#roxie and dave: no we get it we really do

[prospitsdream]

urghhthinking of well?? guardianswap but not really since no guardians are actually swapped.

pretty much a role/personality? swap of some sort.

june’s dad would be the one preparing her for the apocalypse in weird ways. pranks gone wrong, the Proud of You Son notes are kinda tinged in a sadness. i dunno how else to describe this. maybe he was warned by nanna who got informed. she would complain as if this is Normal Pranking but its not girlget out.

rose’s mom died, leaving her in the woods with firstguardian jaspers and a whole lab to explore (aka MAD SCIENTIST ROSE MAD SCIENTIST ROSE). i think this would make her much more paranoid… and maybe looking for guidance from a specific white orbhead guy. yikes. im sure this will have no repercussions at all.

dave gets bro.. who DOESN’T do All Of That? still emotionally neglectful but more of a stereotypical brother instead of setting all of that up. the traps are still there but no fireworks its just puppets. still a douche. hes… slightly more chill i guess.

jade gets an ALICE GRANDPA?!?!?! but hes neglectful like he was with his other kids. bec isnt a first guardian anymore, but a normal dog. grandpa is off trying to get more involved w shit for the game while also missing crucial pieces by accidentally settint jade to the side. jade goes “grandpa today i dreamed i was on a yellow planey and i saw you in the clouds dead” and grandpa goes “Thats nice dear let me finish on the phone now”.

and lord . the alpha kids

jane and jake are the ones being sent into the future, with jane’s setup initially being provided by famous comedian john crocker w/ help from crockdad while jake has a very hightech place set up by Grandma :) im sure growing up isolated will allow these people to grow up normally with no repercussions. (well we saw how it affected one but u know what i mean)

roxy was growing up in the woods with her mom until batterwitch assassination moment. YIKES. out of isolation she clones a bunch of cats and idolizes her mom way too much. also again, paranoid to the max now.

dirks bro is. well hes raising dirk at least that counts for something. periods of no contact with the guy since hes doing shit to periods of massive doting really warp a guys perspective on affection. who wouldve thought.

[clockwards]

actually the only reason roxie and dave believe darius' older brother when he says the kids are alive is because they've met them and know they're fucking insane

[skenpiel]

ummmmmmmm. i think for ncv ill cosplay kris and roxy and then someone else but i dunno who yet but it sorta has to be utdr because thats my policy

[red-elric]

i think what a lot of ppl miss about the nuance when it comes to the retcon is that the POINT of it is that its a bad ending. homestuck is designed to be a tragedy and it was never going to end well; its frankly ridiculous to try and shoehorn in a scenario where none of the current main characters are dead when the story is ABOUT death. its not narratively satisfying at all like this! but thats not what the kids wanted (and, more to the point, thats not what the FANS wanted. newer fans DEFINITELY miss the fact that homestuck was written as a conversation between hussie and the fans, a conversation that turned into an argument halfway through and led to a lot of things being taken in bad faith on both sides. but i digress; this is a watsonian post)

the retcon powers are very VERY explicitly described as the ability to change the alpha timeline. the 'whats supposed to happen' of it all, the premeditated narrative the story was written to fill. conversely, when aranea used the ring of life to come back and meddle, she is explicitly described as 'causing a doomed timeline.' and like, the thing about doomed timelines is that theyre meant to happen as much as theyre meant to be fixed. theyre how paradox space accounts for and incorporates time travel, and the existence of the doomed timeline is often NECESSARY for the alpha timeline to function. thats how you get davesprite, thats how the aradiabot that brought gamzee's honkHONK code back from his crazy murder timeline contributed to doc scratch's creation, thats why every dead dave helped the alpha timeline dave figure out what to do. if vriska was meant to have never died in the first place the timeline wouldve been doomed long before game over. the ring went to the wrong person, and thats the kind of simple fix sburb was expecting to solve with some time travel to get things back on track

the ring was supposed to go to someone else. probably vriska! from the alpha timelines perspective, it wasnt that long after her confrontation with john that she really changed and grew as a character. that she became someone who deserved a second chance. imagine: john uses his retcon as normal time travel, the way sburb comprehended it through the limitations of its code. he takes the ring before aranea can, goes to the dream bubbles, and has another conversation with vriska. maybe she doesnt even really want the ring anymore, and thats exactly the kind of thing that would convince john to give it to her. and she agrees, because he tells her terezi is waiting for her. they go back, they have the final fight, and people die. maybe they dont come back. but its the group of characters who earned the ending, who we watched grow up for three years

but thats not what happened, and it was never going to be what happened, because as narratively satisfying as it could have been? john and terezi wanted something different. john wanted everything to be OVER and terezi wanted the chance to make a different choice, even if it was wrong. theyre selfish; theyre kids. theyre tired of being characters in a story, of someone else pulling their strings. thats what typheus's choice was about, you know? and john made the wrong choice. some other version of john could have fixed things the "right" way, had our john decided to die instead. to accept the consequences of the doomed timeline and let pardox space fix it. hell, between roxys first instinct to just sit and let the void take her and terezis pointy horns offering a counterpoint we have some pretty blatant devil/angel on the shoulder imagery! and john making the same wrong choice he did when terezi first told him to fly to the seventh gate, except this time there was no davesprite on angel wings, no one left alive he cared about enough to listen to. because as much as john felt like he was SUPPOSED to fall for roxy, the girl version of his fathers lover, someone strongly associated with his half of karkat's shipping chart but without the complication of being a lesbian, someone HUMAN to repopulate the world with cut out of his apocalypse movie fantasies...... terezis way of thinking has always appealed to him more. because as much as he pretends its not true, john doesnt like to take things lying down, and he doesnt like when other people do either. he gets bored! hes attracted to the danger and morally grey self confidence terezi and vriska exude, so. he listened to terezi, and they brought vriska back.... without any of the character development she had gone through.

and its a bad ending, because of course it would be. and thats the point :) it was stupid to think two kids could meddle with the fate of the universe and it was stupid to think that these kids could have a happy ending so easily. but can you really blame them?

[weirdmageddon]

since hes open to feedback im considering talking to james roach about giving jade the justice she deserves after her narrative shafting in act 6 and one-dimensional ooc-ness (and also being a plot device deprived of agency) in the epilogues. if i do im probably going to link to this post……

so james if i sent this to you and you’re reading this, hi! :)

you say, “i want you to know if youre having problems with the story you can come to me with it and i will hear you out”. first of all you are such a good dude and have such a good open honest approach to the fans. i need to get that out there, because i know you’re just as much a fan of these characters and world are we are. secondly, i don’t know what your plans for homestuck beyond canon are, but dave and jade’s poor handling is a problem in both homestuck canon (act 6, even act 5 fucking them over with “tell, don’t show”; see the latter half of section 1 of the post at > Dave: Deploy cloning apparatus. and section 2) and post-canon that has yet to be addressed.

i understand the nuances of making things flow in a story; things that have already been established can’t be simply retconned. i wrote this post knowing that in mind and hopefully working around that into believably timed and justified/needed arcs gives it more potential

jade is a character i care about so much, and many fans also. her dynamic with dave was one of my favorites but the resolution to their separation…is not even really a resolution. it’s hard to talk about one without the other since theyve always been narratively intertwined. or at least jade has

remember how they musically collaborated more than the other kids? (crystalanthemums is their surprisingly tender song dont forget. i saw that the weird troll grub versions of objects make a comeback in the upd8; make music a relevant part of homestuck in-universe again too </3) dave sending her sbahj furry poster in the mail? the first ones to use a collaborative fraymotif in the comic? kringlefucker and conksuck boot? literally collaborating on creating the right seed for the new universe? and then dave died in jade’s arms and they were separated for 3 years and then that never gets touched on because of the retcon and all the other endgame shit going on (and lets be real grimbark jade from before the retcon wasn’t a satisfying reunion either). we get like, a brief exchange of dialogue at the very very end that made you want to see MORE of them after the battle but it. doesnt happen.

and then in the epilogues jade gets warped into this oddly hypersexual ooc one-dimensional character meant to narratively get in the way of davekat and it’s so awkward and uncomfortable for them. and even THEN in meat timeline gets her agency revoked by the narrative with alt calliope. and in candy dave realizes he’s gay (i thought he was explicitly bi? didnt he call jane hot multiple times both pre-and post-retcon, and once call roxy a “choice babe” in pajamas before he knew it was his ectomom?? if you’re actually gay and in denial why would you have these subconscious freudian blunders). and being married to jade gnaws at him because of it which is. unsatisfying i guess and isn’t consistent with dave’s established sexuality…and then he dies leaving his probably concerned wife and becomes a robot. even if the “point” is that the epilogues are metanarrative commentary about storytelling and candy represents the kind of fanfic that goes off the rails with fanservice it doesn’t feel good when i still care about these characters and their established canons. and a lot of people are in the same camp as me regarding this. it’s still an uncomfortable resolution for their relationship

i really want to see jade’s arc overcoming being used as a puppet by the narrative and the space aspect. just some things to think about / consider that have been running through my head: she’s a witch, right? isn’t what she’s supposed to do is actively bend the rules of her aspect? feferi bended the rules of life by asking the horrorterrors to create dream bubbles so the deceased could still sort of “live” which had a massive narrative impact. who exactly determines that being spacebound means you are fated to be passive and alone? the author? alt calliope? how do we know alt calliope can be trusted or if she’s just projecting her experiences as the most passive class possible onto jade, who ironically has an active manipulation class but is forced to be passive for some reason? normal calliope wasn’t right about everything classpect-related either.

ultimately these things are up to you. you’re still the director of course. but i’m speaking to you, as equally caring of these characters as you and everyone on the team, as a hypothetical suggestion or just something to consider for a jade arc: i think it would do such good to jade and the comic as a whole to see her speak to the manager and recognize the power she has and take back the reigns over her own life and dignity. jade is MAD that she had her own possibilities for socialization and agency taken away from her. and with floralmarsupial, my beloved mutual floral who i went to homestuck high together with, i KNOW the potential they possess to write a compelling arc for jade harley. i think everyone knows too lol floral is THE compelling deep jade harley fanwork big name fan. i dont know what we got to lose. with you guys in charge now, and with the last we see of jade in hs^2 (now hs:bc) fighting callie’s influence and advocating for her own agency, really the only way to go from here for jade is up. (assuming she doesn’t permadie of peanut but i doubt that’s going to happen since she’s one of the original kids and it wouldn’t be satisfying storytelling. and it’s homestuck)

this statement so ripe with potential to me ^ and we’re left on a cliffhanger with jade going in this direction

i want jade and dave to be close friends who care about each other a lot and do silly stuff together again. this isn’t even a call to make davejade canon; it doesnt have to be romantic—i dont want a davekat davejade war to break out, you know? i know you’re trying to balance fan demands. but i just loved their dynamic a lot and i MISS it so much, homestuck act 6 didnt give us this and i wish their reunion had more that went into it. we’re past that point though

i want jade and dave to have a talk that’s like old times. something that isn’t awkward as hell or about sexual relations or drama or whos fucking who. just something for the two of them. something that grounds them in what made homestuck so compelling in the first place: character and friendships and these kind of interactions

i want to see them collaborate again. an idea i have is maybe they start a band or something since they’re both musically talented and also live together so they can make stuff together in person now. you’re a music guy you get it. tangle buddies. jam buddies

and maybe something more serious that concerns just the two of them. post-retcon dave never talked to jade about his thoughts when they fought bec noir right? knowing that jade would inevitably kill him with bullets through bec, but he couldnt warn her because he knows she wouldn’t go through with it, creating a doomed timeline? so jade thought all that time she killed him by accident…..what about all that guilt she must harbor? the first person she had in-person contact with since she was probably four years old, her best friend online, and accidentally killed him within just a few hours of meeting him? and never got to talk about it with him, let alone anyone, after three years? hello?? :(

these are the final lines of the last pesterlog between jade and dave before their 3-year separation (and basically all of act 6)

so uh…..this exchange really openly invites some kind of talk to take place even if it’s long overdue. among other things maybe. they need to hug or something. jade’s touch starvation is real, but not everything needs to be sexualized about touch. she’s lonely and starved of affection but i feel like it would be more meaningful if it wasn’t sexualized. just really basic platonic primal cloth mother needs. just like..both being human beings and having basic needs like this that jade’s been deprived of. who’s the person she would feel most comfortable going to? who does she have the richest history with throughout the webcomic? dave, right? her online best friend since childhood that always cared a lot about her? they have stuff to talk about

i feel like that would address the issue people had with jade’s out of left-field promiscuity in the epilogues and even leftovers of it in hs^2. not only do i think primal platonic touch starvation would be a more meaningful and evocative type of interaction to give them at some point, it wouldn’t rock the boat or create any ship drama (davekat has long since sailed and most people seem to be on board with it) and it would probably be really positive representation of these sorts of things which not only throws a bone to aroace people but just depicting this sort of thing normalizes the fact that two people can be close and not necessarily in an official relationship.

this is a good transition point to this post also which is basically an extension to this one. it’s exactly the issues i had. it’s on the nature of what they had going and how much they mean to each other but how the storytelling held them back when it was unnecessary

this breaks my heart. mr. roach and hs:bc writing team please i miss my favorite blorbo duo being happy in each other’s company. they were such good friends but circumstances pulled them apart. i miss when they created music together and talked about their interests and exchanged quips. i am such a well of ideas for stuff like this. show us how much they mean to each other again

if youre still reading this james thanks for hearing me out. if you wanna pass on to the writing team to look at and get their feedback on this i’d be so so thankful

“and to think that after all this he still chose to save her, like always, probably knowing he had little to no chance, just because he cares for her, her life and who she is beyond this moment, really meant a lot for them. i really, really was mad that this would be the last time they would truly ever be together in a way that to me mattered” — vintagegamebro

[roxykisser]

through altercations known only to me rereading my lalonde wizard post has made me think about what class each of the kids would play in dungeons and dragons, so i’m subjecting my 2 followers to it.

john: fighter. i’m sorry but i can’t see him picking anything else besides maybe like… ranger. he mostly sticks to the default subclass but jade probably made him try rune knight at least once for a one-shot. he found it too complicated but relented to branch out into more subclasses afterwards.

dave: i’m torn between rogue and hexblade warlock. mayhaps some sort of cursed multiclass of both. he seems like the type to look up game guides to get the most broken character build possible and make up a backstory on the fly but he ends up actually quite attached to his pcs.

rose: probably a warlock. my first instinct was wizard, but i think she’d enjoy the flavour of warlock more, considering her gothic tendencies. she started out with the great old one patron but then discovered homebrew and became unstoppable. that one player who sends 10 pages of backstory, but it’s actually enjoyable to read

jade: the dungeon master. she’s the one who can most reliably engage all the players in the game without overcomplicating the plot and probably excels in juggling everyone’s game preferences. though when she does get to play she probably has no set character type and just makes a character depending on what strikes her fancy that day

jane: my first instinct was a city ranger build, since that’s probably the closest you get to a detective in dnd, but hear me out.. paladin. the strict code of oath. the angsty backstories. the heroic persona. jane spent a lot of time pre-game playing damsel in distress. i think she’d enjoy playing the knight for once. she probably tries it just to try it at first but ends up liking the mechanics so much she just sticks to it

dirk: right. we have a few options here. the first one is specifically cavalier fighter, because they get a mount. obvious choice. but for some reason he also strikes me as someone who would play sorcerer. it has some of the most fiddly mechanics in the game and it’s one of the closest classes we get to not-newbie-friendly in dnd. he’d like the challenge. then he looks at the set up of the rest of the party, sees they have no healer, and begrudgingly picks cleric/druid

roxy: is there really a question here? she would play wizard. she might branch out into warlock for a one-shot or something when she sees rose play it but she would probably prefer the versatility and sheer volume of wizard spells. i swear opening the wizard spell list is like spinning a wheel of fortune every damn time. also it means she gets to have a familiar and obviously she would make mutini (i mean, excuse me, moutani)

jake: i’m imagining his character creation went a little something like this: “So which class will let me do some pistol action?” “well, technically any of them, if you have the right proficiency!” “Okay but are there any that are like, really good at it?” “i mean… there are gunslingers and technically artificers…” “Great! i’ll play that then” before jade can explain gunslingers are actually sort of really complicated to play, especially for newbies. eventually he switches to bard

bonus: terezi plays barbarian. you can’t convince me otherwise.

[doomsdaydicecascader]

my problem with postcanon jade was that it said she was a cis girl before fusing with bec. i took it as the same "true in a transmisogynist way" troll as transmasc roxy

like, truly, i miss transfeminine roxy every day, and my house is fairly glass when it comes to things here considering i'm writing The Butch Lesbian Jane Comic, but like. the way homestuck fans exert ownership over the text of homestuck is fundamentally what the homestuck epilogues and post-canon are about. act 7 is about the dead calliope saying "fuck canon" and making her own, and she does not know how to care for the characters in question. i genuinely believe reconciling these facts, that what homestuck wants to be and what fans want homestuck to be are tangibly, ideologically opposed, is what post-canon is about

"fans read this character as X identity" is fine and good but that's paratext at best, and making demands of a text that has no obligation to respect them at worst. the epilogues are cashing in that desire to not respect them. homestuck has always been shaking off its readers who exert too much ownership, feel too comfortable with it. this goes way back as far as act 5 act 2 - the author commentary describes switching between walkaround sprites and hussnasty mode in such close proximity as a means of saying "if you always get what you expect, you will become complacent and that's no way for a reader to be", the "come in, go away" routine of homestuck is so repetitive now that i'm surprised basically nobody's caught on - homestuck is always doing insane flips to try and shake people off of it.

and now homestuck is doing that with your headcanons. like, this is a thing i see genuinely, all the fucking time in fandom over the past 15 years or so, people hype themselves up on paratexts and pretend the paratext is the source. the worst i ever saw of it was people having full blown self-harm threatening panic attacks because klance was not endgame in voltron legendary defenders. genuinely, i remember this so well - i think there were still two more seasons of the show after that event too, but i didn't watch it.

i only looked on from afar because what i saw of season 1 wasn't especially novel. castiel was never gay, no matter how many times he was caught leaking omegamusk in walmart or whatever, i'm stealing valor with this joke i was never a superwholock omegaverse girlie. there's so many fandoms i'm not a part of, it's unreal.

anyway, my point is people get really invested in their reads on characters and pretend it's real for the same reason a normie's sports team is gonna go the distance this season. and when they don't, they riot. this is literally just sports fandom 101. we may as well be talking about fucking inflategate here. i also don't go to sports. it's basically just homestuck for me these days.

i imagine this is what it's like to run my little pony before bronies came along: the show was negligible in relevance beyond its capacity to show off the new toys to play with. but the difference is that my little pony is about the toys, it's about encouraging that kind of play, it's fundamentally a set of toys they made a show about, as opposed to homestuck, which was always niche art for webcomics weirdos that caught on, quite literally, with the brony audience. i remember the first time i ever saw dave strider was on fucking ponychan, chronologically it would have been mid-act 5 act 2. it was an image of dave ransacking the lohac stock exchange, which is an a5a2 thing, it was before season 2 started, etc etc.

this is one hell of a tangent to say as far as the text of mspaintadventures is concerned, problem sleuth characters have gender signifiers that are more similar in nature to drag and performance of gender roles than any actual sexual dimorphism. homestuck characters are built atop the gender expression of problem sleuth. jade was a 13/16-year old girl, and that's the only information there was. over time, this changed.

this was an explicit change, too - it's in the change to act 6, passing through the fourth wall, that these characters, who fundamentally are game pieces, that homestuck starts to contend with the fact that people are emotionally invested in them as people. people don't like dave or vriska in the same way that people care about problem sleuth or nervous broad, and this comes out in the text. we get a lot of the best stuff in homestuck out of that change, too, like. the retcon only works because of that emotional investment, and i go so hard for the retcon. the retcon is the coolest thing ever.

and with that change, now, in 2024, she is explicitly a 39 (? i think she's 39.) year old woman with a penis. she didn't go from "cis woman" to "trans woman", she went from game piece to human person. there is no "cis jade" to be overwritten. you're assuming a "cis is default" worldview of a team of transgender and/or nonbinary people and thats just like. its not ideal, really

[gaphic]

hi im really interested in your hot takes on the classpects. as i was reading through that post about how homestuck is about breaking or following the narrative my first thought was about how this probably leads to a very different interpretation of the classpects than ive usually seen, but im not sure if im familiar enough to think it all out myself - and then i saw you mention offhand you have Hot Takes about it so. color me curious?

YOU ARE QUITE RIGHT IN THAT ASSESSMENT!

ok here's my take: it's literally Not That Deep. sburb is an incomplete RPG, not a deity or a greater consciousness. it doesn't actually know what is good for the players personal development. it is entirely skin-deep.

this is reflected in the performatively hollow echeladder mechanic, and in the sprites- who, lest we forget, are NPCs. that's why they're so 'mysterious.' they exist only to keep players on track, and 'the following quest objectives are HIGHLY PERSONALIZED to help you reach your full potential! great answers await you!' is a line written to serve that purpose. jaspersprite drops the facade a little bit and reveals he has no idea what he's talking about, the game is just making him say it

in keeping with this, classpects are not determined by people deep interior selves. they are determined by surface-level observations and by party optimization. the game generates a handful of possible classpects based on traits like 'bookish,' 'pirate' and 'cheerful,' then cross-references that with balanced team builds. the alpha session, being less complete, lacks the party optimization algorithm

Roxy is a do-good hacker (criminal) who uses an appearifier, she's a rogue who makes stuff appear out of nothing. Dirk carries on about being a leader and being toxic, he's a prince who destroys souls. Jake is weak/insecure and ignores reality, he's the 'untapped potential' class with the power to imagine things into existence. Jane is the only one who seems a little less literal, and I suspect that has to do with the Condesce, since she was the one who released the sburb alpha. Condy is a life player, therefore Jane is a life player (plus, she has that penchant for foiling assassination attempts, avoiding death) and she's a maid because Condy wants a handmaid

Aradia robs graves, Dave collects dead things, Caliborn is into murder, time is the death aspect. Callie, Jade, and Kanaya are all artists, space is the creation aspect. Karkat fantasizes about being a member of the royal army and he's obsessed with his blood, he's a knight of blood. I could go on but you get the point lol. classpects are superficial and depend heavily on what balances well, not your personal truth

likewise, I think your average '[closest object to you] + [current weather condition] = your sburb planet' type meme is pretty much exactly how the sburb planets actually work. they're not 'designed to challenge people' beyond the literal quest challenges

i think this reading immediately clears up a lot of apparent inconsistencies in the comic, like how Dave's planet is his own personal hell while Vriska's planet is her own personal heaven. the game doesn't actually know how they feel about these things or what would help them grow

[rockkal]

HOMESTUCK BEYOND CANON NEXT UPD8(s) PREDICTIONS (I'm delusional, btw) /SHITPOST

We get to see Jack Noir be a pathetic little meow meow and has depression because he's too busy working at the mine coal to see his wife

The Felt come into the screen, also somehow snowman, and they all say "We voted for Obama" (this is very important homestuck lore, btw)

Brand new character called HEROIN ADDICT is introduced. Son of Karkat and Dave. Has a brother named John Egbert Strider Vantas

Clover flirts with Jane and gets sent to the weed dungeon. And not like the good weed. I mean like the weed that really feels like shit

Jake becomes new leader of the Felt and Crowbar becomes his dad (Crowbar dad AU, write that down, it'll be on the test)

We get to see Death, the character, talk with ULT Dirk and he brang along the Midnight Crew, Mom Lalonde B1 and Dad egbert because he thinks they're cool (also, Mom Lalonde and Dad Egbert kiss a lot in death's office and have tea and buscuits with the Midnight Crew)

CALIBORN COMES FOR A SINGLE PANEL AND MAKES JUNE OFFICIALLY TRANS! BECAUSE HE HATES JUNE AND HE HATES WOMEN SO HE COMBINES THE TWO THINGS HE HATES INTO ONE (this is a joke, btw. I honestly want June's transitioning to be more in character then just the gremlin guy I like does it for me)

Ms Paint. becomes narrator of both Candy and Meat and it's just a podcast about different types of paint

Something related to The Midnight Crew's creator, Professor Mayasaka or however the fuck ya spell it, something translated into midnight. Whatever. I just wanna see the professor man come in and do something

JANE REVIVES AIMLESS RENEGADE SOMEHOW AND HE GOES GOD TIER! (His Classpect is Mage of Blood because I say so)

Sollux and Eridan kissing

B

Roxy breaks the fourth wall and says "it's Roxy Lalonding time" and Roxy Lalondes all over the place

A bucket appears and yeah

We see Andrew Hussie in a bath robe

Terezi manages to give back the legal rights to Beyond Canon back to their creators (sorry, I forgot your name, mister cool homestuck guy. I forget easily :'(]

Vriska dies. (I hate Vriska! (In a Kismesis way))

Equius comes back to say "I require horse" and then he gets prototyped with the universe frog

Matchsticks gets a personality and we learn he wants to become an actual fire fighter and save people since he was a kid

Stitch becomes hella cool by partnering with Kanaya to beat the shit out of Dirk

Rose just stays Rose because I forgot she existed

21 again but with Dave

June Egbert gets two new dads and they're Eggs and Biscuits from The Felt because it reminds her of her dead dad's cakes

Diamonds Droogs/Draconian Dignitary x Dad Crocker 20 hour oiled up make out session flash animation

Calliope has a child with Roxy. (comment what ya think they would be called)

Dirk eats a baby (it's John Egbert Strider Vantas)

AR gets to have a robo body and becomes friends with AR and Aradia and also Aranea is there to keep them in check and they call eachother the "AR squad", but Aranea is the out cast because she is blue

Eden Gardner (homestuck OC of @springselkie) gets a mention.

Monkeys become relevant to the plot

Jack Noir gets to show us his stabs

Bold Eagles are Aimless Renegade's second power, because he's the only AMERUCAN character in homestuck

Jake gets a beard and celebrates by showing us his level 100 GYAT

What Pumpkin office remains is an important location in the story

Mommy Condie comes back and marries Earth C's version of Colonel sassacres

Freddy Fazber, new character, literally the best. Hor hor hor hor.

Something related to drugs, I guess (I'm running out of ideas)

Fortnite becomes canon and everyone loves it

Deltarune reference

Jack Noir eats money and becomes lamborghini

Jack Noir villain arc where he and June kiss (their kismesis, it's ok. They want to kill eachother)

Rose's wifi is STILL shitty! COME ON, IT'S BEEN 10 YEARS, FIX YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION, GURL!

Kanaya gets to make something Lord English related

We see Doc Scratch because he's awesome

Wayward Vagabond comes back from the grave and does ANOTHER revolution against monerchy. He is truly the best diplomat.

MLP gets mentioned

Problem Sleuth shows up for 5 panels and then dies

Nepeta gets to kill Pickle Inspector

Eridan smokes weed

[S] Terezi: Do the mackarena

Weed chapter

Karkat gets a period cramp

Something something Lord English in black void, becomes normal Caliborn, being room mates with Equius, Gamzee and AR (auto-responder)

Free Bird fight sequence

Joe Biden gets a mention because he was probably in office before the clown fuckers took over D.C. Washington

Cockaine chapter

MSPA reader gets hella blazed and yeah

Caliborn kisses a rule 63 version of a Miku body pillow

Pic Yaoi sequence or smth

Sawbuck stays a fat fuck and eats the earth at the end

Itchy dies from tripping on a rock

Doze unslows himself and does a break dance

Trace and Fin make out session

Quarters gets to shoot ULT Dirk and is declared a war veteran

Bog from RHG shows up to eat a chocolate bar

I'm high

Ok, that was the end of this dumb shitpost. Hope ya got a kick out of it. Or not.

Wait

Shit

I should probably add an image so that I could look cool

Give me a sec

Yes, God of Yaoi.

Perfect for this.

See ya

[homestuckconfession]

Been needing to get this off my chest for a while. Sorry for the wall of text.

Being a hater for any of the female hs characters is a huge red flag to me. You dont have to like EVERY female character, but being a HATER is very sus. i feel like there is not a single female character that is worse than the worst male character. There isnt even a single female character more ANNOYING than the most annoying male character (especially since most of the male characters are kinda insufferable tbh). Beta girls? So fun and cool. Beta troll girls? I can’t think of a single one i dont at least have begrudging respect for (fef is my least favorite but even she is still pretty cool conceptually imo). Roxy? Her interactions with Callie are so cute and she’s just such a fun character in general. She was the highlight of the alpha kids section for me. Jane? she’s on fef level for me. I appreciate her story even if I don’t really vibe with her. Dancestor girls? Not my favorite bunch of characters in general but i cant think of a single female character i dislike out of them apart from meenah or Aranea, but that’s probably because they had the most screen-time.

A lot of the male characters are either groomers (doc scratch), pedos/otherwise disgusting and annoying (Cronus), hussie (hussie) or just plain boring (most of the male dancestors). I’m not saying I dont like ANY of the male characters. John and Dave are probably my favorite characters in homestuck! I just feel like male characters are given SO MUCH more grace to be annoying and shitty and ANNOYING. Like goddamn. Not to yuck anyone’s yums but I’ll never understand any hate on any of the female characters when the amporas exist. I cant think of a single enjoyable trait or moment that eridan had and Cronus is fucking CRONUS ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????!? AND YET they both still have so many fans and I hardly see any posts tearing into them like people have torn into vriska or Jane like DID WE READ THE SAME COMIC?!?!

I’ve NEVER seen ANY male character get hated on as vehemently as ive seen female characters get hated on. If you are a hater of any of the female characters then i do not trust you.

.

[thewebcomicsreview]

Oh hey, Homestuck 2 updated. With a flashback, no less. It's been a loooong time since we've seen Harry, but I remember liking him. Honestly I like all the new characters more than the HS2 incarnations of the old characters.

You’re still at home. Stuck.

oh_you.jpg

Oh Jesus, John and Roxy in the "Guardian" style. Kind of interesting the presentation, though, that this is how the kids see their parents. Good way of explaning why where weren't like this before.

that SUPPOSEDLY DIVINE NEGLIGEE’s inability to accommodate your dads AWKWARD MAN-BOD was downright sacrilegious

I just like this sentence.

It's weird that we're getting a room introduction for Harry, the one character who actually got one in HS2. Huge emphasis on costumes and outfits here, which is what leads a lot of people to think Harry might be a Heart player. That's into fan-theory, though. In actual Homestuck, Kanaya was the "fashion" troll, and Jade was the one who had all the different outfits she kept switching between, so add "Space" to the board here. Also, the fucking Bunny is back.

Harry is basically trying to get a redesign here, and he doesn't like his bag. He does apparently need something to carry his stuff in. That's...odd. He has a sylladex, we saw him use it before this flashback takes place. Is the bag like Dad's wallet, a physical item representing a video game-y abstraction?

This is the best panel in the update

Okay, Harry has "Sleezy Headbanger" and "IdeogranicDramaturgy" in his contact list. These are new characters, and the second update in a row with mysterious new names in people's phones.

You know, it's really weird that the Omega Kids don't have logos, requiring Vrissy to be represented by a silhouette of her own head here. Especially since Harry changed closes in this very update and didn't take advantage of the opportunity to do some branding. Those simple shirts were famously good-selling merch, and they served a story purpose, so it's odd HSBC isn't doing them.

Man, Harry is just all the original four kids, isn't he? He's got the rambly nature of Dave with the dumb sincerity of John.

D'aww

VRISSY: I think they should 8e here Soon, so let's take a seat and Chill out, okay? HARRY: ...my my, how can i resist ya? ;) VRISSY: Oh my G8D, I told you Never to S8y that Again!!!!!!!!

Is that a fucking Mamma Mia reference? Out of nowhere, without Vrissy even setting him up for it?

Anyway, we're caught up to the present, and the three kids are united.

Though, Given Vrissy's sudden furious rage, it looks like the four kids are meeting up for the first time. We're actually going to get a conversation with the four new kids, something that never happened with the four originals in HS1. I'm actually really excited for this. Yiffy gets to meet another person who just furiously hates her sight unseen. What a novelty for her that'll be!

[grimxark]

Its sooo upsetting that jade never got her happy ending, she never got her chance to heal. Not where we could see, anyway.

Disregarding the game over timeline, disregarding 3 years of her being in a ship with John and Davesprite and Nana and Jasper— disregarding that and moving to the ending timeline, the one that made it to the end, Jade Harley starts the game, because it’ll make her friends happy. Jade wasn’t going to play SBURB. It wasn’t something she had set her mind to. She wanted her friends to play, because Rose would see her dead cat which she loved, John would have fun, and Dave… well, he’d be with John and Rose. She didn’t really get all that much information from the clouds of Skaia.

She starts being bullied by the trolls much earlier than the other kids, and Karkat is much more ruthless. He’s mean. She plays the game, and she’s excited to see her brother wake up, and then she dies before she sees that happen. And she wakes up with the worst migraine of her life, and Feferi terrifies her, and everything’s happening all at once and she’s being blamed for a thousand things she simply didn’t have a say in. And her grandpas dead, her dog is gone, and she has doomed her friends.

She tells Rose her mom is dead. Would she blame herself for her turning grimdark? For being the reason her friend found her cat, but lost her mom?

She meets Dave— the first person she sees since she was small, and she kills him. And her dog, a part of him anyway, makes her do it. And this is after she learns that she is the reason her grandpa is dead, too. She killed him.

I know Jade doesn’t need a weapon because of how powerful she is. But I think, also, she wouldn’t have wanted to use her gun again.

Then she’s almost at her happy ending and her brother and her best friend (another version of him, but Dave nonetheless) die while on her watch. And for three years she blames herself. 3 years that she spends alone, again, in an isolation she thinks was created by herself. Again.

Then she gets to see people again, and she’s mind controles to hurt those people, and then she falls asleep and when she wakes up she is incredibly uselessly alone and there’s just a letter and another mission. And she goes to that mission, and she has to see her dog again, the reason she killed Dave, the guy who Doomed her timeline, who took her guardian away, who took Rose’s and Dave’s and John’s guardians away, her dog. There’s a nostalgia and an request from deep within her for some sort of reminder that her dog exists, or existed, within these creatures, a request to play again. And one of them hits her, and she falls, and she’s knocked out again.

Then… she gets a hug? She sees her brother again? What’s that matter with no dialogue? There is no real heaviness to her reunion as there was with Dave and dirk, or rose and Roxy, or John and Jane and Jake (and arguably, those three weren’t as heavy or as emotional or as meaningful as the strilondes). But Jade gets nothing. Nada.

She begins as a character foil, as the key, and ends as the character foil, discarded.

[the-meat-machine]

is stridercest canon-compliant

Hi. I'm not sure how to answer this question, but like hell am I going to let that stop me from rambling on about it for far longer than anyone would consider reasonable.

What does it mean for a ship to be canon-compliant?

My first difficulty is this: what does it mean for a ship to be "canon-compliant"?

I tend to be of the opinion that you can come up with a justification for nearly any ship that, at the very least, doesn't contradict canon. Whether that ship is probable or not is a different story.

To give an example of a ship that's technically possible but canonically unlikely… let's say I were to posit that Nepeta had red feelings for Aradia. Well, we get fairly direct evidence of Nepeta's romantic interests throughout the comic, and Aradia never features in her self-pairing fantasies. Not to mention that if she had such feelings, you'd think it would cause conflict in her relationship with Equius, who does canonically have feelings for Aradia. But Nepeta never says she doesn't like Aradia that way, so for all we know they could have had a torrid romance offscreen that is never once hinted at in the comic. Highly improbable within canon, but not strictly impossible.

A level above that, there are ships where there's basically nothing to go on. Nothing to contradict it, but nothing to really support it either. For example, how would Dirk and John get along? Well, they only ever meet once in the comic and it's when Game Over!Dirk is giving himself over to the glitchy void, so who fuckin' knows. You'll have to base their interactions on a general knowledge of their characters. And hey, you can probably come up with a pretty convincing argument that they'd be great for each other! You can equally come up with an argument that they couldn't stand one another. There's really no canon basis to say either way.

That said, I think Stridercest is on a rung above that. These characters have had significant canonical interactions that revolve around one another, giving a richer basis to draw from. Or at least… Dave and Dirk have. Which leads me to my second difficulty.

What is Stridercest?

"Stridercest" can refer to quite a few possible ships.

For example, Guardiancest. Do I think Guardiancest has a basis in canon? No. Alpha Dave and Beta Dirk lived in different versions of the universe and both died well before the end of the game. They almost certainly never even knew that each other existed.

That said, Homestuck is a pretty wild canon as far as possible character interactions go, what with all the various ways characters can hop between universes, time travel, get resurrected, meet up in dream bubbles, etc. Trans-universal communication is canonically possible (see for example Jade and Jake's letters to each other), so who knows -- maybe Alpha Dave and Beta Dirk could have met each other somehow. Does it seem likely? Absolutely not. But it's not impossible.

Now, if you were asking about the original Stridercest, Bro/Dave, that's a ship that clearly is logistically possible, at least. They spent 13 years in the same apartment. Something could have happened. Did it? I don't know. I don't consider myself a Bro/Dave scholar, so I'll leave that as a question for the reader.

But one pairing I have significantly more to say about is Dave/Dirk.

Here are some things that are canon:

Dave has had, at the very least, passing attractions to a minimum of two of his ectobiological relatives -- namely, Rose and Roxy

Dave has evinced attraction to both men and women

Dave used to idolize his bro, but later came to have more complicated feelings about him

Dirk has had a lifelong obsession with his own long-dead bro. He studied all the minutiae of Alpha Dave's life and patterned his own life after what he's gleaned from that

Dirk is definitely attracted to men

Dave and Dirk had a long heart-to-heart during which they hugged each other

Here are some questions that cannot be directly answered by canon:

Do Dave's incestuous inclinations extend to Dirk and/or Bro?

Is there a homoerotic dimension to Dirk's obsession with Dave?

Now, you could plausibly answer these questions with "no". Maybe Dave's upbringing with Bro made it impossible for him to see Dirk in a romantic light. Or hell, maybe he only likes blond hair on chicks, not on dudes. And for all we know, maybe Dirk's interest in Alpha Dave is strictly platonic. (…ha, that one's hard to type with a straight face. But it's possible.)

Of course, I'm asking these questions because I think you can easily answer them with "yes". There's significant canonical basis to suggest that these suppositions at least could be true. At the very least, conditions are ripe for these two to have some very weird, complicated feelings about each other that are laced with incestuous and homoerotic undertones.

So is Stridercest canon-compliant? For Dave/Dirk, at the very least, I'd argue that it is.

[davekat-sucks]

The homestuck cafe's menu just reminded me of a great 4/13 story I have! I want to share it for people to read! For one 4/13 that I celebrated, I had a friend who held a party at her house and made a bunch of shots themed for all the trolls, beta kids, alpha kids and the antagonists. The colors of each drink were on point. I made 30 rice krispies treats that were shaped and colored with food dye to look like casey and they were MASSIVE. I brought gushers too! Candy corn?! You think we wouldn't have that shit!?!?! I believe it was the 9th anniversary, no epilogue yet.

We rewatched all the major flashes and only about three of us there actually read the whole story, three read a good chunk of it. We cosplayed too. I was Roxy. Most people who came had no idea what homestuck was and they just talked and drank in the kitchen where the drinks were. Must have been about 20 other people there just watching a few of us cheer and yell at a screen in the living room. Make her pay is my favorite flash, I always get so fucking into it. Make that 8itch pay. We did the whole How Do I Live bit like it was karaoke. The part where Jade enters the game, what a song! Fucking sunsetter played at some point, jamming out to that shit! My favorite! At Cascade I was pointing like crazy at how Sollux sacrificed himself for some ungrateful pieces of shit who don't give a fuck about how he just melted his brains! When Jake died protecting Jane in game over, I was so drunk that I screamed "SHE WOULDN'T DO THE SAME FOR YOOOOU!" My other friend had her meltdown when Tavros was killed "HOW DARE SHE!?" And Collide, what a high! what a let down! GO JAKE KICK ASS! EAT COOKIES! GO KARKAT DO SOMETHING! DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!!! WHOOOOA! Everyone was screaming for Dad! I was the one screaming shit like "DECAPITATE YOUR BROTHER DAVE YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" Gamzee is in the fridge and I'm like "BURN IN HELL!" Gotta get a lighter out for when it shows all the beta kids and their homes! Someone is out here yelling "DAVE MARRY ME!" LORD ENGLISH IS STILL ALIVE YOU DIDN'T KILL HIM!!!! DAVE GET YOUR ASS IN THERE AND FIGHT!

I really wish I could have known what it was like to see things from their perspective! What they imagine Homestuck is actually about from that experience. It really must have been like that tiktok. The epic. mac game commentary where a guy is commenting on random objects like a unicorn and someone signing a CD with a pen. We were screaming over good music, digital collages and a story they can't hope to make sense of. No one ever tried to explain anything. It was pure chaos! Homestuck having bullshit moments just to anger people and bring them joy in the form of videos is what we loved about this stupid story! I still love it!

I would feel embarrassed I got so crunk over Homestuck infront of people who were strangers to me but it was their choice to come. They were warned that the experience would be like a fever dream and they came for that! They got to watch a few friends from high school get the band back together then get drunk and high on life! They got to watch people love and hate every single thing happening on screen and yell like we were watching the big game! They got to watch idiots celebrate the best and shittiest webcomic that ever existed! If that is their only experience with homestuck, more power to them.

[3collecurei]

Homestucktober 2023 (1-5)

1) Patron Troll

Seer gang rise up ✊🏽 (I'd done two classpect tests since 2012 and both times I was a Seer, my aspect just changed from Void to Doom which isn't a good sign lol...although the one I just tried from 4chan is telling me I'm a Page of Void now...I mean I'll take it because it's an aspect I've gotten before but I'm not really trying to be Jake or Tavros out here they both got so screwed over lol)

Anyway if she were my actual patron in a game session I'd be fucking terrified because of what she puts John and Dave through but also probably laughing my ass off at her antics and impressed by her intense sensing ability despite the blindness

2) Favorite Beta Kid

Dave Strider is much needed comedic relief in such a tragic tale and his ramblings are often as deeply philosophical as they are deeply ridiculous. I don't even have the right words to describe all this character has done for me. I'm in love with the Time aspect even though it's probably the last aspect I'd be assigned to because I think Time players have to deal with the multiplicity of the self the most out of everyone (except maybe Space players), and what a fucking difficult thing that must be. I will always wonder how he managed to spend IIRC weeks in the game whereas for everyone else it was just 24 hours (and of course Davesprite spending IIRC four months trying to fix his doomed session...my heart)

3) Favorite Beta Troll

(IIRC the beta trolls are technically the dancestors but I just call the original 12 the betas sometimes because they deal with the beta kids and we meet them first. Anyway)

Again I don't have words enough to describe what Karkat has done for me. Karkat rounding up and trying to lead eleven other insane motherfuckers and losing his cool often but almost always asserting, in his way, that it's because he deeply cares. You really see this in Act 6 Post Murderstuck when we find him in Openbound and he's obviously dealing with the weight of having failed at leadership so hard that over half of his teammates are dead. It probably took him a while of raging at how long the meteor trip would be (and upset Sollux didn't stay after "dying" in front of him again) before the sadness set in, but if there's one thing Karkat isn't, it's afraid of emotion. Also the PCG, CCG, FCG conversations remain some of my favorites in the entire canon, especially the one where FCG berates CCG for "wanting [Terezi] in every quadrant like a desperate fool." If there's one thing I can relate to about Karkat it's that I will also always read past me for filth even if it's hard. I use it as a form of self pruning and improvement and eventually I think FCG gets that too.

4) Favorite Alpha Kid

It was Dirk for a long time until maybe the last year or two, but I realized after re-reading the Epilogues that relating to him as much as I do is probably really bad lol, but Roxy was always a close second. Obsessed with the fact that the wild alcoholic, who one might think would be the worst team member because of that, instead sobers up and fully embodies John's role as the "friendleader" which is why I think they end up getting along so well. Despite the obstacles Roxy is full of love for their friends, and with friends like the people who they end up becoming in the Epilogues, you gotta hand it to them for their persistence. Considering that they were in a Void session their positivity throughout was pretty amazing to me, also shout out to them for fully embracing Calliope's skull appearance and finding them beautiful anyway. Alien love wins

5) Favorite Alpha Troll

Okay but can we talk about the fact that she ends up alive??? As a huge stan of hers since we started seeing her I was fucking living my best life lol I can't hate it whatsoever even though it was at John's expense 😭 Meenah's one of the most determined characters in the entire thing fr, she really said "fuck being dead for millions of years after isolating myself on the moon to avoid responsibility, now I want all the responsibility, all of it." Fully meets Karkat again in Candy and is like "lemme reverse what HIC did and use my ancient Queen powers to benefit the mutant," imo an incredible foil to her future self even though they're very much the same troll and speak pretty much exactly the same. Fish puns are hysterical to me most of the time, her unwavering dedication to the shtick 4x as hard as Feferi did it and editing/improving ones she doesn't like in the middle of her sentences 😂 I cosplayed as her at AX 2013 and had a blast, except for that Cronus cosplayer who tried to hit on me in character, I had no idea what to do lmao

[nutzworth]

today begins my homestuck reread. i wanted to start it yesterday january 1, 2024 but i got busy. so we begin today

PREFACE: i wanted to download the unofficial collection and read it thus, but it didnt WORK cus of my accursed mac. so. im on the unofficial collection website. also i debated on how exactly to do my liveblogging and decided on actually liveblogging in my friend's discord server and then translating the day's reading to text on tumblr. so!

DAY 1: JANUARY 2, 2024

STATS: read for ~3 hours pages read: 1-381. 380 pages slur count: 3. john, rose, dave. all r slur silly count: 3. jade, rose, rose. jade about dave; rose about herself piss count: 1/3. howie mandel strikes again

THOUGHTS:

ive found a lot of overlooked aspects of especially john and dave. whether or not these are "i never noticed she was holding corn on the plate!" encanto aspects or not is undecided. people tend to interpret john as having eaten cake his whole LIFE when instead it was just on 4/13 because it was his birthday. dave has A BUNCH of ironic blogs and websites that he never shows. ive only seen sbahj and his personal blog so that was kind of a shocker to me. thats all the overlooked aspects i guess lol in addition to john talk: all of his dad's harlequin merchandise is soooo cute. i wouldnt be annoyed if my dad put all this harlequin stuff in my house theyre so silly and bright dave is REALLY ANNOYING. i kind of forgot. he sounds so different from how he sounds later in the comic and how he does in my head. he does a rap in the pages i read and the first part was good but the second part was bad. rose and her relationship with her mom is JUST like me fr...... ugh. rose is so me but if i was like way pettier. something about them strikes me. mommy issues i guess. being spiteful towards your mother when your mother is just trying her best. something. oh well i was thinking about the strilondes and their conceptions of irony and its been affecting how i interpret the text. dirk and rose get irony; dave and roxy do not. dave tries to mimic what he sees in bro, but only scratches the surface of true mind games. he fails at being ironic, though he is cool i guess (for other reasons). rose interprets her mother's vaccuuming as an "ironic housewife routine" which broke my heart. rose gets irony; roxy does not. (this is also how their one-sided passive aggressive one-upmanship operates. rose is ironic; roxy is not). ive also been keeping track of the times in canon which is also corn on the plate level but whatever. johns doing this all at FIVE PM. brother thats dinner time for me. a meteors coming for you and youre playing this game and suddenly youre in another dimension and its FIVE THIRTY! ugh. daves like oh man i gotta fight my bro to get a sburb game to save my buddy rose and its like SEVEN PM! jesus! so night time. some dirk and dave mirrors: manbro bukkake theater. didnt notice dave said that?!??! ben stiller instead of rainbow dash above the closet door. awesome. sylladexes and fetch modii are crazy and i think its so interesting how hussie focuses on them so much in these first acts. i saw something a while ago about how fetch modii mirror people's thought processes and thought it was cool. dave thinking STOP! = 7 and then that releasing his sword (in 7 spot) was really cool. i love fetch modii they make no sense also some pages havent been working and its kind of driving me up the wall :-/ some flashes dont have sound and daves sound mixer DIDNT WORK AT ALL! but thats fine rather that than one of the gaming flashes where you walk around.

think thats it for today. thanks everypony