4chan coffee enema jewish tummy worm removal shit like this guy is unwell.

probably indifferent to weed. its whatever. smokes absolute mid dogshit ass weed from a ass trashcan. says it has no effect on him. it mostly doesnt but thats probably because its dogshit weed.

have a very specific vision of his body type i think it was REREREDACTED who drew the like closest possible but still significantly less repulsive vision of him. he's not filled out buff he's stringy and kindof shredded which is entirely a different thing and altogether much more diseased looking. even resting you can see the outline of muscle under skin NOT because his muscles are oversized just because there's so little between it and the skin. his eyes are sunken in. i imagine that hes one of those dudes whos absolutely partially deaf but somehow hears fucking everything. average height.

[CSA cw] hasnt done anything ever at all for a bit. it's all 100% genuine. that said i feel like a lot of the sexual abuse he does is so outright and casual that it's almost comical like if your older brother gropes you walking down the hall what do you even do about that. it was only a second so OBVIOUSLY for the lulz right.

[CSA cw] this is also obviously a conditioning thing but first and foremost it is miserable. also important to note i dont think it is INTENTIONALLY a conditioning thing. i dont think he is a groomer in the manipulative or the "aware of what's going on" sense. i think the most manipulative things he would do would function similarly to all the little inside jokes of his existence; they're not manipulations, they're not jokes, they're pure expressions of himself. i think his self awareness is inverted; instead of covering him like a blanket, it acts as a foundation for a more direct understanding of self. and the foundation is cracked why did anyone stop saying biatch that shit is so funny sorry im listening to a song the way mac miller says biatch is so funny and awesome. bringing this back.

i don't think he talks really at all. i think he avoids talking at all hes really into pointing and grunting in various tones but hes the type who would feel it in his throat the day after if he held a proper conversation with someone. theres just a lot about social interaction he thinks he isnt a part of. it isnt that he doesnt observe it or isnt aware of it but similar to his counterpart he just cant bring himself to think of any "rules" as applying to him. on a level that is pure subconscious he cant fathom that he is a human at all, so any self interpretation or self expression of course will be influenced by this.

doesn't sit still ever, even when he does. twitchy fidgety and easy to frustrate. i envision him as being violently ocd basically, to an extent that makes him kind of cartoonish. like he doesn't have severe ocd so much as he exemplifies the effects of long term severe ocd when it's left untreated; he's like this with all the symptoms he manifests because when i write him and think about him im working mostly conceptually. hes a good representative character and i think hes at his best when this is the role hes filling.

like to think that his indifference and lack of connection to anything of any meaning in the world has been almost lifelong. the result of neglect and abuse itself, sure, but more importantly i think he is like this because he is drastically understimulated. there's nothing to do that interests him, no one worth talking to, nothing. not just a sadist but a compulsive one. i imagine that at some point he has seen someone OD. was not his fault but he was just not all that affected by it; thick skinned to the point that it's concerning. avoiding saying things like psychopath here because i feel like that doesn't quite suit what i'm getting at. he is, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, extremely unselfaware. so much of what he does is route action, muscle memory with no conscious process to it. even the performance of self awareness is nothing.

this is a big part of how i see him as a sexual predator specifically. it is just something he does compulsively, a repeated whim he follows. there's not a lot else to it. at least not in his mind

should go without saying but any "irony" playing he does is basically bullshit nothing to mess with people. like of course it is. there is virtually nothing genuine to be found 300% of his goals are to fuck with people; likes feeling smart and one upping others, likes feeling socially dominant, isn't smart or in possession of enough capital to ACTUALLY engender these feelings so he makes do with bad stupid elaborate jokes. its a craft

i kind of enjoy him as this backgroundless enigma i will be honest. like he turned out so revolting and who knows why. that's not my business. he functions better as a concept made manifest. it mirrors canon ofc but it also makes him horrifying by way of how can this happen. the same way people wonder about this shit in real life and it can simply never be answered no one will ever know.

although… the most important part of bros history to me is, specifically, the decline of his mental state due to cal. overarching view of his upbringing is that it would've been dismal and cal the telepathic puppet who spews garbage into his brain 24/7 does not a good man make. i base this off a very specific character study by the meat machine on ao3 that goes into this very concept. mind-blowing for both of us. the magic of cal on his brain… kind of can't resist thinking about it. like HOW did the decline happen. literally brain poison i imagine it functions similarly to how people fall into holes of like. suddenly doing a ton of hard shit and the next thing you hear theyre believing birds are spies and shit. schizophenic in nature. hes so misdiagnosable but the truth is there's just something wrong with him and there's nothing even to do about it. he's doomed to be this way forever. COSMIC ALIGNMENT. the burnout from this if he doesnt die super young would be insane like just horrifying absolutely miserable. thinking about the state hed be in at the point dave makes his very smart adult man exodus back home that he handles so well. like. nightmare.

[onewomancitadel]

I was musing again on the use of intertextuality and source reference to predict the direction of a story. I think that the usual approach of superficial parallels and references is insufficient both from the perspective of 'why interact with these other texts' (cultural value, tradition, deconstruction/reconstruction etc.) but also to what ends can you derive the narrative events of a given story from others. Because on the face of it - as a storyteller - do you want your story to be directly read through another, basically? Not really. The thematic interests of your story are going to alter it in some way.

But of course the issue with superficial parallels is if you just say, well this thing is like this other thing, what does that mean? In the case of something like R/WBY, we're relatively certain that there's a lot of reference to 'fairytales and myth', but to what ends they do or don't dig into the real esoterica or the commentaries is up for debate. Some people will get deep in the weeds and come to a conclusion about the show based on superficial reference (which is not in itself very clever), some people will dismiss the notion of interaction altogether. I have particular trouble myself with R/WBY because whilst - as in the past under the Reverse Ozlem tag - I have definitely identified there's real motivation there according to the thematic interests of the story and their own fairytale, there are times where they lean into reference and times where they don't. I think that's the nature of the beast: there's only so much you can do when you've got your own story to tell.

But I see this over and over again in fandom (and media criticism at large). Take Succession (of which there have been parody articles on this topic already) where people were trying to predict the absolute ending based off of Shakespeare. This was obviously shortsighted, thematically and tonally, but people felt like they had effectively cracked the code. In this case, I would say that at times intertextuality and parallels can simply be a lazy mode of analysis. Appealing to a higher text with a definitive conclusion and letting it do the work for you, without thinking about what's actually in front of you, and add in the authority of a classic text and you're cooking. I wouldn't say people are conscious of this and wilfully malicious in any way! I just think it's interesting because the implicit assumptions are that once you introduce reference, it doesn't get transformed, it is Simply There To Be Clever.

If something is Simply There To Be Clever, to me, it is not really that clever. Even something as basic as potent imagery and symbolism has a reason for being used; that's why random crucifixions which introduce Christlike imagery can feel really out of place in stories which didn't previously have room for that type of iconography and meaning. So what are you to do?

Well, when you're getting into explicit interaction, I try to think about the tone of the text and its thematic concerns. The reason why something like R/WBY is never going to fairytale-for-fairytale match its inspirations is because it's telling its own stories about those figures actually being real. So where you can identify the particular influences, thinking about how they're remixed and commented upon (Cinderella is evil, what does that mean?) can lead you in more interesting directions. Cinderella is evil and emotionally closed off and has had an ostensibly 'bad ending', but is that really true? The problem with R/WBY in this case is that it's a work-in-progress, so the definitive answer for a character like Cinder is still up in the air. But I think that people have already dismissed the notion of her redemption/happy ending is very interesting, based on her being an 'evil' retelling. But what does that retelling really mean? Is it just supposed to be there for flavour? Haha, okay, Cinderella's suffering and now she's made it everybody else's problem, cool.

I guess in a more simple way, why parallel, why reference, why comment intertextually. (Part of the point of art is that it's conversation). It's usually going to be a bit more than you think it is.

[abeautifulblog]

I am interested in hearing about the bad acid trip if you feel like talking about it?

Okay, so the truth is, I have no idea what I was tripping on—I would not have chosen to take acid, that is not a drug I have any desire to fuck with. It was supposed to be just pot, but everyone I've told this story to has gone, “That... doesn't... sound like... pot. o_O” So who knows.

Anyway, here's Gremble's Bad Drug Trip!

I had been on a trip to visit my parents, and while I was in town, I got to reconnect with my friend P, whom I hadn't seen in a while, when he and his housemates were hosting a party. It was chill, low-key, about a dozen people. P and his housemates had good taste in friends, everyone was cool and very queer, and even though the only person I knew there was P, I was having a good time.

(By the way, another character who will become relevant in this story is Shelley—my best friend, my roommate, my lawyer, my queerplatonic life partner—but she hadn't come on this trip so it was just me.)

Then a joint was getting passed around and I was like, Sure why not, I'll give it a spin.

See, I had tried pot twice before, and both experiences had been Bad, but they had been bad in different ways, so I still didn't have a baseline for what pot was 'like.' I was curious, and I do a lot of things out of curiosity.

And the first hit was very nice! Like the tipsy euphoria of being at the perfect stage of drunk, without the inner ear imbalance. And I thought, oh this is actually quite pleasant; this is what people are on about with weed.

And then I took a second hit.

P had offered me the water bong in the kitchen, and I took a deep hit off that and promptly started hacking my goddamn lungs out. Can't-stop, can't-catch-your-breath, tears-streaming-down-your-face coughing, like every stereotype about newbies trying weed. I staggered off to the bathroom so that I could at least hack my lungs up in privacy, until I finally got control of myself again.

I was braced against the sink, and in the moment when I lifted my head and locked eyes with myself in the mirror, I realized that my consciousness was rapidly leaving my body. I could feel it, sliding downward, about to slide right out through the soles of my feet, and the thought came to me, very clearly:

You have fifteen seconds to put yourself somewhere safe, because *you* are about to not be here anymore.

I managed to get myself to P's bedroom—which was sheer dumb luck, since I'd never been in that house before.

And then I fell through the void for ten hours.

For large swathes of it, I was... conscious but not conscious of myself. The word for it is depersonalization, but it is a hell of a thing to try to describe, because human language wasn't built with the words for that experience. Imagine having your senses, observing the things around you, but there is no you that is doing the observing.

Sometimes I was present and conscious, and it felt exactly like a picture I'd once seen in a grade school textbook, a photograph of the sun taken from Pluto:

That dot of light in the infinite distance was my life, the life I'd known before, and as I drifted weightless through the void of space somewhere beyond Pluto, I grieved for everything that I knew I was never going to see again. Everything I'd known and loved was lost to me, unimaginably distant, no returning.

I'm going to miss Shelley, I thought, at the times when I was lucid.

And then, like the Silent Hill sirens starting up their warning, I'd feel it as my consciousness started to slip away again. I kept drifting through space, but gremble wasn't there for it anymore.

Occasionally I would resurface to find myself in P's room—but that wasn't terribly reassuring either. I didn't know where I was, and P is an artist (same photographer-friend who took these pics, actually), so his room had dark walls covered in canvasses of his paintings—large, bold, surreal and abstract, and altogether not the thing to be looking at when you're tripping balls. To be honest, that room felt a hell of a lot more threatening than falling through space did.

P came in at one point to check on me—he got me sitting upright and got my boots off. I don't remember anything he said there, but I remember myself, very slowly, putting the words together to tell him, quote, “Your room is a very uncongenial place to get high in.”

And then he left, and I slipped away into the void again, and the next time I resurfaced I was back in a menacing room I didn't recognize.

And that was it, all night long. Sometimes drifting through a void of unimaginable isolation, with nothing but the knowledge of what I'd lost, sometimes waking up in a strange, dark room with with incomprehensible paintings looming over me on all sides.

(At one point when I was awake, “Take Me to Church” was echoing down the hallway from the living room, but slow and distorted. This song actually conveys the experience very well, of the familiar becoming strange and unsettling.)

After a while I did get used to the room. I still didn't know where this place was, but after returning to it enough times I came to recognize it, like, ah, it's this place again. And since nothing bad had happened to me the previous times I'd been there, eventually I reached a point where I could cautiously venture to relax a little in it.

~~

I woke up the next morning to find myself back in my right mind, with P sacked out on the bed next to me. And while alcohol has a tendency to blur one's memories of being drunk, I could recall everything from the night before with unnerving clarity. The cognitive dissonance of being back in the real world—of never having left it, really—while simultaneously feeling what I had felt the night before, when I had known, with absolute certainty, that this life was lost to me.

I talked to P about it; apparently no one else had a weird night, just me.

But for the next twenty-four hours I was... not quite non-verbal, but close. This is a Known Bug when it comes to me and pot, that it makes talking very difficult, and since talking is pretty much my hobby, this is another reason why Pot Is Not The Drug For Me.

I went back to my parents' house and did my best to pretend like I was normal, but the experience had been extremely unsettling, so I called Shelley on discord and made her talk to me for a few hours. Except I still couldn't talk, so she was on voicechat, while I typed all my responses. She indulged me, because she is the bestest of friends.

Anyway. If another opportunity to try pot presents itself, I'll prolly do it, lol.

(Shelley: “Oh for fucks' sake, even my brother only stuck his finger in an electrical socket twice.”)

But I still don't have a baseline! I have tried pot three times, and each time was worse than the last, but the experience has been wildly different each time. And it's been very educational, and equipped me with the firsthand knowledge of how to write a bad trip, without requiring me to fuck around with drugs that are actually dangerous.

(Just... very unpleasant sometimes.)

So yeah, I'll probably stick my finger in that electrical socket again someday.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[silene-stenophylla]

Forget Me Not Flowers

Forget-me-Nots do best in poor soil

Winter months are always bad

It's too dark for them

It's too cold for you

Neither of you can help it

You don't know if they're really gone or not

Every winter when they begin to fade

Depress

Darken

Wilt

and you don't find out until spring

Maybe this winter is your last

You love them, you don't want it to be your last

You're scared, but you're grateful that you're both alive enough to feel afraid

Whether or not their heart is still beating is a constant worry

You're glad it's something you can worry about

Too many hearts have stopped already

Too many flowers that didn't survive frost

Or maybe couldn't survive you

You're the gardener, the friend

What else could it be if not your hand that couldn't keep them safe?

Forget-me-not flowers are small.

Blue

Unassuming, but precious

They smell like rain.

You can hear rain on your window, it's comforting in the same way that they are.

You wonder if they're warm, away from it

You fear they're in the garden being drenched

Their name itself lends way to fear.

The flowers are here now, but they're acting as if they're predetermined to be gone before you.

They want you to remember.

That's worrying isn't it?

That they're so sure they won't outlive you?

Forget-me-not

You’re scared of the day you’ll have to remember

You don't want anyone else to become a memory

Your mind isn't grand enough to keep something like that safe

The vines in your garden grow and grow but they won't flower.

You're trying so hard

Why won't they flower? You love them

You love them

You love them

You're worried you overwater them

You're worried you don't fertilize them enough

You're scared you're failing them

(Do you show your love enough?

Do they know how much it'd hurt if they were gone?)

Your little plant sprouts just one

Small

Simple flower and it's the most precious thing you've ever seen

Hearing them laugh makes you weak

You want to see them smile more

You won't survive this if you can't keep them smiling

They won't survive this if you can't keep them smiling

Flowers are temporary, as hard as you fight it

The flower falls off, the plant keeps growing

It needs to keep growing

Surely, if they just grow a little bit more they'll be tall enough to feel the sun

To live for themself and to love themself

As much as you love them

You're scared you're failing them.

You know you're failing them

You keep trying

Their leaves are so delicate,

You spend so much time staring at them that you've memorized the shape

You know you know the shape

You have to

You don't know what you'd do if you were wrong

You don't wan't another thing to grieve

Holding a memory is too heavy a task

You're not fit to carry something so valuable

Your hands are no good for keeping things safe.

Not that they believe you

They insist they're someone else

They insist they're a weed.

You keep watering them. You love them

You have to

They can't love themself

If you can pull them through just one more winter maybe they'll understand the sun this time

Maybe the warmth will be enough

The air is cold but you're holding their hand

You're supplying them with light

And you're scared it's not enough or too much or the maybe wrong thing altogether

You love them

You're scared

You love them

And it doesn't help

You don't want to forget

More potently, you don't want to have to remember

So you turn on the tap, and refill the watering can

Maybe this time it'll work

Maybe you'll stop killing your flowers

Maybe your loved ones will stop killing themselves

[tomatograter]

Do you think Dirk saying that he doesn't like to label himself as gay means he has internalized homophobia? Or does he really just don't like to put labels on himself? I've seen ppl saying it's homophobia but there's ppl in real life that don't feel comfortable with labels so I'm a bit confused honestly, cus we are talking about Dirk and he's... Dirk after all

Easy answer: Dirk is Gay.

Prolonged answer: I think it's kinda weird how some fandom discussion around "Dirk dodging the label in One pesterlog" has largely spiraled way outside of its original context to be talked about in a vacuum, especially when that context is crucial to understanding what is actually being said, AKA — it belongs to a deeply awkward conversation between Dirk and Roxy. One of Many they are implied to have had about the subject of Roxy's sustained, unwelcome, and oft drunken advances towards Dirk (& his splinters).

I'm going to reproduce it plus another bit of text down below, for the sake of comparison.

(To prevent the trickster text from looking like absolute shit, I have altered the background. Read the original here, if you're nasty: https://www.homestuck.com/story/5754 )

Now that we've been reacquainted with how and where that sentiment is expressed, let's try to break down what Dirk is doing here.

He is not receptive to Roxy's early advances, and spends most of the 'intro' for this conversation (not pictured) ignoring when Roxy flirts with him, until she gets upset at how 'boring' he is being right now.

Dirk is the one compelled to apologize.

He proceeds to shut the scenario down as an unwanted probability, eliciting further guilt-babbling from Roxy over how Dirk never wants to play along with the perfect traditional family fantasy, until she finally blows up and says it's because he's gay.

"I mean, yeah, that's what I thought."

Dirk, rather than saying I Am Not Gay, since he looooooves changing a conversational subject, claims that "Gay" is not entirely historically appropriate for this situation, given the non-negligible passage of time and the wildly dystopic circumstances* they find themselves in.

Dirk reassures Roxy he does still care about her.

Dirk is absolutely terrified of a similarly inclined (and intoxicated) Roxy up close. This is the most exclamations he's ever used.

Now, *These circumstances? The loss of 99% of the human race, including their society, customs, culture, and prejudices. (ALLEGEDLY.) It's important to remember that from Dirk and Roxy's side of the timetable, troll culture has been pushed as "the norm" for actual fucking centuries. HIC tried to recreate the caste system by artificially coloring human blood, leading to the death of billions. Faygo came out of the water tap, not water. Troll slang was incorporated into the English language. Humans ceased to organically reproduce. They were actively Discouraged from reproducing, since that's not something HIC could have total genetic control over; rendering traditional marriage and the concept of the nuclear family pointless.

You could also argue that same-gender relationships are not uncommon in Alternia, making "gay" altogether unnecessary by proxy, and that's true! But my point is this one: any union (or at least our society's holy concept of it) between straightie humans would be by definition undesirable under HIC's rule, too. She is the church, the president and the governing body. The population is only as good as they are assets for her to do whatever she wants with, including mass murder.

But wait! While that tracks… Roxy clearly still holds onto very 'conservative' definitions of romance for most of Homestuck. We see this multiple times. Dirk, as proved in conversations with Jake, uses 'gay' as an ironic pejorative. Suddenly it's not Historically Inaccurate anymore, Jake's interests are just gay.

Does this mean the context above is basically worthless, since they don't seem to have internalized it? No.

What must be kept in mind is this: Dirk and Roxy's only "active" link to de facto humanity is our society as it was in the early 2010's. Those glimpses they get by talking with jane and jake. They have all that dystopic context, yes, but the reality that seems the most "unfucked" to them for a grand majority of their lives are the halcyon years before the Condesce's rise to power: back when weed was illegal, BlogSpot was popular, movies sucked, MTV was still a hip channel, and gay generally meant something real bad. The wave of homophobia as a punchline or fear mongering tactic was at THE HEIGHTS. Marriage equality was a hot debate topic. Those were the dayz.

Dirk is keenly aware of the taboo implication the word "Gay" as a self-denomination carries. He's no dummy. But he's rarely direct with his intentions either. He's slippery as a bar of soap. (He's never "straight about his feelings", if you prefer.) And for a guy that cares so much about his reputation and maintaining a curated sense of utter coolness, he wants to avoid outing himself as any sort of weirdo no matter the cost.

But that's not all. I think the gravity of just how much Dirk believes he *owes* Roxy simply for existing as the last human in the same timeframe as her is a severely underplayed aspect of Dirk's core character, together with how much he tries to avoid her sexual advances only to end up feeling like absolute shit over it, because — if they truly are the last people on god's blighted earth, isn't he being "selfish" and "irrational" about not feeling shit for Roxy, in the grand scale of things? Is Roxy not his only friend in tangible reality, even if he avoids the mere suggestion of visiting her? Even if she gets black-out drunk and tries to push him into indulging her, regardless of how many times he's already said no?

(Spend enough time here and you realize how it directly mirrors the jane/jake experience.)

Dirk cares a lot about each and every one of his friends.

He pointedly adapts his speech based on whichever one of them he's talking to in an effort to express that investment. May it be reassuring Jane, fooling around with Jake, or trying to prevent Roxy from falling into a total catatonic doom-spiral; he avoids telling them anything that would be too crushing to hear. That's not what he's trying to do here. Not to say that he isn't bitchy sometimes, but that’s far from the central thing he does. The Epilogues have retroactively led people to believe that Dirk abhors and despises every single person he's ever been close to before (god forbid) LIKING them, and I think buying too much into that assumption ignores the foundations of his canon text, as well as the central motivation behind 99% of his actions in the story. This is the guy that grew up on Friendship Is Magic, has a picture of rainbow dash shamefully glued to one wall and a rainbow poster of Jake's symbol stapled to another, and everything he does is a little cringe attempt to demonstrate his worth by showing how much he cares about people, even when he's punching his actual feelings down instead of up and saying them.

Which brings us back to the load-bearing part of this question: Admitting to Roxy that there is absolutely no fucking way he will ever agree to having her babbys because he is gay is precisely the opposite of what Dirk wants to say, if his intention isn't pulverizing her. So he doesn't. And his worry on this regard is such that it prevents Dirk from even telling Roxy that he does love her, in the platonic sense, as a friend and hell-earth survivor, because he knows that specificity is what that would disappoint her greatly. (He only ever confesses this to Jane, on the death slabs.)

But also I think this is a really funny visual of Dirk's relationship with the word gay, to put statements into perspective:

[hiruseki]

I sent someone else an ask about this too but i noticed you're on Reddit too. And I've been kinda annoyed because I feel like a lot of people there are really snobby about shounen and think ONE is making fun of it all the time. I mean he is sometimes but i don't think he always is. And they're always like "this is a deconstruction of blah blah" when shounen already talks about the issue. Idk if this makes sense but what do you think

oh, anon. i have so much to say (read: rant). which should not come as a surprise since all i ever do is rant about how much of a cesspool the OPM subreddit is (sorry). not sure who you sent your other ask to, but i'd be curious to see what they have to say!

but yes, several people there are unbearably pretentious and snobby about shounen and desperately want ONE to be as pretentious and snobby as they are. a perfect example is how many people are like, "garou is Deconstructing The Shounen Trope of borderline suicidal training being a good thing." like, uh, no. what the fuck are you talking about?? (what irritates me about this one is that i know exactly who started this take, along with several other shitty takes, and seeing it grow like weeds is...god.)

the actual trope is "he pushed too hard and now he might cause himself permanent damage, because it's unhealthy." shounen goes out of its way to show how it's a character flaw, and a tragic one at that. so, basically, exactly what OPM is doing with garou. so no, it's not a fucking deconstruction. that is absolutely a shounen trope played straight. but people don't want to hear that their precious hyper-intellectual story might maybe, just maybe, not have as much disdain for shounen as they do. and that maybe garou doesn't exist to make fun of shounen protagonists (which i could also write a whole essay on btw).

like, uhh. naruto nearly losing his chakra altogether? sasuke literally going blind? gon pushing himself so hard he needs a deus ex machina to resolve his coma and then loses all his power? and midoriya is literally the poster boy of how self destructive this habit is, and he's one of the best known shounen protags ever. i could go on, but that’s just one of the “Shounen Bad” takes i see a lot.

shounen manga is flawed, and a lot of the tropes are silly. they sometimes prioritize battle aesthetics over substantive plot, and the characters can be shallowly written. but that doesn't suddenly mean everything about them is bad. i think ONE knows this. he absolutely plays with shounen tropes and laughs at them sometimes, but it's teasing, not malicious. he knows there's a time and a place to play shounen tropes because they're good.

this is also why the stupid ass "ONE isn't writing the story anymore" takes have started cropping up. these people cannot stand the idea that ONE actually does have an affection for shounen.

TL;DR you're right, and i've noticed the same phenomenon of pretentious users who use the subreddit as an outlet for their self congratulatory psuedo-intellectual masturbation. if it makes you feel any better, they're more of a vocal minority than anything.

[klysanderelias]

so two quick things about the beginning of act 2 WotR - one, the army combat stuff is kinda fun, it's basically if you took heroes of might and magic 3, stripped it down hard, and added a couple of dnd abilities. Nothing to write home about, but it ain't bad.

Probably the biggest thing to know is that moving your party on the map advances the timeframe but moving armies doesn't, so near as I can tell it's best to exhaust army movement before doing anything with your party.

two, the romances are now delineated by sexuality - some characters are straight, some are gay, some are bi. I'm a little torn on this because on one hand, it's nice to have sexuality represented in video games, and it's realistic. On the many other hands, I play video games for escapism so the idea of someone deciding 'one of the features of our romances is that you can get shot down for wrong-gender-syndrome' kinda sucks, AND although it'd be more dialogue/writing intensive, ESPECIALLY within dnd there was a better way of limiting player relationships - by alignment and character choices! Why should a chaotic evil character be able to romance a lawful good character and vice versa? Near as I can tell, this isn't implemented in the game, the only character choices that affect your ability to romance an NPC are gender, whether you flirt with them, and whether they abandon you over the course of the game (shoutout to ekundayo for walking off with like 50k gp of items in kingmaker when I decided not to wipe out an entire civilization for him).

(this got long and weird and no longer relevant to WotR)

I dunno, it ain't a visual novel and I'm not sure I really want it to be more intensive, but honestly a lot of times I'm not even sure I WANT the option to romance NPCs in video games anymore. Oftentimes it's so shallow and one-sided that it just feels awkward, ESPECIALLY once you've more or less maxed out their affection and romance events so that you spend the rest of the game effectively ignoring them outside of scripted interactions during the plot (shoutout to Garrus for spending more time with his calibrations than with me in ME2).

Plus, like, (we're getting into the weeds here a little) it's kind of uncomfortable how many rpgs and games in general tend to make you assume there's a) gonna be a romance option and b) that's it's gonna pay off in a 'certain way' if you catch my drift. Recently I picked up a visual novel that billed itself as a dating game called C14 dating, and I enjoyed it! It wasn't spectacular, but everyone was over 18 (which is like less than 5% of all visual novels, from my experience), it had little blackjack/sudoku minigames to stand in for archaeology dig work, and the characters were diverse and thoughtfully written in such a way that I never felt like 'ah yes, this is the guy with one arm, his entire character is that he has a prosthetic.'

The problem I had with C14 is that I went into it with a certain set of expectations, and the person I pursued initially ended up being asexual. That's fine! But I didn't know that until the end of the game, when I had been altogether far too thirsty for this man for me to be happy about that reveal (which, I should clarify, was less about me being upset i wasn't 'bout to fuck and more about 'oh jesus, if this happened in real life I'd feel like a MASSIVE asshole given how I've been acting') and near as I can tell, no one else in the game has an ending more risque than maybe a kiss on the cheek. Again, that's fine! that's honestly good! but I sure as hell did not temper my expectations because I made a series of assumptions that were dramatically different from what the devs intended.

Which is a long and weird way of saying, it's fucking strange to come into a video game and basically look at all my companions like 'which one of y'all am I gonna fuck' but that's kind of the bog-standard now. I don't know which game started the trend or popularized it, but imma blame Mass effect out of spite. And y'know, part of that's on me as a player and on the culture I inhabit, but it's also a growing trend in RPGs to the point that sometimes it's surprising when companions AREN'T romanceable.

Also maybe I should blame fallout 3 instead, because between fallout and mass effect I know which one I hate more...

And it's kind of funny that WotR delineates by sexuality in a game where you can literally walk over to a dude in the camp and trans your gender for like 200gp or less depending on how many times you do it and the npc will immediately go 'yes now I think you're hot actually' because it just goes to show how shallow the criteria is. It's good that they're not terfy about it ('well you STARTED as a man') but also like, I'm bisexual so gender is really murky for me as a standpoint for attraction anyway so I'm just like. do y'all really go 'sorry bud, I'd fuck you except for the societal category you adhere to'

this is gonna get too weird if I keep going down this road

anyway the point is I understand they didn't want every NPC to be 'playersexual' (which is a term i hate, frankly), but like...

[marie-dufresne]

you mention a lot that Marie doesn't have friends at school. Why? Shes nice pretty outgoing, and in all your threads is really likeable. Is there something I'm missing?

I don’t think you’re necessarily missing anything. That’s something that gets more glossed over because I very rarely write anything involving her school life. But now’s a good time to explain.

Firstly, whether she has friends or not depends on her social status. When she’s wealthy, she has friends, or at least girls she hangs out with, in the event we’re in a verse she actually gets to finish school. That said, we can focus on gutter verses where your question really applies.

As a small child, her lack of friends is probably less noticeable. The kids all just play with each other at school and it’s not until they get a little older where thing start to matter that begin to set her apart.

1. She smells terrible. Again, probably not something little kids care about so much, but especially when puberty comes about and not only is her body changing, but the way all her peers are viewing each other, this is a big part of it.

Her hair catches and retains all smells good and bad. Wherever she’s living with her parents smells of cigarettes, weed, cheap beer, and a litany of whatever delivery has been sitting out for the past week. Not to mention whatever animals are wandering around and very likely, mold and mildew from the condemnable state of whatever building they’re in.

She doesn’t always have utilities on, so often times, at least until she becomes sexually active and turns to hookups for a place to stay, douses herself in body spray to try to cover up her lack of hygiene. We all know this only makes everything worse.

2. Outgoing isn’t always great. Outgoing in Marie’s case, before she learns to get a handle on herself, is detrimental.

She was that kid who never understood personal space, who would rip things out of your hand so she could get a closer look, blurting out things in class because she has something to say. She’s in your face talking to you (too loud at that), inserting herself into conversations, hugging, squeezing, touching, jumping, clapping, yelling and all around being unable to yet ‘read the room’.

Personal boundaries are something she struggles with even as an adult which is why you see her gravitate towards men. It’s easier for her to be in their space because she can play it off as being a “flirty” person.

3. Her dyslexia is a mark against her. When she’s poor, she never gets officially diagnosed. I mean, I’m pretty sure Claire filed for religious exemption just so she didn’t have to take her for a yearly physical or some crap like that.

Because she isn’t properly diagnosed, she isn’t given the help she needs to succeed. She also attends very poor, underfunded schools with a severely lacking, if any, special education department. By the time she’s in high school, she’s shoved in the basement with all the other “slow” kids.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I have a very clear memory of what it was like for seemingly “average” kids to be taking a special education or remedial class. They were constantly picked on for it. My brother suffered at this end for having ADD. His friends constantly “joking” about his “sped” classes. He’s got thick skin and he’s a clown himself so he rolled it off. Marie is very sensitive. It doesn’t go over well, and a large part of why once she hits adolescence, abandons school altogether.

4. She’s a hoe.

While we on the internet love to believe we’re not into slut shaming, it’s still alive and well in high school. The girl is desperate to not go home, so yeah, she sleeps around a lot. Because she doesn’t have the wealth or status to use it as a power (like say Heather Chandler of Heathers), she’s just got a bad reputation. She hangs out with people far too old for her and has too little regard for her own personal space.

tl;dr: she’s stinky, annoying, and slutty

—

Very likely, by the time any muse has met Marie who has grown up like this, she has grown, and taken at least some control of her life, adapting to be accepted in whatever society she’s currently in, be it the club scene, trendy city life, or motherhood.