#catdave

[hms-no-fun]

where did the inspiration for cat!dave come from. i love it btw, im just curious where it came from

catdave, like a lot of stuff in the gf3 prologue, just sort of happened. it's one of those things where in writing that chapter, jade grabbed a button that did a thing as a way to keep their villain-narrator honeypot from collapsing, and i decided to roll with it. turning dave into a house cat seemed like a fun gag, especially considering awkweet purrmusk and davepeta and all that. karkat picking up catdave with horror and protectiveness was really funny to me, just like NO HE'S MY BOYFRIEND YOU LEAVE MY SPECIAL MAN ALONE. then i thought, wait, what if a cat had time-distortion powers. what if catdave was like, i'm the hottest fucken kitty that ever did strut, i'ma slow down time and make everyone admire me. that joke alone was enough to keep catdave in, and i figured okay, we'll roll with this for a minute and then reverse it at the end and it'll be a funny anecdote. "hey remember that time dave turned into a cat?"

but unfortunately for dave, this is godfeels. i can't ever just do a fun joke about transformation. if we're gonna accept that jade has a button that can turn people into the animal they secretly want to be, that's gotta have CONSEQUENCES. what is this, fucking rick & morty??? there will be no resetting to the status quo at the end of THIS episode thank you very much!

of course by the time i got to publishing that first catdave chapter i'd figured all this out. dave's sort of defined by his repression and embarrassment at himself and his wants. i've imagined him sticking to his "i don't want to be a hero" thing very closely, and with that just kinda chilling with karkat all the time. (oh there's actually a funny pseudo-continuity error related to this-- in gf1 someone mentions what makes dave and karkat such a good couple. i'd imagined then that davekat were absolutely a totally out gay together couple. then the epilogues said actually no they were still too repressed to actually DO anything, and i decided to lean into that because two incredibly gay men no-homoing together for seven years is really funny/tragic to me from a story perspective. and since i decided to make gf2 parallel the epilogues, it seemed appropriate to fold that back in. i think in gf2 this gets papered over with june being surprised that they hadn't kissed yet? but that's def a thing that changed between fics from my perspective lmao)

so it seemed to me that catdave was a minor analogue to trickster mode- an unexpected jump straight to Personal Apotheosis without the journey necessary to give it any meaning. and that quickly mapped onto the problem of out queer people treating obvious eggs like their own Pet Project, pressuring them and pushing their boundaries even when it IS to some extent what they want. so dave keeps his cat ears and tail because he's a closeted furry with Some Gender, but because his friends all thought the transformation was funny and cute the end result was actually pushing him even further back into the closet. and since i knew that we were aiming towards davekat divorce fever anyway, that felt like the *perfect* dramatic intervention on his character. this is the hardest part of building an ensemble cast drama; giving everyone something Clear and Concise to deal with that can stand in for all their problems, so we can cut right to the chase when necessary.

this process is, in microcosm, the fundamental backbone of godfeels. it's about taking deadly seriously the personal and existential ramifications of extraordinarily silly impossible bullshit.

[lorithescrump]

it’s always “would you still love me if I were a worm” and never “would you still help me murder my abuser if we were both cats”

Catstarion and Catdaver being the blood-soaked creatures they are because damn, I’m hyper fixated on these two fools

[pet-cemetery-emotes]

Yo! In the Emoji Finder server we're adding wordmojis to credit artists. I would love to add one for you since we use your emojis a lot! Would you be willing to make one that has your blog name or just "@PCE"? Thank you if you do! ~ @emojifarm

Ohhh. Okay. Hmmm. Either is fine! I could even make one if you’d like? I don’t really require credit, so I never thought about this. I’ll see what I have time for tonight if you’re interested - you don’t have to use these ofc, maybe you’re going for artistic cohesion. I could definitely try to make those two options, and maybe a symbol to represent this blog, or an emoji of our little mascot.

It’s just called Cadaver/Catdaver or Ghost or something. Even it doesn’t have a proper name.

EDIT: I misread this post :) I will make these once im done bein sick

[nubcatnoises]

Classic yo-kai Kasha (localized to Catdaver) and a vengeful spirit friend whose kind usually accompanies her in battle.

...More obviously Rin-flavored than other classics so far, but it's fine. Yo-kai watch loves bright red cats.

[shitty-davesprite-daily]

nyaknow, nya could nip the other dave while they're trying to trap you, thus two catdaves

TG: oh fuck i COULD

TG: tumblr wont let me tag you but hey

TG: hey other lame not cat me

TG: cmere >:3

[onlysushicat]

i drew homestucks as warrior cats the other day and tbh i think i like. straight up fucking YOINKED your dave design w/o even realizing it??? i dont even remember if ive seen that particular cat!dave art you did before or if i somehow just came to the EXACT same design choice for him. anyway if u happen to see it floating around i promise i wasnt intentionally trying to steal your design ahdkdhskshs 🙇

Awww dont worry about it! Im not privatizing catDave design, hes cute af as a tuxedo and if you agree then draw him as such ;33 I dont mind, actually makes me happy we share the same thoughts about it 🩷🐿️🩷

[m39]

Beyond Canonical Extravaganza - YEAR 1: Chapter 12

You tried to say something for over an hour with no progress. All you did was screaming into your pillow, staring at the floor, cursing more than an armada of drunk sailors, and more. Before all of that, you had been staring at this picture for around twenty minutes:

You are now sitting. Your head is on your desk. All you can think of right now is to grab some Skooma right in front of you and-

NO!!!!!!

No! I will not succumb to another alcohol libation like that one time with the weaboo troll from Hiveswap: Friendsim! I still must rant about this one thing that will make you public enemy #1 in Homestuck’s fandom’s eyes if you say anything bad about it!

Because hey, if you couldn’t catch up with my clues in the past, let me scream it in your faces right now:

I DON’T FUCKING LIKE FLUSHED DAVEKAT!!!!!

gasps

Yeah! You fucking heard it! And I’m confident to say it since the worst cesspool from this site moved to Twatter after the NSFW purge of 2018!!

huffs & puffs

Okay… okay… Let me calm down in a minute.

sigh…

Let me explain myself. The truth is that there are worse, more nonsensical ships in Homestuck, canonical or not. Now that I can think about it, flushed Davekat is painfully mediocre as one person told me (I am not going to tell who for their own safety). Unfortunately, it is still my least favorite ship because this shit is everywhere! Almost every Homestuck artist I saw, drew this ship at least once. And most of the time, it was in the style of UwU Daveu-kun, Karkato-kun, kawaii desu UwU shit. If I had a gun pointed to my head to say which ship from Homestuck is the most overrated, it would be this one. I think I only liked two artworks with flushed Davekat and only because of the funny factor they generated. And you know what’s the saddest/funniest thing about all of it? I think that the Pale Davekat is really fucking good, to the point that I might consider it my BroTP.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t like this or draw fanart of it etc. I’m just saying that I don’t like this ship. Nothing more to add.

Now since the rant is over (or at least the bigger part of it), let’s hypothetically say that I am a fan of flushed Davekat. Would I still like what happened in Homestuck^2?

…

No. I don’t think I would. You wanna know why? Because it’s not the Alpha timeline. It’s the Meat timeline, and characters from this timeline (and the Candy cesspool) are not canon. So why should I care about a ship that isn’t even from the Alpha timeline? Hmm? Exactly.

Is there at least something worth talking about? Well…

Umm…

Ergh…

This line from Dave was pretty good:

And uhm…

I…

There is…

There is nothing.

…

Seriously, there is nothing to say about this chapter. Half of it is just Dave having personal drama and Karkat telling him to pull himself together, while the other half is shit that I explained earlier. Just yesterday I was praising the quality of the previous chapter! What the fuck happened!? This chapter feels like fanservice stuffed filler to make Homestuck’s fanbase forgive this comic’s more controversial aspects.

I didn’t even mention how Davekat was partially forced upon by Doc Strider because he wanted his OTP to be true, just like Caliborn before him.

And now, I’m done with this. I’m done talking about it. Let’s hope it will be the last time I talk about it (for a long time at least). But hey, look at the bright side! It can’t get any worse from no-

You suddenly memorized that the last, two chapters of YEAR 1 are in the Candy timeline.

D:

You finally snapped.

a few hours of alcoholic euphoria later

OOOhhhhhhhhhhh yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeee brother! Imma li-lizard kingi!! 8D

You suddenly hear a loud knocking. Even though you can barely stay on your legs, you manage to reach the door and open it. Behind it, there is a bunch of robe-dressed individuals. Some of them wear accessories based on Dave and Karkat. Others have their skin painted in gray.

Oki Doki towel aaaaaaaAAAAAAAsses. I’m gonna hic say it only once… Ge- belch Get back to that game y- you came from. I’m not interestit into Cabal POOOOOOOOORRRRRRN! YA GOT DAT?!?!

Cultist: Salvete haereticus reputandus.

Pardon me?

Cultist: Non vidistis quod de nostra religione dixisti.

Polish, please?

Cultist: Nos, autem membra non sustinebunt gentes, quæ non CabalCo DavidKattus darent, neve macularent.

Wait wha- OH!!! OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! You must be the fans of CatDaVe!!

Well excuuuuuuuse me, princess, but I’m n-n-nooooooOOOOOOOT a fan of this shippppppppFFFFFFFFFFF! Butt eeyyyyyyyy… We can sti-still accept that nobody is the same and… hic oh god… and not everyone will like a certain ship, rrriiight????

The cultists say nothing for a while. Suddenly they pull their weapons out of their robes.

Cultist: GEROXE BIBOX MALAX!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

technical difficulties

[labstuckcatstuck-blog]

I'm so sorry that this is happening to you. you don't deserve this at all, from what I've seen you're such a nice, sweet person(people?). I genuinely hope it gets better and that these awful people fuck off.

Hah, thank you.To clarify on the person/people thing, we are more than one person but share a body. A system, if you will. There’s a better explanation I can give but the body is to tired.Only two of us have posted on this blog, however. Me (Rose), and CatDave. It’s his blog, I’m simply here because I’m pissed off and he’s having such a mental breakdown because of this whole ordeal.

[hms-no-fun]

was it intentional making dave and kanayas changes reflect the names of the rejected/lost endgame ships? Dave is now davecat (ala davekat) as he loses karkat in the fallout of all this, and kanaya becomes Mary, the remaining half of Rosemary now that rose has died. was this intentional? And, further, assuming this wont be expounded on later in the fic due to its entirely meta nature, how do you feel the changes reflect their characters, with Dave INCORPORATING the phonetic match of davekat, and kanaya Explicitly Removing the rose? Or is all this just nonsense?

the davecat/davekat pun is intentional, and kanaya choosing "mary" out of rosemary is also intentional, but i hadn't actually thought much about how they mirror each other in their relationship to their relationships! dave doesn't think of himself as catdave of course, but the presence of that pun in the reader's mind certainly helps reinforce the fact that davekat didn't explicitly *break up.* actually you know what i'm gonna go on an extended tear about some dualism because i want to, regardless of how on topic it is

i've said before that i wanted godfeels kanaya in 3.2 onwards to echo kanaya in homestuck^2. in hs2, her divorce fever manifests through the adoption of a nun's attire and a distant longing for her wife. kind of a "when will my beloved return from the war" type thing.

i remember folks having a problem with that interpretation of kanaya being passive in a ooc way? but i think it's notable we never got far enough to see her in action, and let's remember that she's still ON the ship headed to deltritus, to rescue rose and kick dirk's ass. so you know. it's hard not to be passive when you're stuck on a ship waiting to arrive at plot

(which is a criticism of hs2 i appreciate, even if i don't entirely agree for a number of reasons we definitely don't have time for)

so anyway, the thing about hs2 kanaya is that her wife disappeared without talking to her. it's not just that she's separated from her wife, fundamentally there's a betrayal involved-- which the characters (and thus the readers) sublimate into anger at dirk for having manipulated and controlled rose into going down that path in the epilogues... but i think it's genuinely up for debate whether or not rose was, in fact, altogether 100% mind-controlled by dirk. is she really under his thrall, or is she playing into the role because it's better than dying of existential migraine? or because she's bored of her life on earth c and wants to spice things up in the bedroom with reaaaaaaaaaally extended foreplay? rose has always been a melodramatic bitch after all, that's what everyone forgets loves about her!

[relitigating long dead fandom discourse voice] just because rosemary means a lot to you as Queer Representation doesn't change the fact that gay people also suck! like they literally got married at age 16, have some fucking perspective

of course to my mind it's even an open question whether rosemary divorce fever in hs2 was straight up an agreed-upon longform romantic roleplay. i mean what better way to larp your femknight in shining nunarmor ravishing you romantically from the clutches of the weeaboo dragon fantasy than Literally Making It Happen In Real Life? you see i liked hs2 precisely because it had an ambiguity of purpose in its characters that lent itself to all sorts of juicy interpretations. yeah they probably plodded around in that a bit too long, but let's not pretend that the fandom ever approached hs2 with even a sliver of patience or good faith to see its ideas through to the end

u h h h h h h h wait what the fuck was i

so anyway mary in godfeels is similarly betrayed, but in a very different way. the question of why rose didn't bother letting kanaya in on any of the things she knew is wrapped tight in barbed wire. contemplating it is an unavoidable act of self-harm. it's a question that can't be answered, but will linger forever. mary has to wonder if killing her wife was truly necessary, if there was another option, if rose's visions were truly infallible... or if rose just couldn't think of a better way to end things between them. those are just a few of the many questions that can haunt you when a loved one dies unexpectedly

so mary is a post-rose kanaya who has to choose between obsessing over the loss of her wife or moving on into a completely new existence. now then, on the flipside of that you've got dave, who doesn't have that same dividing line between his First Real Relationship and the rest of his life. he says to himself "karkat will wait for me," and so presumably intends to find his way back to earth c sooner or later. but he also has to live in the present, deal with his own shit, continuing to grow and change in unknowable ways. so where mary has to accept that it's okay to become a person her wife would not recognize, dave has to confront whether he can live with himself if he becomes someone that karkat won't recognize. he has to interrogate whether or not his boyfriend's unconditional love will remain unconditional as the two of them grow and change apart from one another.

so yeah, there's some juicy dramatic resonance in the davecat & mary puns. which, you know, will almost certainly have no intersection with june's situation or dana's situation or lenore's situation hahaha

[jbergren]

Chris Marano 2019 Reel from Chris Marano on Vimeo.

My 2019 reel includes a handful of small or personal projects/logos, class content from School of Motion, and a short clip of "Catdavers" an ios game I developed.

[turntechtimegoddess]

wanderingfelinestrider

oh my god..are you a cat dave? fuck me thats adorable.

[hms-no-fun]

where did you get the divine inspiration to make dave a catboy

bit of a complex answer to this one but to start, even as a defender of the epilogues and hs2 i find their treatment of dave and karkat rather frustrating. there are some good davekat conversations and i'm personally a fan of how willing candy is to throw a wrench in their dynamic... but overall it feels like davekat are "solved" in post-canon. they have nothing to do, there is no real drama between them, they are a finished ship and that's all they will ever be.

i've known for a long time that 3.2 would be much more of an ensemble cast affair, so for 3.1 and the prologue i spent a lot of time thinking about how to give everyone something to do. well, no, "something to do" isn't really accurate, it's more like i wanted to push them forward into a new state of conflict that they then must resolve as the story goes on. that's distinct from "something to do" in the sense that putting davekat on some kind of Quest may force them to be more active, but it won't fundamentally change their (in my opinion) stale dynamic. so i really wanted to find a way to organically interrupt the davekat dynamic that didn't involve killing one or the other of them or, crucially, just completely outright separating them. because i think with davekat, if you accept that they are that rare couple that can really weather the years despite getting together so young, you get an opportunity to play with all sorts of new relationship dynamics.

so i knew all of this in abstract when i was writing the gf3 prologue (though admittedly my plans for gf3 as a whole didn't yet extend much farther than "it's gonna be a space opera"), but i didn't specifically have the idea to turn dave into a catboy until writing the chapter where it happens. sometimes you're writing a dialogue scene and then one of the characters will say some shit like "okay karkat ask a question or i'm turning your bf into a cat," and you as the writer have to be like. okay. hold on.

because you can't just say you can turn characters into cats and then not follow through, right? it was one of those moments that really make me love writing, where a character just said some random shit i thought was funny and then i had to seriously ask myself what it meant for the story. and i realized like, holy shit, dave has all this history with cats and cat people and furries where he's always been the sort of tsundere closet case of the beta kids, WHICH i always saw as a contributing factor to the way he reacted to june coming out in gf2.1.

and then it just dawned on me that like, maybe dave likes being a cat, and maybe it spoke to him so much that he kept the cat ears and tail. and maybe the fact that he keeps those traits is this unconscious admission that he is a lot queerer than he acts. and honestly, all the rest just sorta followed on from there! we see in 3.1 ch6 that dave and karkat are sleeping in separate rooms, that dave is isolating himself, and he's still very much embarrassed about and in denial of his cat-ness. and meanwhile, karkat is trying to convince jane to become a communist! which is admittedly a bit silly as a plotpoint, but like, it's karkat and jane. what's wrong with a little fancifully positive pitch romance between a wikipedia marxist and a globetrotting capitalist? uh but i digress

anyway catboy dave is lowkey one of the three characters i'm most excited to write more of in the future and i'm really glad people like this addition to his character

[askcatdave-blog]

Omegle [Homestuck]

I`m going on omegle as cat Dave in god~meow~ tier