#candy karkat has a fit about meat karkats davekat fit

[ardenttheories]

So, while I’ve yet to read Candy - and I admittedly don’t think I will today - I’ve got a lot of thoughts (both good and bad) on Meat. 

Edit: removing the read more, and the initial description to the post. Most people have already gone over things I have here, so there doesn’t seem to be a point in hiding it. 

I think one of the biggest reasons I dislike this Epilogue is because it fucks up how everything ended. Homestuck was over. This was a fact that we had all come to accept, and what he wanted to expect from the Epilogue was a conclusion to a story we all loved. There was an idea, here, that we’d have everything neatly wrapped up in a bow, that all the plotholes would be filled, that we’d get a satisfying and happy finale to something that spanned seven years of existence in its initial part, and has dragged on another three years beyond that to now. 

John going back into canon was the right first step. It was going to, we thought, answer one of the biggest plotholes going. Something to do with defeating Lord English once and for all, freeing them of his tyranny, saving Paradox Space. We thought the worst of it was that John was going to die, or that he’d be unable to return. We thought, in the end, that we were going to get a bittersweet ending - one where everyone was happy, and safe, but some things would be permanent and utterly incapable of being undone. Maybe John’s death would have felt better, in some sense. 

Instead, we’ve got this weird narrative with no active conclusion. More questions than answers. 

Why was Dirk, as the Prince of Heart, able to become utterly omniscient? Why could he control the narrative? His power is incredible, and it’s fucked up. He can sway peoples’ inner thoughts, he can force decisions, he can slide them towards things he thinks they need, or things he believes needs to happen. That shouldn’t be a power available to him, even as his Ultimate Self. That isn’t a power of Heart, logically; metatextualism is and always has been a Light element. Even considering the logic of the Ultimate inner self, why does Dirk have access to everything and everyone? Where’s the logic in that? They aren’t splinters of himself. To a degree it definitely fits in with the puppet master idea, but it leans too far into it. Dirk was a puppet master because he thought he knew best for his friends and was a master manipulator - that hasn’t changed. But the way he’s doing so has. 

Is it because, as the understanding of his Ultimate Self has come through, he’s recognised his position as a character? But then why can he influence canon, the narrative, everything? Why is he able to see their deepest thoughts when he’s not a Seer, when that goes beyond the capabilities of a Prince in general, let alone a Prince of Heart?

Edit: I think I figured it out. Princes of Heart destroy Heart. They destroy individuality, the inner self, the soul and the very essence of a being, a person, a thing with thoughts and feelings and the ability to access free will. They destroy what it means to be you. That’s what Dirk does. He destroys the ability for anyone to be themselves by replacing them with himself, making them broken splinters of his own demands and desires, turning them into the things he wants them to be. Every time someone speaks, they’re doing so because Dirk made them. Every thought they have, every decision they make - Dirk overrides their individuality and brings them into the circumference of his own self. I guess having a power like that would eventually blur your perceptions of reality to a point where morals seem oblique or obsolete. 

I think, to that degree, part of the bitterness of this is seeing Dirk back at his old shit again. He was getting better. He was learning not to do shit like this, to grow as a person, to let go of the reigns and to invest himself in life and relationships and people - and he’s gone off the deep end again, seemingly maddened by whatever the fuck it is that he’s learnt, or figured out. This isn’t the place a lot of us wanted to see Dirk slip back to on Earth C. This isn’t a place we wanted him to ever go back to. He hasn’t developed, or grown. He’s tumbled back down the same old paths and he’s, worse, regressed. 

He genuinely thinks he’s doing what’s best. I think that’s a fact, at least. But it’s horrific reading it. I don’t like reading it. It’s twisted and self gratifying on his part, knowing that when Jake’s free of his influence he’s more than content to support Karkat, and when he’s under it he becomes obsessed, unable to live without the concept of Dirk in his life. Some stage for Dirk to contemplate his bitterness over, and feel like he has the last word on. 

He’s so much worse than he used to be at the beginning of the Alpha Kid SBURB arc. He’s selfishly pretending he’s selfless, and he’s convinced that he’s doing it for their good when all he’s doing is jerking off his own ego and tearing apart the very foundation of the people he claims to love. And he does love them. He does want what’s best for them - but what he sees as being best for them, for everyone, rather than what naturally occurs. The very idea of giving them individuality is impossible to him, because he is everyone (a conduit for his voice because of his influence over the narrative, incapable of fighting against him or even recognising he’s there unless he actively allows them to do so; they’re just puppets on strings) and he has control over everything, and he thinks it’s better that way, for some reason, because they need him, and they’re helpless without him - so it’s his duty to fix all the things that are broken. Except nothing is broken. I think becoming his Ultimate Self has just made him go mad. 

Worse than that. John, a character dear to a lot of people, is unceremoniously tossed aside because Dirk doesn’t think he’s important. John’s just a pawn; an end to a means that, ultimately, Dirk doesn’t think he deserves to come back from. John died. That’s it. That’s all Dirk affords us to think about. 

His budding relationship with Terezi - so beneficial for them both, so finalising for the concept of John’s growth, the realisation that he is depressed, that home isn’t home, but he now has someone he could make home with - is just completely sidelined. Dirk’s fucking awful at remembering Roxy’s pronouns, especially when Roxy was using they/them. Dirk was desperate to get Dave back under his control, believing he was incapable of looking after himself, that he needed his guidance. Even though, as it turns out, Dave was perfectly fine without him.

Dirk micromanages because he’s, again, in a position where he believes only he can lead to a good ending for them all - and he’s willing to become the villain for it, willing to accept a Just death when it finally meets him - and while he’s doing what he thinks is right it’s not what anyone wants. 

In a weird way, reading the Meat Epilogue is a lot like being the characters Dirk is toying with. They don’t want to do the things he makes them do - we see as much with Kanaya, realising that Rose is gone, and losing her shit over it after coming to terms with the fact that her acceptance of it was forced on her mind - and we, likewise, don’t want to read the things he makes them do. We don’t want to see our beloved characters be twisted and played with that way, but we’re forced to. 

We don’t want John to figure out that he’s finally found something to live for, only to die immediately after. We don’t want Terezi to disappear again, his corpse still in the wallet, after she’d finally found home. We don’t want DaveKat to happen on the terms they did, partially forced by Dirk, without the ability for the conclusion with Jade because of her position as a conduit for Alternate Calliope. We don’t want them to win like this. We don’t want it to end like this; Jane as a fascist president, Jake’s mind broken by Dirk, Rose off to some impossible and weird mission she likely doesn’t even have any say in - that she probably isn’t aware of or even agreed to because every moment she’s been talking, it’s probably just been Dirk, talking to himself using her voice, convincing her of his thoughts, taking over her individuality - Dirk losing his mind to whatever madness he’s been exposed to through his slow unravelling - because he is mad, with power, with responsibility, with something fucked up that’s twisting him and disengaging him and erasing all the development he got through prior to Earth C. 

There’s something Dirk says, too, that fucks it all up.

Perfection to them is a sweetness beyond comprehension. Sugar so potent it’s poison to us. To our bodies, to our souls. Like the place she was operating from was a realm of self-construction. A bubble of pure, phantasmal confection. Well, I for one have had enough of that goddamn toothache. I’m back in the protein saddle, motherfuckers. I’m clacking my tongs, and the charcoal is hot. Now who’s hungry for meat?

To Dirk, letting everyone do what they naturally want to do - such as letting John and Terezi figure out their relationship on their own terms, to find passion in the backseat of a car that leaves them both open and vulnerable and ready to go home - is Candy. The lack of his influence is poison. In his mind, when he’s not in control, everything is too sweet. That’s why all we get is a hard slog. One pile of shit after another. It’s why John still dies, why Jake’s ability to think for himself doesn’t matter.

This ending, like I thought it would be, is bitter. It’s not the ending we thought we’d get; it’s worse. It’s not satisfying. It’s open-ended, it leaves more questions than answers, it ruins the sense of finality that we thought we’d get after Homestuck’s end- 

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s the big shit Hussie was trying to get across to us. Because the point, here, is that nothing the kids have ever done have been their own will. Someone has always been writing their story for them, narrating it, guiding them along towards an ending. Hussie has written every line of dialogue in Homestuck; has put the words in their mouths until it’s felt natural for us to assume then when he writes, he’s transcribing actual facts of what’s happening and not just his own thoughts of what he wants the characters to do and be because they’re his and in his story. In the same way that Hussie is the author of Homestuck, Dirk is the author of the Epilogue - not in the same way, not by far; he’s still a character, still confined within its barriers, but he’s aware of it and us and the role he can play, and he’s taken control of the authorial pen to craft the story the way he wants it to be written. The same way Hussie has written Homestuck, up to this point.

Our characters have never had any voice. Any influence. At the end of the day, we’re still reading a story; words written on a page made by someone else. Dirk, I think, just wants to be able to control the story of himself and his friends. Alternate Calliope wants him to stop being so fucking pretentious and allow the story to run the way it’s meant to - the way Hussie intends it, the way it was meant to be, fluid and broken and ruptured. It’s like a confusing metatextual yet internal conflict where Dirk is still confined to being a character while also trying to be more than that - trying to be real, like us - and Calliope wants to allow everyone to be free of that influence while being openly aware that someone is always going to be writing those lines for them. 

It’s just better if it’s the actual author doing it, allow them to speak their own words and thoughts, than if it’s Dirk doing it, forcing them to act and think the way he wants them to (though, in fact, that’s exactly what Hussie’s doing by warrant of being the author. Homestuck’s always had that weird duality of existing as a real universe, but still being purely fictional). 

And in a way, that’s deeply interesting. It’s something literary scholars would eat right the fuck up, and frankly, I wish I could have done my dissertation on this rather than on the general use of the second person narrative in Homestuck. 

But it’s bad fucking writing. 

We, as consumers, are allowed to be upset and disappointed with this ending. This is not what we expected. This ruins literally everything we have been building up to since 2016. That beautiful ending, that idyllic finish, has been torn asunder. And sure, it’s engaging. It’s interesting. It’s beautifully written, it’s dramatic, it’s tense, it’s even uncannily funny in certain places - but it’s awful. 

Because nothing good came out of this. We already had a relatively acceptable ending. Our main eight survived, plus some straggling trolls; they made the universe, the world they’ve been fighting to get to for seven fucking years; they were happy - some married, some finding relationships, some on the precipice. If our big takeaways from this had been Roxy comes out as trans (uses he/him pronouns), Terezi and John start dating (Terezi finally accepts that Vriska isn’t for her, John finally finds a life on Earth C), DaveKat/Jade is canon, and Lord English is finally dead - things would’ve felt better. 

But that’s not what we got. We got all the other sloggish shit, too. Dirk’s controlled everyone to get to where they are now. John died because he wasn’t fucking important. Terezi’s heartbroken, doing who knows what (again). Rose is missing, and Dirk’s becoming the villain nobody wanted to see him become. Kanaya is heartbroken, Jane’s going to ruin Earth C, and Jade may never come back. 

It’s a heavy ending. It’s too heavy. The positives don’t make up for the negatives. It’s too much. 

I hate it. I love it, but I wholeheartedly hate it. I love the gender reveals, the relationships, the happy, tender identity stuff we’re given to think on and told as canon, the deep theory that’s embedded in every word and brings up so many perfectly developed theories on narrative and the existence of characters as a physical presence within their texts - but I hate how far back it’s set so many characters in terms of development. I hate that Dirk got turned into this. I hate what’s going to happen to Rose. I hate that, after all this time, John’s death means less than nothing. I hate what’s become of Jake. I hate what’s happened to Earth C. I hate that our good ending has been twisted into something this sharp. I hate that this is how ten long years of struggle for all of these characters has ended. 

The more I think about it, the more I come to accept it. The more it’s becoming a fact, a thing that’s happened, a simple Truth of Canon that I’m never going to be able to change. The more I find things I like in it, and the more I realise there’s a lot of potential for theorising and for writing shit down, and the more I recognise it as a fucking smart piece of text. 

But this isn’t a good ending. It’s not satisfying. It’s bitter and confusing and hollow and painful. At the end of the day, for as great as it is in a literary sense, in a purely fandom sense - a purely consumer sense, purely seen as a fan who is attached to these characters and their memory and their struggles - it’s just...

Meat. 

[bardofv0id]

Meat vs. Candy: Meat

Here’s the thing.

I’m hearing two main arguments online... a lot of people saying the epilogues are Terrible, for various reasons, and a few people saying they're Good, with a smaller but vocal subset of those people arguing that if you don’t like them then you’re obviously just expecting to be spoon-fed a fluff ending in which the Character You Like gets a wish-fulfillment storybook epilogue.

There are probably some people who are mad about not getting that. However, I think misrepresenting the range of anger various parts of the fandom are experiencing as being purely some kind of childish knee-jerk tantrum at not getting the toy they wanted is disingenuous, at best, and parallels some of the mistakes of the epilogues themselves.  Note that this in no way excuses or justifies people sending the writers or anyone else death-threats or whatever the hell else has been going on.

Honestly... the Meat ending was pretty good writing, in my opinion.  It wasn’t comfortable or happy or flattering in any way to a number of characters who I recognize people care deeply about, but it was nothing really worse than I expected from Earth C, based on the fundamental narrative of Lord English’s giant closed-loop system.  The loop had to close, in order for Homestuck proper to occur at all.  That means that Earth C is where Calliope and Caliborn hatch and grow up, far, far in the future. And that means that universe, like the others, will be destroyed by a SBURB session one day. Sorry, folks.  It was never meant to be a 'happy ending'.

Meat was deeply metatextual. It was gristly and greasy and discomfiting.  It raised questions about what it means to have a narrator, and whose biases are implicitly included--and I think those are very interesting questions to raise, whether or not they are particularly satisfying to someone who is also reading for the characters.

Spoilers beyond the read-more, for obvious reasons.

That said, there were elements that did surprise me.  The removal of the other kids from different points in different doomed timelines, to fight with John against LE, rather than being his teammates from Earth C--but from John’s perspective, it doesn’t seem like there’s much difference.  Either way, they’re not fully ‘real’ to him (and barely feel real to us, as quickly as they appear and then die). He’s from the Game Over timeline, he’s battling depression, and nobody in the retcon timeline is really quite authentic to him, either--just as to many fans, they didn’t feel quite authentic, when the retcon happened and we had to suddenly let go of the characters we'd watched grow and change, replaced by funhouse mirror reflections and could-have-beens.

I’ve also seen some reasonably interesting arguments that a lot of Dirk’s narration, in the Meat route, either sounds eerily like Vriska talking or flips back and forth between Vriska-mode and Dirk-mode, well before alt!Calliope ever gets involved.  I’m prepared to believe some Serket element (whether that is potentially Vriska, or the Aranea who was abruptly displaced from her attempt at wresting control of the narrative by John) was involved there, and Dirk was not acting entirely of his own accord.  I’m also prepared to shrug and say “okay, maybe it was just a narrative parallel--Homestuck does that a lot”.  Some narration, especially when Terezi is involved, doesn't sound at all how I would expect a Serket-influenced narrator to sound with regards to her, in particular.  It doesn’t particularly grind my gears to think some version of Dirk, in the right environment, might make a series of choices that leads him to behaving like this, entirely on his own.  I recognize that it’s upsetting to DirkJake fans in particular to see their favorite pairing written like this, but it doesn’t feel wholly out of character to me for either of them to develop in these directions, given the right (or wrong) pressures and external situations. This Dirk is the culmination of a very wide multiplicity of Dirks, including at least one if not more who ended up directly subsumed in Lord English and/or under his explicit influence.

I’ve heard that some people were attacking the Meat route on the grounds of transphobia, which... I think is a rather weak argument, given that it’s recognized in the text itself, as pronoun changes are handled respectfully by one narrator-character and inconsistently by a second, who is being set up as the villain of the story. That seems like a pretty solid metatextual rejection of the action, no?  Like, if a villain does a bad thing, in a story, while the hero is fighting them, do you argue that the story itself advocates for that thing? There has to be some kind of distinction between ‘character does X’ and ‘author of story advocates X is Morally Correct’, or we would never have any villains at all. Dirk's dismissiveness toward Roxy's agency grows, the further toward 'villain' he slides.

Were there some things I liked, in Meat?  I guess.  From a sociopolitical and cultural standpoint, the shitty repercussions of the way the retcon gang set up a planet, dumped a bunch of chess people and clone grubs, then left them to do all the work of creating its society and waiting for their eventual 'godly' return... were pretty logical. I'm actually happy that it was acknowledged, instead of just brushed off as inconsequential.  It was interesting, too, to see some of the kids playing with notions of gender identity as they grew, and how their companions adjusted. It was telling (in terms of Dirk's character development) how he thought of Roxy and Calliope's gender explorations as something he could choose to 'allow' or not. Also, with how truncated most of the gang's personal development (and plot development) was in Homestuck proper ('thanks', retcon!Vriska), I think it kinda made sense how stunted and incapable of like... dealing with regular life in a functional way a lot of them seemed. Jumping straight to teenage 'godhood' didn't make them experienced or smart. It's sad that all of them just kind of... stagnate there, but Earth C has always felt incredibly stagnant to me.

Retcon!Vriska getting swallowed by the black hole was at least thematically fitting, though I'm wondering why she is using such Seer-themed language, suddenly. I also like that the wallet is finally back in play. Rose and Dirk's philosophical debate about individuation and free will is delightfully creepy, given the themes of the story. There are moments, within the story, that the turns of phrase and the humor just hit me full in the teeth and remind me this is Homestuck, and I do love those moments.  And of course, my xenobiological worldbuilding interests enjoyed that apparently, earth onions are quite toxic to trolls.

Were there things I didn’t like in Meat?  Yeah, of course. I don't particularly like that John, an Heir of Breath--one who is innately positioned to awaken Breath, freedom and motivation in the people around him--callously shoves an unresisting teenager he's barely met into a refrigerator and just leaves him there, apparently convinced he deserves it.

Did some of the things I disliked relate to the storytelling itself, rather than just how characters were characterized, or what actions they took?  Yeah. Why are we still out here queer-baiting with Dave and Karkat?  Years have passed.  They have spent literal years sitting 1.5 feet apart so it's 'not gay'? I sincerely don't think this pairing is actually healthy or beneficial to either of them, the way it developed in canon, but come on. Then, they still balk and drag their feet unless it's being narratively pushed on them by someone else. It's just painful to watch.

I also take a certain level of personal offense as a Tavros fan when the narrative goes out of its way to repeatedly harp on Tavros being useless and no one giving a shit what he's doing.  Ghost Tavros was awesome, okay, and was personally responsible for gathering the ghost army, so fuck you, Vriska-coded narrator. You have bad judgment. But that is not a crime of writing, if it is an intentionally biased perspective and not just writers taking cheap shots at a character they don't happen to like. I'm just incredibly tired of it being done habitually and collectively, as a fandom, to that character in particular. Furthermore, I'm really discomfited by the way Tavros's development (am I the only one who remembers him dancing and telling Vriska to suck it?) is completely ignored and de-legitimized by having him immediately fawning on her, trailing around after her, hiding against her shoulder, etc.  Tavros was a victim of emotional and physical abuse, at Vriska's hands.  Can we just agree to stop narratively forcing victims back into contact with their abusers, period? It's not a good look.

Moreover, there's the whole misogyny angle.  When does a story about misogynistic characters (and narrators) doing misogynistic things while misogynistic shit narratively happens start being a critique of misogynistic tropes rather than a tired old rehash?  Every step Jane (allegedly a strong, independent woman, though also stepping into her dictatorial role as 'Heiress') takes is either dictated by Dirk, sent into a complete tailspin that upends her confidence by Jake, or verbally decried as factually wrong and/or stupid by Dave and/or Karkat.  Rose and Kanaya both have their agency overwritten and end up separated from each other through the actions of Dirk, and Rose becomes an extension of Dirk, losing her very selfhood.  Jade is treated as an accessory to the DaveKat trainwreck, simultaneously discounted as actually emotionally relevant and blamed for its ludicrous problems.  She, of course, also ends up having her agency overwritten as she's plunged into a coma and possessed, prevented from actually having reactions to the things that are going on, or taking action for herself. Borrowed!Rose and Jade are KO'd almost instantly in the fight against Lord English, and become either literally erased, or dead weight for a male character to drag around until it's no longer convenient. Terezi admits to wasting a huge amount of time trailing around after Vriska--who was an emotionally abusive gaslighter to her, on the retcon!meteor. (And we're back to victims being constantly evaluated according to their proximity to their abusers again.) Then, she's on to redirecting herself into some quest on John's behalf, instead. She's still not living for herself. Finally, you show me an Aradia who would ever, ever be concerned about 'saying more embarrassing stuff' around Dave, or thinking of him as an ‘outrageously cool dude’, and I'll show you a bridge I'd like to sell you.  That ain't any Aradia I've ever seen. So who’s narrating there, Dirk again? A third party?

Other weird things: apparently Jane's kidnapping in the snapchats just... never gets explained or referenced again? I went back to reread those, and they connected to Meat even more than I realized at first.   I guess Jane grew up to be... exactly what she was raised/groomed to be, which is *uncomfortable* but not particularly shocking.  I feel bad for people who were hoping for happier endings for the human kids, but I don't think I ever really expected Homestuck to serve up happy endings.  I don't buy that things in the snapchat were just thrown in at random, though.  Those elements were there for a reason, and arguing that everything in the snapchats were connected to the epilogues EXCEPT that one major extended plotline doesn't make sense.  Especially when it visually and narratively seems to be a direct link to the events of the Meat storyline. 

Also, where the fuck are the sprites?  We never see or hear from Jasprosesprite, Gcatavrosprite, or the Nannasprite(s?) again. I’m not sure anyone cares, but. Uh. Yeah.

I have other thoughts regarding the classpect-coded language that crops up pretty frequently in the epilogues, but I think I will devote a separate post to that, if I get around to it, given that this *is* at heart a classpecting blog.

So anyway, Meat ends, it's depressing and futile and grim, I get it. I don't like every element, but it hangs together as a story with a narrative, overall.

Then we get to Candy.

Hoo boy.

I’ll tackle that one next, but as it was considerably more upsetting for me to read, rereading it for fact-checks and commentary is going to be a lot harder for me.  I’ll get through it here sooner or later, though.

[bramblepaws]

TIME TO START ON MEAT

the relief i felt when the thing was like “Dirk’s alive!” was ... very strong. i dont get him but i Hated. Absolutely Loathed. the way he went in the Candy route. 

also a lot of relief over seeing dave and karkat just chilling, sans an ooc-jade. hell yeah. let’s get this train BACK ON TRACK!

im glad jake’s ass is a constant across the universes

also i really like how this is written. feels good feels org-

ALSO i do enjoy dave being into economics, it feels right for him

god i love them

ah this is what the obama scene was referencing in Candy. ok cool

i guess this route is just gonna be me going “i love davekat”! because guess what! i love davekat

I LOVE DAVEK--

oh thank god

also... can’t believe John just punched a teenage girl in the face. wild. 

i missed their friendship a lot in the Candy timeline, i gotta say. also it’s interesting to see John talking like this, because it definitely feels like.. Him But More Mature. fits. he’s less ................... all over the place?

this is just here cuz it’s funny. That’s Life Dave

is this foreshadowing for how this route is gonna go................. HMMM

i don’t have anything to say about this but i like it. the “multiple selves” thing has always been an integral and interesting part of homestuck, and i enjoy the fact that we can delve further into it through this type of narrative

hehe

ok they just got sucked into the juju and im VERY confused. so.. next update will come. later

[bramblepaws]

MEAT WHOOPS, part 5

i don’t get what’s happening with calliope taking over the narrative from dirk but i’m honestly really upset that jade keeps getting booted from the epilogues by callie. Let Her Be. for the love of god.

and is callie acting as some sort of cruel parental figure to Dirk? do they just not care about anything aside from “stopping” him? i dont get what’s HAPPENING. what is the point of this????? at least when it was Dirk’s narrative i understood where it was going. 

also i cannot believe that john sees terezi, both of them are dying, And Yet his thoughts are immediately “wow she’s...............hot.......” like it’s accurate to how men be as far as i know but i hate it

oh also i keep forgetting john is literally covered in puke. super hot dude! you got this!

first off: im using this for canon chubby-stocky karkat and no one can stop me. also fucking Cute.

GOD I LOOOVE DAAAVEKAAATTT

dirk you’re so...... Ugh. even if there isn’t any “free will” and jake is just acting out what he’d be doing sans influence aside from his base personality. that’s still. Doing Something. not everything has to be for a higher purpose, it is human to just dick around and like live life sometimes. Why Are You Like This

HRHGHGGHHG AAAAAAA

gGGGGHHRHRG GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ohhhhh vrisrezi also good................... just something about this whole sentiment is really interesting and i feel says a lot about terezi’s character

i honestly don’t get why JohnRezi is trying so hard to become canon in both epilogues.... what’s the thing that’s being communicated with this.... like davekat feels. right. in both of them, like it fits with both dave and karkat’s arcs about romance and sexuality. but frankly john has never felt like a person who was... romantically interested in anyone... Let Alone with a blackrom leaning (which seems to be what’s implied between him and terezi). so it feels unnecessary to his arc? like in the candy timeline it made sense for him to get with roxy Specifically to fall apart, because he kept trying to push himself into the role of being Romantic Male Interest that then was a father and husband. he’s got his own issues with masculinity that it doesn’t feel like he quite... ever dealt with. but he’s always given me the STRONG vibe of being aroace, and the terezi thing doesn’t. Fit with that. IMO. and i don’t know if i really get it from terezi’s side, either? like maybe i get it in terms of letting vriska go, but she could do that in other ways.....

no shade to people who like johnrezi though, i just dont Get It

kgnlsf;das;fldgnfd;lngfdg;lfng this is good

oh lordy here we go 

i.it’s weird to read uhhh canon... pg-13 homestuck ship fanfic... ITS WEIRD,

maybe the johnrezi thing is so terezi can finally have a healthy blackrom relationship. it’s funny how much... idk... Tamer it actually is. is hussie trying to use these two to go “hey just SO YOU KNOW! ABUSE ISNT WHAT BLACKROM IS--” after he read all of our inaccurate fanfics. because. like that’d be weird but valid :///

also callie using the right pronouns for roxy is ... so focking good...

im enjoying this

OHHH DAVE USIN THE RIGHT PRONOUNS TOO..... 

hey dirk what the FOCK did you do to rose and kanaya. if they arent safe i can, will, and should murder u,

oh actually the misgendering is enough. im going into the comic rn to kick your ass

cute............

roxy youre SO valid

im literally crying i love dave SO much i am just overwhelmed with affection for him Every Single Time he starts monologuing about anything

i love you. so much. im kinning this whole speech 

DIRK YOU CANNOT SAY THE WORD INCEL IM FUCKINGG BANNING YOU. NO MORE INTERNET ACCESS!!!!!!! reddit and 4chan absolutely suit you though :/

wow.... trolls can’t eat caramelized onions... press f to pay respects 

terezi.... Valid

im fully hating the entirety of the shit that’s happening with dirk rn. it’s really very unfun to watch him be like. transphobic and manipulative and gaslight-y. it’s making me Tired. 

fuck dirk but davekat is good

DIRK IM GOING TO END YOU

FUCK DIRK BUT DAVEKAT IS GOOD!!

god why is dirk so fucking. gross and horny. stop being weirdly sexual about your son-brother you fucking freak!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD!!!!!!!!! 

ok davekat good but dirk is horrible, so that’s a good summation of this whole entire section and a good place to end it frankly.... To Be Continued,