#that series really was young-reader homestuck | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

squadron-of-damned-writes · 3 years

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tagged by @thiswaycomessomethingwicked. Found this sitting in my drafts after third of a year later. No time like the present, right?

Rules are: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line.

(how convenient that AO3 shows 20 works per page by default!)

1. It most certainly is a morning and the doorbell rings. Like the beginning of a horror movie, Sam thinks as he makes his way from his room to the front door. (The Night In Gale, 2019-10-11, Good Omens x Supernatural)

2. The remnants of the stained glass creak and shatter under the heavy plate sabatons. The men clad in deep red robes watch the armoured figures walk through the raided monastery in careful silence. (Moon And Destiny, 2019-08-24, Les Misérables x Wizardry)

3. “Alright squad! Who are we doing this week?” (One Gay at a Time, 2019-08-31, Les Misérablex x Queer Eye for the Straight Guy)

4. Light. Everything is is spinning. Light, even behind closed eyelids. It’s omnipresent. Radiant, blinding, magnificent light. (Like A Teen Girl,[1] 2019-11-15, W.I.T.C.H.)

5. Witches have pricking in their thumbs, Varen had his stomach worms, and Lyris had her teeth. She could feel them vibrating in her gums. It usually went away with a couple of flagons of mead, but apparently not tonight. If anything, it made it worse. So here she was, Lyris called Titanborn, tipsy but not yet drunk, sitting by the campfire with the two of Companions and a growing feeling of dread as her teeth planned to run for the hills. It made her only more irritated. (Mind How She Goes, 2019-11-30, Elder Scrolls Online)

6. “Well, are you going to stand there the whole night?” (The Past, the Present, the Death, and the Devil, 2019-12-19, Les Misérables)

7. There is this thing they don’t tell you about dying – it gave you mother of all headaches. In all those tomes and epic sagas there could had been at least once mentioned that the brave heroes and mighty beings who returned from the Other side felt like a horse kicked thorough their head. This terrible pain was usually why your freshly resurrected dead scream in agony and want to destroy things. (The Many Deaths of Me,[2] 2017-04-30, World of Warcraft)

8. As strange as it was, Lyris finds an odd sort of peace here. It is not her old home – she doubts she could ever return there – but her cabin near Riften is a new home. At first it was a house, but she made it a home. It was a hard work to get there, and she is rightfully proud of it all. (To Be Found, 2019-12-09, Elder Scrolls Online)

9. Say what you want about the Tribunal and Vvardenfell, there is something that draws a good hero to the city of Vivec. That something might be a divine presence, but most likely it is simply the presence of a quarter with publicly accessible forges and looms in the close proximity to a bank and the drop site for commissioned works. (The Battlespire, 2020-05-09, Elder Scrolls Online)

10. “Your Majesty, a message for you.” The chamberlain presents the envelope on a silver tray with a gentle bow. Queen Ayrenn picks it up with her delicately manicured fingers, and the soft warm breeze of early autumn attempts to snatch the piece of creamy paper from her as it hurls large honey and amber coloured leaves before finally settling them on the ground. (War Ends, 2020-07-26, Elder Scrolls Online)

11. “Allow me to ask you again for clarification, Your Ex-” “Charles, dear brother. Simply and plainly Charles, for we all are equal in the eyes of the almighty God.” “- Charles: I have died.” (The Man Who Saved A World, 2020-08-12, Les Misérables)

12. So that’s it, you suppose. You are going to sit down on this chair, because someone has to. (The Tale of Two Fates, 2020-09-05, Death and Taxes)

13. There is a saying in Ferelden: When you think you’ve reached the bottom, the Maker shows up with a shovel. Like most farmer wisdom, even this one applies in Orlais. (Land Turned Red, 2020-12-29, Dragon Age)

14. So you come to the supermarket on Friday morning and in the ice-cream isle is a poorly paid and even poorerly shaven retail worker unloading boxes of frozen pizzas, eyeing them like man who’s missed out on breakfast and his contract doesn’t include lunch break. (Observations of an Unconcerned Bus Driver, 2021-03-07, Stardew Valley)

15. They are giving him that look. He knows it well and hasn’t seen it in a long long time. It is the look that says: “I can’t believe that out of all the people in Thedas, he was the one to save us.” (Fine Literature, 2021-03-14, Dragon Age)

16. A young woman stands in a garden. It is a beautiful garden, very lush in spite of all damnation raining from the sky lately, now that the Veil is gone and… And all that. (Houserite, 2021-03-29, Dragon Age x Homestuck)

17. If you asked Solas, it was the most predictable outcome, blatantly staring you in face, shoving middle finger into your nose and blowing a raspberry. However, nobody asked Solas and even less people cared for his issues with Sera’s behaviour, and thus when Dorian goes missing, almost everyone is surprised. (The Excellent Week of Dorian Pavus, 2021-04-09, Dragon Age x Doctor Who)

18. Talent. A short and complicated word. What is a talent? (Necromancer’s Virtues, 2021-05-06, Dragon Age)

19. Fucked.That’s what they are. Fucked. Completely and thoroughly. The Trade Tongue is a limited and insufficient language and lacks any imagination whatsoever when it comes to cusswords. (The Wolves Breach Through, 2021-05-29, Dragon Age)

20. There are a lot of ways to tell that you’ve woken up the wrong way in the morning, and I was pretty certain that I’ve hit three of them at least: Every fiber of me was aching, two men were looming over me with worried expressions, and the sky was dark. Especially the last bit was extremely worrisome, since I was fairly certain I fell asleep in my bed at home under a solid ceiling above which is mum’s room and after that is the attic and after that is a roof and only then you get to see the sky. (Real Feeling of Sharing,[3] 2021-01-10, Dragon Age)

Observations:

I use the opening lines of a story like most people use headlines; luring in the reader by making them think “Hold on, what’s going on?” and hoping it ignites strong enough curiosity for them to read further to figure it out. For that reason more often than not the opening lines are not exactly related to the story.

A surprising amount of mu openings also clearly say: “The story you know is over.”

Also very specific thing which is less about opening lines and more about the trope of my fics: A suspicious number of beginnings based on the fact that the person of focus is dead or implied to be, or implied to be really close to it.

I also don’t like long introductions to the story, so it’s either “Things are happening now, figure it out dear reader” or “This is a thing I am going to focus on because it’s my thing, deal with it, plot will come later.”

Favourite opening line is from The Wolves Breach Through, especially because it quickly evolves into a rant about langauges. The Night In Gale is a close second, because I love to take a piss on the source material. For this reason The Battlespire also comes close to the top, although the fic in itselfwas shit.

[1] Like A Teen Girl should get renamed, because the story evolved from “Parody of the Magic Highschool Girls premise” to “Drama With the Lads”, but I eh, who cares anyway, right?

[2] The Many Deaths of Me deserves to be rewritten by older and more experienced me. It could be a great fic.

[3] Probably going to get renamed to Original Real Feeling of Sharing, but only when I start the next story from the series.

tagging: @timesthatneverwere @thewronglong

#writing

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bladekindeyewear · 5 years

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Freed up some time, actually! Gonna blog the new pages of HS^2. Liveblogging resume...

FYI, the post I glimpsed that alerted me to the fact that new pages exist had a translucent screenshot of Brain Ghost Dirk on it, so I know that at least is in store for me. Makes sense; a way to involve Dirk’s voice obnoxiously heavily even when he’s too far away to narrate. And ties into this... chapter(?) name, of course. Chapters, huh?

> CHAPTER 1. Ghostflusters

God. Damnit.

Could we NOT??? No?

Fuck you, Dirk. I blame you for this.

So we have greenery, a can-city and Sburb-legal human house mix... some sorta cow-looking thing from far away in the front yard...

The void resounds. Space seizes and warps as the bounds of relevance erode away to nothing but the wishful nostalgia of times passed. There is a hole in the middle of the universe, and it is hungry.

All very literally true.

But the denizens of this particular iteration of Earth C don’t know it. All of this is just business as fucking usual for a planet plagued by war, continuous inclement ghost weather, and the general malaise of being absolutely severed from canon.

--oh, FUCK. This isn’t the new planet, this is Candy timeline Earth. I didn’t wanna come back here! :C

I guess that explains most of the content warnings. Except fucking ALCOHOLISM. Gee, thanks for adding THAT to the Candy timeline, as if it wasn’t fucked over enough!!! Bluh.

I thought the closing lines of the Epilogue were that after RoboDave, Aradia and alt!Callie dove out of the Candyverse inside the singularity, the black-hole timelines and Dirk’s presumably-still-”relevant” nonsense weren’t going to collide with each other again? So... why are we seeing this? Is there going to be MORE influence like that, and the ending line was just fancy-talk? Is it just an irrelevant little follow-up to Candy to show things turning out okay or pseudo-okay, like an epilogue to the epilogue? Or is some of this Dirk nonsense presumably within the bounds of some sort of canon going to still have some last bit of influence on this so-called non-canon timeline?

That last one would make sense, given that it echoes how Homestuck^2′s dubious canonicity would still have definite influence on fanworks outside of canon. Right?

Let me pull that last line from the epilogues again--

...where’s the Epilogues’ log, this is getting kind of hard to find with all their reorganization... fuck, I had to guess at the URL even. Here we go, the last page of Meat...

The hole leaves behind an absence in the sky so calm that continuing to call it a sky wouldn’t seem to do it justice. It’s a perfectly neutral expanse into which anything one can imagine might be summoned. And for a while, anything was. But not anymore. Where the hole gaped just moments ago, there now exists an imaginary line.

Above this line resides all that matters. Below exists all else. Never again the twain shall meet.

...Right. This implies that Canon and Non-Canon shall never meet again. BOTH ways. Doesn’t quite gel with the fact that we’re cutting back here--

Oh.

This is about Jake and Brain Ghost Dirk isn’t it. I noticed his name down further on the page. THAT’S why we’re cutting back here.

So, Canon and Non-Canon aren’t exactly meeting... not for anything relevant, anyway. But we’re using Candy Jake’s visibility of Brain Ghost Dirk to get a better idea of Dirk’s broader self and plans through a splinter of him? While getting another glimpse into how the post-epilogue Candy timeline is going for our, er... “curiosity”? Is that it?

Hm. I guess that doesn’t count as the twain “meeting”... I’ll just keep reading now.

They spend their days absorbed in the petty and pointless pursuits of “having jobs” and “raising families” and “falling in love”.

Is this Dirk’s narrator voice? This sounds like something the current megalomaniacal Dirk would say.

I’m not going to quote the rest of the text’s further reminders of how Jane has been made into an absolutely fucked-over asshole in every timeline except the one where she grew old to open a Joke shop, adopt Dad, die, get prototyped and timeline-doubled, then mysteriously disappear from any mention in the Epilogues as if the Sprites were just forgotten about completely eventually.

> (==>)

Oooh, using the less-relevance-surrounding-parens that were used on retconned ghost!Vriska back in Homestuck proper to denote our presence in the non-canon Candy timeline? How handy!

Not a far-away cow, then.

John has been an incredible pal, opening up his home to Jake and his son on such short notice, and even offering him a pair of pants, as well as a shirt that he has so far neglected to put on.

Alright, that got a chuckle from me.

John’s house doesn’t have air conditioning.

What the flying fuck.

...Ah, John’s been away patching things up with Roxy some more, I presume.

It, like the rest of his assets, is in her name. She’d seen to that as soon as they were married.

Life players and assets, huh? Always gotta be hoggin’ em.

He hasn’t seen much of Tavros today either, but that’s not unusual. He’s probably out with his kismesis, the one he thinks Jake doesn’t know about.

Huh. Maybe Candy’s young Vriska? Couldn’t get the real Tavros with your main self, so your alternate nigh-clone self settled with a human by the same name? Or one of the other kids we heard of from this ‘verse..?

> (==>)

Jake’s hot man-bod cropped out of this image to avoid titillating my readers too much.

(Tumblr keeps jumping back to the top of my post after I add images and I keep thinking the title reads “Ghostfuckers”.)

Jake washes the dirt out from under his fingernails, and his eyes fall on the bottle still sitting on the counter. John had opened it, but together they’d barely touched the stuff. Jake had promised him and Tavvy he’d dry up his act and all, but... well.

God damnit. If this is still Dirk-voiced narration -- I’m not sure it can be, now I think about it, as he’s supposed to be “out of range” or something, unless non-canon is just malleable like that, which wouldnt be surprising (or Dirk’s splinter’s presence allows it) -- he could literally be inducing or writing in Jake’s drinking problem just to hurt him more. You can’t really put an overstep that assholish past Prince Dirk the way he’s gotten to be.

There was another ask in my inbox insisting that Dirk wasn’t going to stay the true villain here, if only as some sort of karmic revenge for declaring his self-importance... but I still don’t think that’s the case. For one, Dirk HASN’T declared himself the villain... he still can’t see how fucked-up and unjustified his trampling over of everyone’s wills IS. Shadows of recognition... but not really. He really honestly believes he has the fucking RIGHT to do what he’s doing.

(Which is, incidentally -- to answer another ask -- why there’s basically NO chance that Rose has some sort of control or recognition of her situation under the surface, and is playing Dirk, as another person hopefully surmised. No. She really IS being unknowingly steered away from personal growth and recognition of the thought-control she’s under... because nothing less could feel as horrible to us.)

Part of the entire POINT of Homestuck and its Riddle was to show that these crazy kids, if they put their wills to it, always had the potential to be the literal Gods of the world around them. That when ordinary people grasp the will and drive to shape the world around them, they can turn everything back from the brink of destruction... or vice versa. Thus, it’s only appropriate that a player from this game could become a villain more disgusting than any we’d imagined in the series so far. What he’s been doing -- writing twisted sorrow directly into the lives and experiences of those around him, nurturing their worst, most power-hungry tendencies (Rose) and deceiving them more directly than Doc Scratch (who was PART Dirk) ever did, making a JOKE of their free will in a more terribly direct way than ANY have been shown onscreen to do?? It IS, and is MEANT to be, the worst we have EVER seen in Homestuck. Not as clumsy and from-the-outside as Lord English, but just as blatantly direct. Not as easy to ignore or mistake as Doc Scratch’s horrible, intentional Prince-of-Hearty worsening of the players, instead just as impossible to gloss-over as it is to bear witness to. That very TITLE, “Prince of Heart”, can embody the very ANTITHESIS of the Ultimate Riddle itself, robbing EVERYONE of their ability to shape not just the world around them, but even so much as themselves or their very thoughts. When used the way Dirk is using it RIGHT NOW, anyway. And his ambition is to impose this on all of Paradox Space.

There COULD be another villain, later. But I can’t imagine a single one more appropriate. And Andrew’s just the type to use one of the Striders, both practically self-inserts of parts of his personality and presence, as that ultimate villain to be overcome in a story about escaping Canon, too.

Turning his ex into an alcoholic just for his own self-satisfaction? In a side timeline where Jake didn’t even try a relationship with him again and finally had a chance to grow up happy in SOME universe? I wouldn’t put it past him, and you shouldn’t either.

Moving on.

> (==>)

Eugh. I just... don’t want to think about him being an alcoholic on TOP of everything else. As if there wasn’t enough to deal with in Candy already.

> (==>)

Hm?

> (==>)

The jungle air is heavy, humid, and familiar. Twenty years on and the thick drag into his lungs settles on him in a blanket of nostalgia, reassuring in its discomfort.

Hm. Is this his fantasy, or a view of him in another timeline?

He is deeper in the jungle than he’d ever venture in his waking hours. There were places on his island that not even his Gran would tread, and she’d been the bravest person he’d ever known.

Hmm. So he even knows it’s a dream, but is still in control...

Jake doesn’t recognize anything. The jungle of his dreams is wild and unknown, and there are things moving in the dense undergrowth.

...Hhhuh. Still not sure what to think of this yet.

A sudden wind thrashes the canopy. There are pine needles in his mouth. There aren’t any pine needles in the jungle.

Very Dream, then.

> (==>)

--Yup.

> (==>)

Yoink--

> (==>)

JAKE: Yes you are i know that much. I saw your body! I carried your coffin chock full of all those stupid fucking swords! DIRK: Nope. JAKE: Dont nope me mister!

They would pile all those shitty swords into his coffin, yeah.

Anyway, now to see how much Prince Dirk is in this Dirk. And if he’s in one mind with himself or has the slightest chance of feeling rebellious.

JAKE: I know a dead dirk when i see one! DIRK: Sure you do. But that wasn’t me. Are you really surprised to find out I got a couple of spares? JAKE: So what youre saying is you arent my dirk. DIRK: ...That is a whole ‘nother conversation that we really don’t have time for, pertaining to exactly who or what ‘your dirk’ actually constitutes. DIRK: Do you mean the Dirk from your timeline? DIRK: Then yes, that Dirk is dead. DIRK: If you mean the Dirk that you fucked and then ghosted, no, I’m not your Dirk. DIRK: If you mean the Dirk that you felt closest to, that you really knew--

...well, this Dirk still knows how to be a presumptuous, pushy creep. :(

JAKE: Ahhh! Brain ghost dirk! DIRK: In the ghosty flesh. JAKE: Crumbs bro where have you been? JAKE: I could have used someone on my side! JAKE: You just disappeared one day without even the odd toodaloo to mark your passing! DIRK: That isn’t strictly true. I did disappear, but it was in a catastrophic blaze of hope-drenched pathos. I even threw out a couple one-liners. DIRK: But you wouldn’t remember that. JAKE: Because...it was a different dirk? DIRK: No, a different Jake.

Hhhuh. So in the claymation-reproduced Lord English stagefight -- or, maybe more likely, the pre-retcon Aranea-induced Game Over timeline -- he was too washed out by hopesplosions to manifest properly?

DIRK: Until recently there’s been a shortage of ambient narrative relevance for Dirks, since one particular motherfucker has been sucking it all up like a thirsty little twink at his first interspecies rave.

Hm! So Prince Dirk has been making it so other splinters of himself have really limited ability to influence, huh? Guess that’s a sort of price for the narrative-hijacking power he’s attained. Wonder how this Dirk really feels about that.

> (==>)

--Pff. He’s certainly not shy about letting Jake know he shouldn’t trust him, though! That’s a good sign.

I’ll split the post here for a bit. Seems we’re about halfway through this upd8 from the look of the log.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #bladekindeyewear #blastyoboots

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edvonstein · 5 years

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which precures would read homestuck without being dared to

Boy howdy. There’s a question I didn’t expect. Well let’s see here and go down the list:

Nagisa: Got into it shortly after launch, after hearing Honoka talk about it.

Honoka: OG reader, has been around for most of Hussie’s stuff.

Hikari: She didn’t read it until about halfway through its publication run, but caught up in a single night. She made fanart.

Saki: She tried to get into it for Mai, but it never really meshed with her. Still learned enough through osmosis to cosplay both Dirk and Dave.

Mai: She has five sketch books that are just redraws of the entire series with everybody replaced by Saki. None of her friends must ever see. They saw. They didn’t get it, but liked the art.

Nozomi: OG reader, not the absolute biggest fan, but did walk away liking it.

Rin: Saw Nozomi read it, and tried a little herself. Then she met Kanaya. The rest was history and fanfics. And special flower arrangements.

Urara: Currently lobbying for a broadway adaption. She is undecided which role she wants to play tho.

Komachi: She has changed her writing pseudonym to John Egbert, to get a better likelyhood of getting her Pirate Hurricane series published. She writes more like a mix of Dave and Rose though. It’s fucking mind expanding.

Karen: She had it fed through her home’s in house cinema to watch it with Komachi initially. They all ended up watching it.

Milk/Kurumi: “Vriska did nothing wrong”

Love: Her and Setsuna totally are like Rose and Kanaya. She is Rose of course.

Miki: She knows she is everybody’s Kanaya. She spend some time making masks of the characters. You can imagine how well that ended. Her Kanaya cosplays are somehow still great for the family boutique.

Inori: Yeah, she read it. Each reading session was followed by a trip to the confession booth. Eventually she just started reading it in the confession booth. The priest liked it too.

Setsuna: Her and Love totally are like Rose and Kanaya. She is Rose of course.

Tsubomi: Yes she read it. No her friends must never know. She doesn’t realize all of them have read it too.

Erika: The only friend Tsubomi opened up to about Homestuck. Turns out Erika runs one of the main japanese fansites of Homestuck.

Itsuki: Main mod on Erika’s fansite. Tsubomi must never know. Nor her family. Itsuki still feels too uncomfortable in their skin for that.

Yuri: Almost OG reader, she and Honoka frequented the same forums. Upon casual mention from Honoka, Yuri tried it out. Her young friends must never be tainted by this horror. Hopefully Hussie updates soon!

Hibiki:Learned about it through Ako. Found it pretty sweet, but didn’t make it all the way.

Kanade: Also learned about it through Ako. her bi heart couldn’t be stopped as she steamed through almost all of it in one go.

Ellen: Had been following it for about a year with Hummie before Suite happened. Continued reading while on the villains side. Often plays Homestuck songs while busking, and has several rearrangements on niconico.

Ako: Has been reading Hussie’s stuff since halfway through Problem Sleuth. She was 7 at the time. There’s a reason she a) is so crumby, Karkat is her spirit animal, and b) she decided to go and become an extra af phantom thief precure.

Miyuki: She is a reading machine, and of course this would capture her attention. She came in a bit late but found it on her own.

Akane: Similarly to Rin, she saw it over Miyuki’s shoulder one day, did a bit of reading herself, and got pretty hooked for a while.The hiatuses however broke her streak. Oddly enough the main emotion she took away from it is a hate for Equius, which she shares with Nao.

Yayoi: Main fanart contributor to Erika’s fansite. Her and Reika spend hours talking about Terezi.

Nao: Never did read it, she was too busy with her family and superheroism. More recently though, she decided to kinda wiki crawl the subject. Walked away primarily with a hate for Equius.

Reika: Another mod on Erika’s fansite.She has found her path. Her parents are disappointed. Screw her parents.

Mana: Tried it, didn’t like it. Square.

Rikka: Wishes she could live on that first planet they showed, with the froggies. She tries to dare Mana, but continues to get shot down. Mana is such a square.

Alice: Found it on one of her internet binges to bring her temper down. It proofed a surprisingly good tool to keep her mellow, which is why we see so little of her inner rage during the show. Another Terezi fan.

Makoto: Somehow has never come across a single shred of evidence that Homestuck exists. As unlucky as she is, she might be the luckiest of us all.

Aguri: Unlike Makoto, she has seen what Rikka and Alice are up to. She did read it a little, and liked what she saw well enough, but didn’t stick with it. Not enough time, and her twin sister lives fifty miles in Vriska did nothing wrong territory, so clearly she must be better than her. (She isn’t.)

Megumi: Came across it on her own, read it, but lost interest.

Hime: Runs the discord server for Erika’s fansite.

Yuko: Does occasional lyrics for Ellen’s arrangements, both on youtube and niconico, and makes the occasional troll riceball.

Iona: She was in fact dared, but by Megumi of all people, after she stopped reading. There is no bigger Rose fan now.

Haruka: As an avid reader, it did cross her radar, she went through it, and came out more determined than before to be the best princess she can be.

Minami: Amusingly enough, stumbled across it during her internet binges boning up on marine biology. Feferi popped up in her searches somehow, and the rest is history.

Kirara: Fans suggested it to her. She read it. The most fabulous Kanaya cosplayer of them all.

Towa: Kirara suggested it to her after she herself had finished (by now the webcomic is done IRL) partially because nerds gotta share, and partially because she truly felt it might help her cope with some of her inner turmoil from the guilt over being Twilight. Towa is slow in reading through this particular one, so she is still going through it today. Results unclear, she doesn’t talk much about it, even with Kirara. It might be helping though.

(The remaining characters I don‘t know as well as the others yet, but I’ll see what I can conjure up. Intriguingly I feel this also marks the first generation of Cures that lived in a post Homestuck world, what with Mahoutsukai airing in 2016, and Homestuck ending in 2016.)

Mirai: Got dragged in by the hype over the ending of Homestuck. Dared Riko to read it with her. They did. They planned their wedding to be like Rose’s and Kanaya’s.

Riko: Got dragged in by Mirai. Would feel very big deja vu next year when they both became moms to Kotoha.

Kotoha: Her moms protect her from this vice. (She found it anyways. There is no stopping the corruption of the youth.)

Ichika: Heard about it, but didn’t really care. Unfortunately for her she is on a team with Aoi, Yukari, and Akira.

Himari: Closet fan, wrote several dissertations about the science in Homestuck on Erika’s fansite. Which is probably where her crush on Honoka comes from.

Aoi: Loud and proud, likes this retro comic. Has started collabs with Yuko, Ellen, Amour, and Emiru because of course.

Yukari: She was a depressed gay teen during Homestuck’s peak... what do you think?

Akira: She was a gay teen during Homestuck’s peak... what do you think?

Ciel: She would have been save. But Undertale dragged her right into this fresh hell.

Hana: Huge fan of Undertale, but never quite pulled together the energy to tackle the behemoth that is Homestuck. Did learn through osmosis, with so many of her senpai cure friends being raving lunatic homestuck fans.

Saaya: Actually dodged both the Homestuck and the Undertale bullet initially. Hana then tossed Deltarune at her, and Saaya fell down the rabbit hole.

Homare: She had some inner hangups about getting into the whole mess, but Hana did dare her, knowing enough about the series to know that it’s message might gibe Homare the kick in the behind she needed to give ice skating another go.

Emiru: Big Undertale fan, but doesn’t care about the webcomic herself. Uncertain if even a dare would work, she does her own thing... well, besides the music. She freaking loves the music.

Amour: Read the whole thing in one hour to understand its impact on culture. What else would make her crash and join the heroes? Jokes aside, she did do it, and it did leave an impact on her. She was the one who connected Aoi and Emiru.

Hikaru: What are the freaking odds that she hasn’t read through it in its entirety three times this week alone?

Lala: Had her ship read it to her as something to fall asleep to. It put her to sleep quickly, actually, like tales from home. Her ship didn’t fare as well. It’s one of the biggest crack shippers on Erika’s site. Lala only heard like ten percent of the story.

Elena: Has neither the free time nor privacy to read a webcomic that’s now a decade old. Likes listening to Hikaru’s ranting about the series. Also likes how somehow that ranting makes Madoka’s face light up.

Madoka: It is unknown how she found the time, but she is a freaking huuuueg closet fan. She wants to talk with Hikaru about it, but still feels too uncomfortable being public about it. Hikaru does however know that MoonSollux, one of the biggest fanfic writers on Erika’s site, is her, but will wait for Madoka to come out of her shell in her own time.

Yuni: Missed the whole mess being a space alien idol phantom thief. Is getting a very wrong idea about human culture from Hikaru’s ranting. A dare would totally work.

(I have zero grasp on the Healin’ Good Girls, so not gonna do them.)

#precure #homestuck #why did i do this #who are you anonymous?#actually i have a suspicion given my follower pool

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homespork-review · 5 years

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Homespork Act 1: The Note Dawdling Tension Plays (Part 1)

A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, 2009, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

CHEL: Here we see the first page, and are introduced to our protagonist, ZOOSMELL POOPLORD! Sorry, I mean John Egbert. The joke names used as a running gag, and also the actual names which end up applied to the characters, were the suggestions of the players of the original forum game.

BRIGHT: Homestuck does start out strongly in several ways. It immediately establishes the protagonist and location. It sets the tone it will use, one based heavily on a text adventure computer game. It introduces the reader to the inventory system...

And here the first feature of Homestuck becomes apparent: although a hugely popular and widely known webcomic, it is very slow to get going. The new reader who arrives on the recommendation of others ends up scratching their head and wondering if they’re in the right place.

TIER: In ancient times (so somewhere in 2014/15) I actually attempted to read Homestuck to see what the occasional weird noises the name caused were going on about. I'm very certain that I didn't even make it to meeting any of the other kids I was so bored.

CHEL: Same here. It took me two or three attempts to get to that point. The problem is that the intro is left over from its days as a forum game, in which no one was expecting it to lead into the epic story it became. It worked great for that format, but less well now. And here we start on our first counts.

GET ON WITH IT!: 1 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 2

How Not to Write a Novel lists multiple errors which could be said to apply here:

The Waiting Room - wherein the story is too long delayed Here the writer churns out endless scenes establishing background information with no main story in sight. On chapter 3, the reader still has no idea why it’s important to know about [the background info, in this case how badly John fails at using technology]. By chapter 7, the reader would be having strong suspicions that it isn’t important, were a reader ever to make it as far as chapter 7. Zeno’s Manuscript - in which irrelevant detail delays narrative momentum Any scene can be killed by description of every meaningless component of whatever action the character undertakes. As in Zeno’s Paradox, in which an arrow never reaches its target because it must always travel half the remaining distance, the reader begins to feel as if the end is further and further away.

A comic about a kid failing to master a video game inventory system is mildly amusing once, but not when it drags on this long, and it’s not particularly fitting for an epic adventure involving the fate of universes. Well, that’s not quite fair; introduction to mundane life and slow revelation of the magical goings-on works fine for books like the Harry Potter series. But, to take Philosopher’s Stone as an example, multiple different odd things happen over the course of Uncle Vernon’s regular boring day, increasing in scale until it’s very clear something strange is going on, and establishing multiple aspects of the wizarding world, e.g. owls, their fashion, the existence and disappearance of a mysterious villain, the fact that the wizarding world is supposed to be secret.

John fucking about with his sylladex and putting up movie posters for page after page doesn’t tell us anything new. Failing to use the sylladex once would be enough to get the point that magical video game inventories are a thing in this world and John’s not very good at using them across, and then we really ought to move on, and we can already see the posters on his walls so we don’t need to see him hanging more. Possibly we could have needed the latter in a purely text format where we couldn’t see the walls, or in a comic without text description at the bottom where attention would need to be drawn to them on-panel. Admittedly, it does establish him picking up the hammer, which becomes relevant, but we don’t need a full page each for both the action of him picking up the hammer and the action of him hanging the poster.

… Who hangs a poster with nails, anyway? His walls must be in a hell of a state.

For that matter, that’s another HNTWAN entry or two:

The Second Argument in the Laundromat - a scene which occurs twice NEVER use two scenes to establish the same thing. We do not, under any circumstances, want a series of scenes in which the hero goes to job interviews but fails to get the job, or has a series of unsuccessful dates to illustrate bad luck in love. This works in the movies, where three scenes can pass in thirty seconds, but not in a novel. The Redundant Tautology - wherein the author repeats himself If you have made a point in one way, resist the temptation to reinforce it by making it again. Do not reexpress it in more flowery terms, and do not have the character reaffirm it in dialogue […] This point is worth repeating; don’t reiterate. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 4

Additionally, people with a lower tolerance for “lovable clumsy dork” characters are going to come to hate John before the comic’s even started, though it’s probably best that people who are going to hate the main character learn that quickly so they can leave. I can understand not wanting to lose the forum game which originally spawned the comic, the other people involved would probably not be pleased, but perhaps it would be better saved as a side story and trimmed down when the comic proper was released. At least they could be compressed down by showing multiple failures and multiple poster-hanging actions on single pages.

One other minor gripe might be the neologisms, such as “sylladex” meaning inventory. I found it fairly easy to pick up and it does make the tone and narration nicely distinctive, but it’s a level of extra complication. How Not to Write a Novel has a couple points on excessively baroque wordplay - do you guys think it’s worth giving it a point for that?

BRIGHT: Possibly not in this case - wordplay is a feature of HS and this one is at least made fairly clear. There are plenty of offenders later on as I recall though...

CHEL: Okay, seems fair. In this case it is more of a feature than a bug. It does establish the narrative voice and add to the video game theme. However, the movie posters also bring up an addition to our third count.

Plus, a black president? Now you’ve seen everything! WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 1

A reference to the song “White Suburb Impressionism”, by IAMX…

"IAMX - 'White Suburb Impressionism" (Watch on YouTube)

… this count goes up whenever characters behave in a way which suggests they’re, well, white and suburban (or wealthier), despite any attempts to present them otherwise. This would have passed without comment, but Hussie later tried to claim he’d always intended the kids to be “aracial”, so any reader could project themselves or their preferred headcanons onto the kids. As we’ll show you, we don’t believe him, or at least don’t believe he succeeded. That would probably be difficult to pull off, anyway. Race affects a lot more than features on a stylised sprite.

FAILURE ARTIST: Now, I can’t quite put my finger on it but John’s and Dave’s opinion on black presidents in movies (that it’s a gimmick ruined by Obama’s election) feels like something that would only come out of a white mouth i.e. Andrew Hussie’s. Not the most egregious case of implied whiteness but still worth noting.

CHEL: The point of the joke here is not 100% clear, and that’ll be a thing which comes up later as well. See, I agree that’s Dave’s opinion, but I thought the point was that John genuinely didn’t know there was a black president at the time of writing because he’s already been established to be not exactly a genius and so far he’s been focused on movies and video games instead of real life. Maybe I’m underestimating him, though, since admittedly not very much of him has been shown at this point and it’s been a while since I read the whole thing. I’m not going to start using the ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY count here, though, because here Hussie clearly was trying to be funny. It just isn’t clear to me what about it was supposed to be funny. That’s probably my autism talking, though. Jokes are hard. I agree that it sounds like a white kid’s opinion either way - even the dimmest black American kid would know Obama existed, and so most likely would non-black people of colour.

Anyway! Things pick up a bit when John, under the username ectoBiologist, starts chatting to the second character to be introduced, currently known as turntechGodhead, though the second topic of conversation is a reference to a 1989 movie which, as time goes on, will be familiar to fewer and fewer readers. Luckily, the writer realises this, and the content of the conversation makes the reference sufficiently clear without falling into As You Know dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: Namely, their conversation is about a scene where - pardon me for being gross but it’s in the comic - a character accidentally ingests urine instead of apple juice. John and TG are surprised the character knew it was urine but I find it weird that someone with working smell would not know what it is. Urine has a distinct odor.

CHEL: Well, be fair. According to the drawings, the characters in question don’t have noses!

FAILURE ARTIST: On a more pertinent note, this conversation is an edited version of one Hussie and a friend had. Perhaps Hussie was TG? TG is practically an Author Avatar for Hussie. Sure, Hussie literally appears in the comic later, but TG seems to fit his true personality better. We’ll see how that affects things for better or for worse.

BRIGHT: This is also the reader’s introduction to the Pesterlog. This is one of those things that seems like it should be out of place in a webcomic - it’s just a page of two people talking to each other in chatlog format, with no other information - but the Pesterlogs actually work surprisingly well.

FAILURE ARTIST: When I first read Homestuck, I didn’t know you had to click on the Pesterlog to open it. I just sat around wondering what amazing conversations they were having. I’m not the only one I think who made that mistake.

CHEL: Yeah, I think I briefly had the same problem, but I don’t remember for sure. Possibly more attention could be drawn to the button.

TIER: I would've probably ended up in the same boat if the friends that recommended I read Homestuck didn't specifically tell me not to accidentally overlook them!

CHEL: That’s not exactly a writing error, so I’m not sure it falls under our jurisdiction, but it’s a point that ought to be brought up. The Pesterlogs do work well once the reader actually sees them, anyway. It’s actually pretty interesting to see how much information can be conveyed in a conversation without falling into As You Know Bob. Let’s check what points are introduced in this first one, for example:

- John really loves what he got for his birthday, a Little Monsters poster. From this we know he’s not spoiled (this is how you do it, Meyer) and easily entertained, and likely has a good home life, as he’s so happy and grateful about a gift from his dad.

-turntechGodhead has apple juice in his closet. This establishes his odd home life, and gets explained in more detail later.

- Some things about the personalities of both kids. John is enthusiastic and a joker, TG is mellower, sarcastic, rambles a bit, and at least plays at being cool.

- John really wants to play the SBURB Beta, a game mentioned earlier which is late being released. TG is less keen, again trying to be cool about it.

- Said game got “slammed” by critics, despite the fact that we learned earlier from John’s SBURB-logo calendar that this game has been hyped to hell and back and must be popular, with merchandise and reviews being released before even the beta version of the game is out. Something weird is going on; someone really wants a lot of people to play this game.

Not bad considering a total lack of body language reference or narration. Das Sporking’s seen authors using traditional narration do worse!

FAILURE ARTIST: The (adult) critics of Game Bro get into shenanigans that prevent them from playing the game they reviewed. Perhaps there’s something in the game that prevents itself from being played by adults, just like how adults can’t pilot Evangelions in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.

CHEL: Not sure. Doesn’t one of Dad’s online friends play it, or at least get caught up in it, later on? Though that part’s obviously supposed to be a joke… Maybe instead it’s a built-in way to stop anyone who might be listened to warning others what it does?

As established earlier, said beta is late; this is a reference to the originally planned launch date of the comic, three days before it actually ended up being released. Also, there’s a pun you may have missed in the background. The programming files on John’s desktop include the phrase “^CAKE”. The ^ symbol is called a carot. Get used to noticing those. It’s pretty amazing how many references, self-references, puns, and recurring themes are worked in, and people such as revolutionaryduelist have made semi-careers picking them all out. We won’t bother with all of them or we’ll be here all century, but we’ll pick up on any obvious ones.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie majored in computer science so there’s lot of computer science in-jokes in the beginning.

BRIGHT: Something I just noticed: One of the other files on John’s desktop is ‘TYPHEUS’. It even has a Denizen icon! Probably something that has been brought up plenty of times before, but still nifty on a reread.

CHEL: Typheus and Denizens will come up later in the comic.

TIER: When he feels like it, Hussie is immensely good at foreshadowing later events in pretty subtle but solid ways. It's stuff like this that makes times when he does fumble look worse than they probably are in comparison.

#homestuck #review #let's read #reread #literary critique #sporking #homespork #homestuck meta

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weaselandfriends · 5 years

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Hymnstoke XV

GC: TH3Y 4LL THOUGHT 1 W4S CR4ZY GC: BUT H4H4H4 1T TURN3D OUT W3 4LL W3R3 1N OUR OWN W4YS GC: TH4T H3LP3D US R34LIZ3 TH3 P4RTICUL4R D3ST1N13S THE G4M3 PUT TOG3TH3R FOR US GC: 1N TH3 VOC4BUL4RY OF L1K3 GC: TH3 HYP3R FL3XIBL3 MYTHOLOGY 1T T41LORS TO 34CH PL4Y3R GROUP

Bildungsroman.

I think the term "bildungsroman" (or its less-pedantic equivalent "coming of age story") is over-employed in contemporary critical analysis. It's a lot like the term "deconstruction," which can be draped atop a wide variety of stories to ostensibly make a critical statement without saying anything.

Hussie himself, in one of his old Formspring posts, described Homestuck as a "coming of age story." But who exactly is the one coming of age? Obvious answer is John. The story opens with him on the cusp of adolescence (thirteenth birthday) and ends, at least in one Epilogue, with him reconciling with his estranged wife and child. Obviously some coming-of-age has occurred, even if only literally. But in what way has John developed as a person? Is that development stymied by the existence of a parallel Epilogue in which he unceremoniously dies, or does even that branch of John's existence feed into who John becomes as a person?

I've only read the Epilogues once, so my thoughts on that part of the story probably won't be fully realized until I reread them at the end of this blog. Rooting myself purely in the current moment of Act 4, however, I can still discuss certain aspects of John as a character. I mentioned in previous Hymnstokes his beginning as a naïve, blank slate reader-surrogate who blindly fumbles his way through uncertain situations. His trajectory has been away from this initial naivete toward cynicism—or "irony" if you will—a more cautious, guarded approach to his understanding of the world around him. The main moment of development so far has been his foray into his Dad's room, which revealed to him that his Dad "isn't all that into clowns you guess." But I don't think it's until John's interactions with Vriska in Act 5 Act 2 that he's going to reach the done-with-this-shit, rolling-my-eyes attitude he possesses throughout Act 6. (And it's funny, because even when he takes on that attitude, he still serves as reader surrogate—as if the reader, too, sees what was once novel and wonderful as obnoxious and stupid—but that's for a discussion of Act 6 as a whole.) So that's John's coming-of-age "arc."

Which feeds into a larger discussion about duality, because as I mentioned previously Dave is moving in the opposite trajectory, away from irony and toward sincerity. Rose is moving away from scientific analysis and toward occult spiritualism, while Jade—well, Jade never really gets a "character arc" because she's more of a plot device than a real character. But Jade, functionally, begins as a spiritual prognosticator whose seemingly supernatural facets all eventually become explained by rudimentary technical features of the SBURB game.

The reason why I think describing Homestuck as a "coming of age story" is reductive is because while these young characters do develop (or at least change), these developments crisscross one another, lead to innumerable dead ends, and fail to satisfy the characters themselves. I would argue that almost all of the characters are more insecure, or even more immature, at the end of Homestuck than at its beginning. The thirteen-year-old versions of these characters speak with the vocabulary and understanding of a reasonably well-read 30-something dude, employing witty barbs and clever sentence constructions left and right as they empirically sort out the unfamiliar game world of SBURB to satisfactory results. They have "problems" with their parental figures, they don't "understand" themselves, but they are competent people capable of progressing despite immense challenges hurled their direction. The major failures of the B1 SBURB session are caused by the meddling of the trolls, not imperfections in John, Dave, Rose, or Jade. In fact, the kids' concerted, Herculean efforts to create a clockwork Cascade of perfectly-placed mechanisms are what salvage an otherwise hopeless situation.

Yet in B2 it all goes to shit, and John and pals wind up being totally useless despite having far more advantages than they did in the B1 session: three years to prepare, foreknowledge of the game's mechanics and even the specific situation of the B2 SBURB they are entering, being literal gods, retcon powers, et cetera. It's almost as if, rather than "coming of age" and "developing into adults," the kids undevelop, unmature, regress, fall apart, decay...

Kind of like entropy.

So if the characters themselves are progressing in these crisscrossing dualisms, irony versus sincerity, science versus faith, then the development of the characters as a whole is crisscrossing the development of the plot: Degeneration versus regeneration, destruction versus creation. In a way, these characters are relics of the world they left behind: that saturated, useless Earth. They are products of its cultural detritus, and while their aim is to create a world from its fragments, they themselves are among those fragments. In the Epilogues, their intrusion into the world they created hurls that world into chaos, and the Meat epilogue ends with them extracting themselves from a place in which they do not belong.

GC: 4CT1ONS TH4T COMPL3T3 LOOPS 1N TH3 T1M3L1NE GC: COGS 1N P4R4DOX SP4C3 TT: Paradox space? GC: OH H3LL GC: L1ST3N TH3 UN1V3RS3 W1LL 34T P4R4DOX3S FOR BR34KF4ST GC: 4ND SO W1LL TH1S G4M3 GC: G3T US3D TO 1T GC: BY NOW YOU SHOULD R34L1Z3 TH1S WHOL3 M3SS W4S 4 B1G S3LF FULLF1LL1NG CLUST3RFUCK GC: A HUG3 ORG14ST1C MOB1US DOUBL3 R34CH4ROUND

Or are the linear tracks of character development I described actually part of Homestuck's favorite structure, the mobius loop? Is the duality between irony and sincerity, science and magic not actually a duality, but two sides of the same one-sided shape?

Because the path of Homestuck might also be read not as a linear rise and fall, but a series of loops. John and pals degenerate in early Act 6, only to renew again after GAME OVER when Vriska sorts everything out and they have a huge pow-wow before the final fight. Yet they degenerate again in Epilogues, falling apart at times even more pathetically than they did on the three-year plane ride to the B2 session, only to finally reach a semblance of resolution at the end of either one Epilogue or the other. But even the ends of those Epilogues suggest a lack of finality, a way for the story to continue, more development upward or downward to be had.

A series of Ascents and Descents. It fits the naming structure employed for many key moments in Homestuck. But what does it mean? Why does it matter that Homestuck is structured this way?

Thomas Pynchon, that nefarious postmodernist, was a writer overtly concerned with entropy, given his background in science and engineering. He once wrote a short story about another one of his favorite interests: parties, bro. In this story, a group of young people are partying in a house. Having fun, drinking, all that young kid stuff. But as the night draws to an end, the energy disperses, everyone becomes tired and lazes about. The closed system of the party has succumbed to entropy. At the end of the story, someone opens a window and a breath of fresh air revives everyone so that the party can continue.

On a universal level, entropy is irrevocable. Eventually, millions or billions of years in the future, heat will disperse throughout the universe; no more stars, no more solar systems, only a cold expanse of space. But in a closed system, entropy can be easily overcome by opening the system and letting in energy from outside, the way it worked in Pynchon's party story.

In an earlier Hymnstoke, I exuberantly declared that Homestuck overcomes entropy. My argument was that, by making meaning out of meaningless cultural detritus, Homestuck resolves the problem of societal decay famously put forward by T.S. Eliot in the poem The Waste Land. That conclusion may have been overeager, especially in light of how Homestuck ends both in Act 7 and the Epilogues. But I think viewing Homestuck through this post- or post-postmodern lens of entropic decay sheds some insight on what exactly those tricky Epilogues mean.

Paradox Space appears to be a closed system that overcomes entropy. It can go both up and down despite being closed. It continually chews up and recycles its own parts to continue its progression, similar to how Hussie brings back seemingly irrelevant details to create meaning later. As characters state innumerably throughout the story, everything in Paradox Space is a "S3LF FULLF1LL1NG CLUST3RFUCK," designed with the sole intention of continuing the existence of Paradox Space.

But Paradox Space cares nothing for the existence of its constituent parts beyond what they can do to further itself. And because of this, the characters, while trapped within Paradox Space, cannot truly progress. They go up every time they go down, down every time they go up. Every state of maturity breaks apart into a state of immaturity, every revelation or self-understanding is later reframed as a shortsighted false epiphany. Eventually, like John at the end of the Meat epilogue, they are unceremoniously mulched so that Paradox Space can continue.

Where's the escape? In a world where the worth of an individual is only how much use can be drained out of them until they break, how does the individual "come of age"?

I think, moving forward, I'll keep a closer eye on how each character interacts with Paradox Space, that unseen clockwork machinist putting all its cute pieces together for the sake of continuing itself. If Homestuck is a "coming of age story," I do not believe it has an altogether positive view on the ability of children to mature and develop. Hussie may have intended it to at an earlier stage of Homestuck's creation, but that was PAH, Past Andrew Hussie. It has been, what, seven or eight years since that Formspring post?

TT: I'm starting to see that. TT: So the exiles are on Earth? Does that mean our goal is to get back there too? To resurrect it somehow? GC: NO NO NO GC: S33 1RON1C4LLY TH3Y G3T TO DO TH4T GC: 4FT3R TH3YR3 DON3 H3LP1NG YOU TH4T 1S GC: YOUR JOB 1S OF GR34T3R CONS3QU3NC3 TO S4Y TH3 L34ST GC: BUT P4RT OF TH31R JOB 1S TO R3BU1LD L1F3 4ND C1V1L1Z4T1ON TH3R3 GC: 4ND 1F TH3YR3 SUCC3SSFUL 1N THOUS4NDS OR M1LL1ONS OF Y34RS TH3 T3CHNOLOGY 1S UN34RTH3D 4ND TH3 PL4N3T 1S R1P3 FOR S33D1NG 4LL OV3R 4G41N

Oh hey, rebuilding and reseeding. Even the dead planet gets recycled so that another session of SBURB can begin.

(End of Meat epilogue, 2010 colorized.)

GC: 1M MOT1V4T3D BY S3LF 1NT3R3ST GC: TO H3LP YOU 4DV4NC3 MOR3 QU1CKLY GC: B3C4US3 1V3 GOT YOUR WHOL3 ADV3NTUR3 R1GHT H3R3 1N FRONT OF M3 EB: do you have a braille screen or something? GC: SHHHHHHHH! GC: 4NYW4Y TH3 PO1NT 1S GC: 1TS LONG AND BOR1NG GC: 4ND YOU COULD ST4ND TO SK1P SOM3 ST3PS

Vriska will eventually take on the role Terezi is performing here, but this exchange hearkens back to what I was talking about in the previous Hymnstoke about "skipping to the end." Doing it here gets John killed, because of course this skip is meant to "FUCK UP TH3 T1M3L1N3." At other times, screwing with the timeline is exactly what the timeline requires, so it is allowed in that instance (and it's even allowed in this instance because the doomed timeline created here allows the main timeline to progress in a necessary way). The concept of temporal causality, introduced in the Intermission, becomes more explicit in this episode with Terezi and John and the jetpack. Where Spades Slick and the Felt played by temporal rules, John will not, and the consequences for those actions will be revealed, as well as the harsh truth: the individuals within the system have no choice; the system commands their actions.

GA: I Just Would Like To Gather GA: Some Means Of Gauging Her Sincerity TG: ok well its easy TG: for everything she says take her to mean just the opposite TG: see not everybody always means literally what they say the way john and jade always do GA: Maddening GA: How Do Humans Forge Meaningful Relationships Using Such Communication Patterns GA: Perhaps It Is The Human Riddle That Is Truly The Ultimate Riddle

While this quote touches on the irony versus sincerity angle as it pertains to the kids, the reason I bring this passage up is: What the hell was the Ultimate Riddle? I completely forget if it was ever meaningful whatsoever. Did it get answered? Does it even show up after Act 5? Act 5 (and Act 4, its prelude) is so divorced from everything that comes before and especially after it. Act 6 gleefully forgets anything that happened in Act 5, and the Ultimate Riddle is only one of its many casualties.

I guess if you slap something into a story called "the Ultimate Riddle" you're going to provoke people to try and answer it, even if the riddle lacks any substance whatsoever.

GC: TH3 HO4RD CONT41NS SO MUCH MOR3 GR1ST TH4N YOU COULD 3V3R US3 1N 4N 4LCH3M1T3R GC: 1 M34N YOU COULD 1 GU3SS GC: BUT TH4TS NOT TH3 PO1NT GC: 1TS FOR TH3 ULT1M4T3 4LCH3MY EB: what's the ultimate alchemy? GC: 1TS NOTH1NG FOR YOU TO WORRY 4BOUT NOW

I think the Ultimate Alchemy also doesn't matter? I don't remember it, at least, although maybe it had more of an answer than the Ultimate Riddle. I think SBURB as a game doesn't matter all that much, that a lot of it is, eventually, skipped Vriska-style. (Maybe the Ultimate Alchemy created Caledfwlch? I seriously forget.)

JASPERSPRITE: Rose im just a cat and i dont know much but i know that youre important and also you are what some people around here call the Seer of Light. JASPERSPRITE: And you dont know what that means but you will see its all tied together! JASPERSPRITE: All the life in the ocean and all the shiny rain and the songs in your head and the letters they make. JASPERSPRITE: A beam of light i think is like a drop of rain or a long piece of yarn that dances around when you play with it and make it look enticing! JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song! JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters. JASPERSPRITE: So if you play the right song and it makes all the right letters then those letters could be all the letters that make life possible. JASPERSPRITE: So all you have to do is wake up and learn to play the rain!

God damn, we are just going on a tear of "shit that is introduced like it's important but turns out to be not important at all." I recall in particular several people were annoyed that Rose never "played the rain," that it was a point foreshadowed but never acted upon. But rereading this story from the viewpoint of knowing what is and isn't resolved, I think it's no accident that all these game concepts (Ultimate Riddle, Ultimate Alchemy, play the rain) are introduced in such rapid succession and all wind up not being that relevant. The quantity of these esoteric terms undermines their ostensible quality; when faced with Ultimate This, Ultimate That, the reader fails to affix narrative importance to all of it. And because all these things do, in fact, wind up being barely relevant (if relevant at all), this stylistic presentation turns out to be entirely appropriate. Of course, these pointless Ultimate Whatevers are framed against the backdrop of John "skipping to end," so the concept that certain things might not be important should already be implanted in the reader's mind.

Does that make Paradox Space not as efficient as it seems to be? That's one interpretation, but here's another, based on a point I made previously: What is important for Paradox Space is not important for the characters. Paradox Space can put forth an Ultimate Riddle, and to Paradox Space that riddle may, in fact, be important. But it's only more jumbled detritus to the protagonists, a collection of obscure terms that are ultimately less important on their personal paths than, say, Con Air. And this fact might suggest that creating your own path ("skipping to the end") might be more important than following the preset path laid out for you, the path created by the system (society, biology, your parents, the government, whatever you consider the "system" to be). John's jetpack excursion fails. But it wasn't his idea to skip ahead anyway, it was Terezi's. He wasn't following his own path. Hence, his failure.

However, in this Jaspersprite instance, "irrelevant" is not a completely fair assessment. A song that can be written down as letters? The letters can make life possible? Jaspersprite also says this:

ROSE: Jaspers, the message you gave me years ago before you disappeared... ROSE: What did you mean? JASPERSPRITE: Meow. ROSE: Sigh... JASPERSPRITE: :3 ROSE: I don't understand.

M, E, O, and W are the four letters that represent GCAT and become essential later in Act 5 for creating Becquerel (if I'm remembering correctly). I think it's those letters that Jaspersprite refers to when he tells Rose to "learn to play the rain," meaning this mystery, at least, is not only relevant but was resolved long before things in Homestuck stopped being resolved.

#homestuck #hymnstoke

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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April 3rd-April 9th, 2019 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from April 3rd, 2019 to April 9th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

What webcomic inspired you to get into webcomics? Please tell us about your journey.

lonelytuatara

there were several for me but I think Sakana was one of the biggest inspirations for me! http://www.sakana-comic.com/ since Mad talks a lot about her process with the comic it really helped make it feel less like some kinda magic that I didn’t know how to do and more like something I could try myself

RebelVampire

honestly i find this to be a difficult question. im old enough to remember when internet wasnt a thing. so when it became a thing, there were basically always webcomics. and it was just kind of like...a normal thing to be read on the internet just as much as anything else. i never saw it as a lesser medium as some ppl have experienced. it was just always there along with the internet so it always felt natural to me to read them if they seemed interesting. that being said, if i had to pick the first webcomic that ever made me stick around for a long time, it was Bleedman's Powerpuff Girls D fancomic. Besides the fact it was super popular at the time, i just thought it was really different. like the art popped a lot more than other comics at the time (that i knew of at least), the story was way less comedy more actually serious material, and just in general i enjoyed the story telling. https://www.snafu-comics.com/swmseries/powerpuffgirls/

Iris

homestuck was the biggest one for me, but others like Witchy, Lady of the Shard, and Tuppence for Stardust are also big inspirations

€heshire777

I kind of networked out from online newspaper comics into actual webcomics and beyond, it's kind of hard to tell but I think Skin Horse (http://skin-horse.com/) was pretty much the first webcomic I got into.(edited)

RebelVampire

cause a true hyperlink comes with the http part. http://skin-horse.com/

also please wrap the hyperlink in < and > so the embed is prevented. it keeps the chat cleaner @€heshire777(edited)

yes sorry XD

im multi tasking and didnt notice the wrong tag

€heshire777

S'fine

I know that guy from a different server too

RebelVampire

@Iris please make sure to link the comics next time https://www.homestuck.com/ http://witchycomic.com/ https://gigidigi.itch.io/lady https://tapas.io/series/tuppenceforstardust

Iris

oh crud, sorry. I'm tired and absent-minded this morning

Respheal

I'm a keenspace child apparently, 'cuz my first introductions to webcomics were Saturnalia (https://web.archive.org/web/20070705042710/http://www.spacecoyote.com/comics/sat/) and RPG World (http://rpgworld.keenspace.com/). Both are dead now, although RPG World has a sorta-creator-blessed fan revival (http://rpgworld.the-comic.org/) And then I sorta fell away from them for a bit, mostly, until a friend threw Mokepon (http://mokepon.smackjeeves.com/) and The Property of Hate (http://tpoh.smackjeeves.com/) at me and now I'm back xD

kayotics

I started reading webcomics back in the early 2000’s so I was consuming everything that was available, but I think the first one that actually made me think “I want my art to be like that” was The Meek https://www.meekcomic.com/ Up until that point I read mostly video game comics and they were funny but not inspiring me to make a comic. The Meek was gorgeous and interesting in a way that I hadn’t seen before.

varethane

A friend of mine made a webcomic in the early 2000s and I will not link it because it baaad, but that was my introduction to webcomics-- though when I started reading Terinu ( http://www.terinu.com/ ) and Lackadaisy Cats ( https://www.lackadaisycats.com/ ) was when I started wanting to make one of my own

The Meek and Gunnerkrigg Court were also early influences for me

oh, and hero! I loved this comic back in the day http://invisiblecities.comicgenesis.com/story.html

there were a handful of others that are no longer around, like Vampirates and Goodbye Chains and Astray3, all of which have vanished forever

Delphina

Acid Reflux (http://acidreflux.ficwad.com/) was the first webcomic I really got into back in 2000. The humor was a great blend of anime and light fantasy, which is definitely my happy place. The forum/IRC communities were big for the time too (and of course there was no social media back then outside of what people hosted themselves). When I started my own comic, one of my goals was to have a community like that.

varethane

yeah I totally used to hang out on the terinu forums and shared fanart and stuff XD

(and on my friends' forum which shall not be named)

Delphina

Yeah, standards were different back then XDDD

varethane

ohhhh yeahhh.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

The first webcomic I got into was Looking for Group https://www.lfg.co/. I'm a huge sucker for medieval settings, so my influences revolve around core fantasy, like Legend of Zelda and Lord of the Rings, but I also LOVE for my fantasy to not be taken as seriously with a good sense of humor, like LFG, Discworld, Dungeons and Dragons, and even The Adventure Zone. Seeing them create a graphic novel was sort of a catalyst for me deciding to make my own. I hope I do well for myself to contribute to the unique fantasy/comedy genre!(edited)

Brodnork

I actually started making webcomics before I knew they were a thing

When I was super young I made comic strips inspired by Calvin and Hobbes all the time

And when I got a deviantart account I started posting them

I think Calvin and Hobbes was a huge inspiration for my early work

Although I really started taking comics seriously when I started reading Cucumber Quest

https://cucumber.gigidigi.com/(edited)

Cucumber Quest

gigi

Calvin and Hobbes really inspired me to make comedy comics, and I loved the variety of backgrounds that were drawn in it

Cucumber Quest has lovely colours and a well written story, so I looked at pages from it a lot when I started teaching myself how to make colour palettes

magusferox

Anybody here read Kill Six Billion Demons? Epic stuff imo https://killsixbilliondemons.com/

€heshire777

Now I am

mika

i should make a tumblr page with all my favs

rae

for my old comic I put a bunch of my favs in the links section because I wanted more people to read them. XD

varethane

That's what I did too XD

though it's gotten a little bit out of date and I haven;t made a new one yet for my new comic

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

I keep my active reading list on ComicRocket these days (https://www.comic-rocket.com/users/SailorPtah/), and when they finish...or stop updating...I move them to the on-site reclist (http://www.bicatperson.com/links/references/finished-comics/).

Some of the oldest ones I remember reading are Venus Envy, Catball & Clown Girl, Boy Meets Boy, 1/0, Alternate Delusions, and girly. (So, also a Keenspace child, lol.) http://www.venusenvycomic.com/index.php http://catball.comicgenesis.com/ http://boymeetsboy.keenspot.com/ http://oneoverzero.comicgenesis.com/ http://altdelusions.comicgen.com/ http://girlyyy.com/

ShaRose49

The first webcomic I ever read was Michelle Phan’s Helios Femina, Just cause I was a fan of her makeup tutorials. I started reading it but stopped and then when I started making my own webcomics last year I got into it again, but the story turned out to be not my thing, but freaking gorgeous art. Then I got into Planet Ace, Shiori, and webtoons like UnOrdinary and Spaceboy, and The Villain. Just sooooo good brings back some great summer memories. http://planet-ace.smackjeeves.com/ https://m.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/helios-femina/list?title_no=638&webtoon-platform-redirect=true https://m.webtoons.com/en/challenge/the-villain/list?title_no=188266&page=1&webtoon-platform-redirect=true https://www.smackjeeves.com/comicprofile.php?id=143025 https://m.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/unordinary/list?title_no=679&page=1&webtoon-platform-redirect=true https://m.webtoons.com/en/drama/space-boy/list?title_no=400&page=1&webtoon-platform-redirect=true(edited)

RebelVampire

@ShaRose49 please wrap the links in < and > to prevent the embed

ShaRose49

Oh sorry!

Do you just stick the link in between <>?

€heshire777

yep

Make sure there's no space though

ShaRose49

Okeydokey!

I’ll definitely do that next time

ShaRose49

Oh can I edit?

I really don’t know discord that well

€heshire777

Hold click/press the message for options(edited)

RebelVampire

i think thats mobile only

on desktop you hit the three dots on the right

€heshire777

ShaRose49

Fixed!

RebelVampire

thank you~!

ShaRose49

No prob thanks for helping me

€heshire777

sure

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

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momestuck · 6 years

Text

Let’s read Hiveswap Friendsim - volume 15!

Just to clear up a misconception - this is Hiveswap Friendsim, not to be confused with Hiveswap proper, which is a point and click adventure game spinoff of Homestuck, of which so far only one volume has been released. So Friendsim is basically a spinoff of a spinoff!

The characters in Friendsim are apparently set to feature in Hiveswap volume 2, although the actual events of Friendsim may not have happened exactly as portrayed. It’s impressionistic, or something.

I suspect this explanation may be more confusing than clarifying.

This volume is called Of Creatives, Conventional and Otherwise.

Charun looks like some kinda gardener, and Wanshi evidently has a book (the title of which seems to be ‘DIARY [of a] CULLABLE WIGGLER’).

Charun

Charun is by Kieran Miranda, who previously wrote Azdaja (the DBZ guy) and Stelsa (Tyzias’s gf with the pink coat).

The protag begins this arc by questioning their entire character trait!

They’re having a day in due to depression.

Unfortunately, we can’t sleep for long. Someone is crawling about in our ceiling!

...or not in our ceiling, but in the edge of our room, anyway. We poke our head out of some kind of telescope- or camera-hole. And meet...

This person! Pizzicato strings (hey I know some music words). This piece is actually by Toby Fox, of Undertale fame, who also did music for Tegiri, Lynera and Galekh. Huh.

The protagonist grumpily asks if they’re here to move in or something, and Charun says some words at last.

It turns out they were here to take this strange lens thing. But now they’re stuck.

The narration uses ‘they’ pronouns, which we haven’t seen since Cirava, so that’s nice :)

Their quirk is speaking very slowly, with lots of pauses, marked by ‘..’ - just two dots - on either side.

Apparently the reason they want it is ..............................art.

We get our first choice. Interesting or weird? I’m inclined to be nice. Let’s say interesting. Kind of damning with faint praise there though, I guess.

Charun picks up on our like... noncommittal use of ‘interesting’. They say...

And that’s pretty much shot our chances of friendship.

Well, let’s be more engaged. Sounds weird, ya weirdo, etc.? Engaged.

‘Haha.. yeah..’ is about what we get for that.

There’s a dig at the format.

Instead, our choice is...

Mmmm.

Let’s go with... two dots?

They’re apparently too tired to lug this lens back down the tower. We get another set of options (guessing .. vs .... was a fakeout)

Let’s carry it! I want to see what they do with it.

We make our way out, and get the long shot of our watchtower again.

Charun, it turns out, lives in a cave just down the road from our watchtower. We get a very detailed background.

Back to back, the difference between this background - lineart, cel-shaded - and the previous one - painted, kind of impressionistic - is striking.

Notably, there seems to be a troll back there, looking out from over a pile of stuff. Also is that like... bug thingy Charun’s lusus?

Charun inquires as to our opinion of their art. We flounder.

Charun calls us on having no idea what we’re talking about. But this prompts the protag to decide this would be a great time to learn how to make art.

We get some wisdom... “All art.. is dicking around..” True words.

But apparently we’re overthinking it. Our second attempt...

Soon enough, they decide to join in. We collaborate...

I’ve seen that episode of The Get Down.

Our results seem to be worth it.

The narrator celebrates.

I’m actually kind of put in mind of some words by Porpentine here.

Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain. Build inside the storms.

And this masterpiece created...

Well I guess we go for a joyride? That seems entirely unrelated to what happened in the episode, but what do you know.

So now let’s propose finding some more portable trash, I guess. Which is another colourful background...

Apparently the background artist for this episode is Phil Gibson. This is a river which is accumulating a pile of rubbish on the bank.

After extracting a promise not to share this secret location, we get to work.

They get us to install instaGram.. uh...

PincerSpam. We check out their aesthetic...

Apparently they’re friends with Cirava. That’s cool :)

At that point, we stumble on some familiar faces in a cave. Awkward segue, but what ho.

What sort of lethal shenanigans are these two up to today? Apparently their quarry is expected to be somewhere in this dump. Uh-oh... hope it’s not our new dear friend Charun.

Charun, meanwhile, has found some kind of gadget with a satellite dish. The protag figures it probably belongs to whoever Azdaja and Konyyl are tracking, and Charun asks us to distract them while they run away with it. Before we can refuse, they’re off.

And that’s that. Meanwhile, Azdaja and Konyyl seem to be tending blackromwards so... yeah. That’s a thing.

Wanshi

Now for a very small troll. Wanshi is written by Lalo Hunt, who wrote Tagora, Tyzias and Galekh. Really likes to write the nerds, huh.

We decide to spontaneously pop down to the library.

The narrator makes the same observation as me about the shelves...

It turns out this shoe is on a troll, hiding inside this shelf to read ‘Scribblejournal of a Cullable Wiggler’. Guess they changed ‘Diary’ to ‘Scribblejournal’ during production at some point.

Wanshi’s theme has soft piano music. It’s titled ‘idk man you name it i’m tired’. Oh, that James Roach and his wacky song names!

We decide to butt in on her reading.

On realising how young Wanshi is, the protagonist muses that they’ve managed to befriend a few other kids, and we get a very interesting bit of narration...

So our protagonist dreams about the failure branches? Given the connection between dreams, death and the Furthest Ring, that fits.

Since she’s a Jadeblood, she’d likely know Bronya, right. I’m very curious about this brain room. Let’s go there first.

Her quirk, apart from the little bookending []s, is capital Ws and lowercase everything else. She’s five and a half sweeps old, which is almost the age of the Homestuck cast when we first encounter them (so she’s about 12 in human terms).

We wonder why she’s wandering outside the caverns. She explains...

We make our way to the brain room. She asks us what a ‘brain’ is - because of course Trolls say ‘thinkpan’.

Considering that there’s no reason for Alternian and English to be the same, I kind of half suspect Doc Scratch has just been fucking with us all this time.

Unfortunately, we can’t enter the thinkpan room, and there’s a scary looking guard there. So we move on. Apparently the reason she was escaping was to go to ‘beastcon’.

Oh god have we found a troll furry.

Apparently she writes ‘soldier purrbeasts’ fanfic. Hmm... not sure what that is. It could be this series of YA books?

We hear what the Jades have been saying about us.

Aww.

I’m not sure what it is we know, except for occasionally being able to give out fairly good relationship advice, but who knows? Our reputation precedes us.

She asks us to take her to the con.

I want to see this con. We make a hurried escape from the library as the guard approaches.

Of course the anime nerds would go.

We head off, guided by Gorgle Maps, and Wanshi excitedly observes the world outside the brooding caverns.

Alas, on the way to the con, we find a dead troll.

For once, we’re with someone who isn’t utterly desensitised to brutal violence.

Indeed...

Indeed.

She shakes it off relatively soon, and we reach the con.

Honestly I’m not exactly sure what this is a parody of, if anything specific. ‘Anime con and renaissance faire’ indeed.

Apparently the attractions include cholerbear riding and a... ‘coslay competition’. Which is entirely different, we soon learn, to ‘cosplay’. We consider calling Bronya to pick her up, when...

a rampaging bear interrupts the conversation.

Whoops. Not exactly a place for kids. We throw her in a bush and... grab a katana? That’s just lying around? Yeah good luck with that...

We fucking stab a bear with a katana to protect a small child we met less than an hour ago. Alternia must be getting to us.

Unfortunately, sheer guts doesn’t save us. We get crushed under the bear.

That’s one way to go out, huh. Well, I guess Wanshi learned way more about death than she bargained on.

OK, side branches. First, asking if Bronya is around instead of taking her to see the brain room.

Snitches get stitches.

Well, the kind you get from running, anyhow. Wanshi’s out.

OK, now to actually befriend her and survive the process. We’ll pretend to take her to the con instead of actually going.

The narrator tries to figure out how to refuse her request.

We narrowly escape from the guard - which Wanshi terms ‘bonding hijinks’ - and take her on a roundabout route home. She gets to enjoy the sights.

The protag is so endeared that they decide to take her to see their crashed spaceship. This reminds them that Vikare exists and they haven’t texted in ages.

I guess Vikare isn’t just forgettable to the readers!

Anyway, after pocketing a few of the remaining bits, Wanshi asks us to get a move on to get her to the con.

So we fess up.

She’s not pleased.

We have a slump. There’s an allusion to that ‘bitch of an Earth’ line that didn’t quite make it from ‘popular Tumblr post’ to ‘meme’.

Though she’s still pissed, she appreciates our honesty. Some Social Commentary...

At that point, we get some texts from Tegiri and Polypa, respectively telling us to come to the con and stay far away. Seems the whole cholerbear incident does happen in both branches this time.

This, at least, cheers Wanshi up a bit.

Anyway, though she didn’t get the chance to make friends at the con, she’s got us. We get invited to RP with her...

...as cats.

She’d get on well with Nepeta, huh.

We learn a little about Soldier Purrbeasts.

So...

Warriors is a series of novels published by HarperCollins.

It is written by authors Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, and Tui Sutherland, with the plot developed by editor Victoria Holmes, who collectively use the pseudonym Erin Hunter. The series follows the adventures of four, later five, clans of wild cats—ThunderClan, ShadowClan, WindClan, RiverClan, and SkyClan, who will not be introduced into the territories until "A Vision of Shadows" —in their forest and lake homes, who look up to StarClan, the spirits of their warriors ancestors, who guide the four clans. They also follow the warrior code, a set of rules established in order to keep the clans as civil factions.

...sounds like I was write to guess it was a parody of this franchise?

The narrator kind of struggles to get it.

But with some prodding from Wanshi, we purple up our prose and find our way to suitably overblown dialogue. Even if it’s ‘not really a starcaste approach’.

Eventually, we get back to the Jade caverns, and find Lynera at a full five knives.

Luckily, our presence calms her down somewhat - as low as two knives! But before we can leave them to sort things out, Wanshi has a gift...

That says ‘Soldiers’. So yeah, definitely a parody of Warriors. These books were first released around 2003, roughly contemporary with books like Mortal Engines, The Edge Chronicles, Artemis Fowl, Alex Rider, and Maximum Ride. Given that, I’m honestly surprised I never read them! Maybe it was more of an American thing.

And like that, we’ve made a friend. uwu

We’re in the endgame now. Expecting I’ll finish this... probably not tomorrow, but likely Friday.

#momestuck #lets read hiveswap friendsim

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skyplayer37 · 7 years

Text

Worm Liveblog: 1.01-3.02

I started reading Worm. That really long web serial about superheroes.

I’d say I’m starting this live-blog late but I have yet to make a scratch in the surface of this thing, so buckle up. I might have a better plan of attack from here on, with sections commenting on each chapter (arc? segment? act?) but below the read more here will be some meandering thoughts in which I will comment on what I’ve read and try to guess what’s gonna happen. And you can laugh at me for being wrong!

I started reading Worm while 35,000 feet in the air. Or at least that’s what Google has given me an estimate of. While I botched the set-up on Pocket and only gave myself the first page to read offline, I was instantly hooked. I was an avid reader in school, tearing through YA series like Percy Jackson and Harry Potter multiple times over, but it’s been a long time since I’ve read a regular novel now. Probably since before I found Homestuck almost 5 years ago.

So naturally, Worm has felt almost nostalgic to me. A quaint story without animated scenes or games like Homestuck, without weird webpages like 17776, and without the improvisation of McElroy content. Just written words again.

But let’s get to the story. The first arc of Worm had me skeptical. I been receiving recommendations to read it for about a year and a half or so now, so maybe it’s hype had grown on me a bit too much for it to start like every other young adult novel. We follow Taylor, a loner kid in school. No friends, plenty of bullies. We see them bullied in their normal life, so they have a reason to explore a hidden world and act as a way for the reader to be introduced to the supernatural aspects in small chunks, rather than being thrown in with a hero from the start. While it was nice to skip over the origin story (of which Taylor’s is still a mystery to me at this point but I have seen Spiderman’s too many times to count), I knew right off the bat how the next couple parts would go. - Taylor gets bullied: check

- Taylor either loses control of or has extra-control over her powers: check

- Taylor runs off to battle a foe as an amateur, gets her ass kicked: check

- Taylor is saved at last minute by the Hero, a bigtime guy who cares more about the fortune and glory: check

Up until she agreed to join the villains team, things went pretty much how I expected them too. Although looking back, it seems like that too was a logical step. Most large works like this (see: Adventure Zone) fall into the loop of the characters joining a large group that then sends them out on missions. It’s an easy format: heroes are told to go out and perform task, wacky hijinks happen, they return to homebase for character development. The tasks gets more and more important until the big finale brings together all the ideas and characters from each task. I doubt Worm will stay like this all the way to the end, but it’s a good way to set-up the world for the first quarter to third or so of such a long work.

The last bit I read before typing this was the reveal of the first one of these arc tasks, robbing a bank. The robbery seems insignificant, bar moral implications on Taylor’s part, so I assume this is when we’ll get to see a hero in action for the first time. Probably the heroes from the Interlude. Taylor will try to wink to them so they know she’s a “good guy” but then gets beat up (and maybe her villain friends will die) and realizes she actually hasn’t done anything to be worth being called a good guy yet. And her power is terrifying.

Terrifying in both current usage and potential usage. I don’t like bugs. Not in the slightest. Pretty much every nightmare of mine involves bugs, and I think most people would say the same. Sorry Taylor, you’re power is pretty much entirely geared towards being a villain. But even scarier, is that she could control that crab. She nonchalantly explains that it must just be its weak brain, revealing this early on that with enough training she could probably control anything. My earliest end-game theory involved Taylor turning evil and filling the entire city with billions of bugs. A sea of bugs that is in someway a metaphor for... poor people? I don’t know. But she was supposed to be crying in the middle of a sea of bugs and someone else comforts her for the first time. Or something. With the crab however, there’s much more potential for the entire world becoming enslaved in a Taylor-controlled Hivemind, so that’s fun. Of course, either ending calls for help from another Cape who’s power is to accelerate other Cape’s powers, so I’ll be keeping my eye out for who could possess that ability.

Here’s a few more meandering thoughts before I go:

- The teacher offering his help to Taylor in private, but turning his back when being there in person to witness her being bullied. That’s meant to be the reverse to how the superheroes’ do things (only stepping in when the crime is committed, taking no action to prevent them or help mankind as a whole) and is likely the message of the whole novel.

- The mysterious Boss of the villain group will likely be one of the big superheroes. They rob a few banks for him, making him filthy rich, and once every like dozen robberies he swoops in and pretends to beat them so that he gets the glory too.

- Taylor remains adamant about being good even after enjoying the company of the villains. Her descent to evil will be a slow corruption, but the story will justify it by making the superheroes look bad.

#worm #worm serial #parahumans #liveblog

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betweengenesisfrogs · 7 years

Text

OFF-THE-CUFF HOMESTUCK POSTS #6: THE TRAGEDY (AND SECRET TRIUMPH) OF JADE HARLEY, OR: THE GNOSTIC GARDENER

DISCLAIMER FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

[Note: Content warning for brief mention of sexual abuse and longer discussion of perceived suicide and associated thoughts.]

Let's talk about Jade Harley.

A common feeling I've seen about the final chapters of Homestuck is that Jade Harley deserved better, that she suffered completely unfairly and arbitrarily in the final timeline.

I actually completely agree. Jade *absolutely* deserved better. Where I disagree is with the argument that Jade's suffering somehow shows Hussie is a bad writer.

I think it's important to recognize that good storytelling isn't always the same thing as happy storytelling. Some stories or parts of stories are *about* suffering. They're tragedy, a form of storytelling I'd define as an examination of a negative set of events: why they took place, why the characters involved couldn't escape them. Done well, this can be as meaningful as any happy ending.

I mean, there's a reason a bunch of Greeks wanted to watch a series of plays about a guy who accidentally marries his mother and then stabs his eyes out.

So when we're talking about good storytelling in Homestuck, i.e.: whether character arcs reach meaningful catharsis, we have to bear in mind that the bad shit that happens to our characters is sometimes the very subject of the story.

In other words, yes, Jade Harley deserved better.

That's the *entire point.*

Now, that said, I actually think Jade does have a happy ending, and a damn cathartic one. But we need to understand the unfair suffering she went through to understand why. What I find fascinating about Jade's arc is that she confronts the tragic, suffering-causing aspects of SBURB and the domain of Lord English more directly than any other character and finds a way to become free of them. It's not that her suffering was in any way merited or right, it's that by rejecting that unfairness, she finds incredible self-affirmation, freedom, and escape in a way that makes her the most direct manifestation of Homestuck's Gnostic themes.

In the causes of her suffering, and in how that suffering is overcome, Jade Harley is the key to the deeper meanings of Homestuck.

The Absent Grandfather

As a person, Jade has suffered unfairly on more than one level. Her later tragedy echoes and recapitulates the tragedies of her childhood, which makes it all the more painful. To understand this suffering, we need to understand her relationship with her guardian, Grandpa Harley.

[A brief digression: at this point, I should probably mention a recent theory by mmmmalo that posits Grandpa Harley as a sexual predator and Jade as a victim of abuse. I feel bad even bringing it up, because mmmmalo seems like a really nice guy, and I really enjoy his work tackling Homestuck from a psychological/psychoanalytical perspective, but I just can't really buy this theory. For one, Grandpa isn't at all characterized as capable of that kind of evil. The closest we come are some dubious feelings about Grandpa from Dave that are clearly him projecting his own issues onto Jade (he's never even met her grandfather), and the odd fact that Grandpa obsessed portraits of beautiful blue women from beauty parlors--discomfiting, but ultimately kind of harmless, unless you really stretch it as a psychological metaphor. To my mind, there really isn't that much to substantiate anything worse here.

Furthermore, the Alpha kids, as ever, offer opportunities to understand the Guardians in more depth, and there's little reason to think Grandpa would be substantially different from Jake English. mmmmalo posits that in DBZ-esque fashion, Jake hitting his head turned him good, but I just don't buy it, especially when Jake's "head injury" isn't actually real--it's one of his excuses for avoiding his own failings. (See the Jane's birthday conversation for how this plays out.) For my money, Jake and Grandpa are pretty similar: nice enough people whose biggest flaw is avoiding responsibility by retreating into the landscape of their own fantasies.

Ultimately, this particular leap is too big a leap for me to take, particularly because I feel like it would need to be addressed on a textual level (like Bro's abuse was with Dirk and Dave) if it was meant to be taken as canonical fact. I feel like mmmmalo's theories are at their strongest when they focus on the psychological experiences of characters, rather than when they try to posit hidden secrets in the canon. The first just feels so much more useful and reliable for me as a method, at least. No shade to mmmmalo, though: I hope he keeps on writing his own brand of fascinating Homestuck analysis for years to come, because he's doing stuff no one else is and it always leads to exciting new approaches.]

Now, none of this is to say that Grandpa Harley never had a negative impact on Jade. Her childhood trauma actually concerns him very deeply. As we see in the scene where she imagines him dictating to her in the foyer, she's both nostalgic about her grandfather and angry with him. She's filled with conflicted feelings about him, positive and negative at once. But the harm comes across in a completely different way, a way that's deeply textually supported and fits with what we know about Jake English.

Jade thinks that her grandfather committed suicide.

At least, she does for the vast majority of her life, until Tavros explains otherwise.

At a whimsical tea party with a plush doll, Grandpa seemingly, from Jade's perspective, took his own life. Here's Jade telling the story: GG: i spent years wondering about it! GG: when i was REALLY young, i was sure the doll sitting across from him did it GG: and for a long time i was terrified of the evil blue girl!!! GG: she sort of haunted my childhood and i had trouble sleeping for a long time GG: but of course i got older and realized that was silly, but then i just speculated that maybe it was suicide GG: which was just a really sad thing to think about!!!

Understatement of the century. This moment shaped Jade's entire psychology. Those who have lost loved ones to suicide often report wrestling with a mixture of grief and anger: anger that they were left to pick up the aftermath. For Jade, this was a moment of abandonment. Her guardian, who should have been there to take care of her, took his life and left her alone on a deserted island with only her (admittedly magic) dog to help her survive. For years, she had to take care of herself, to serve as her own guardian in his absence. Grandpa should have been there, but he wasn't. The culmination of the "increasing stakes" of the Beta kids' guardians is that Jade's guardian is dead and gone.

The scene of Jade squaring off against her stuffed Grandpa in the foyer is thus, like many elements of Hussie's writing, played for both comedy and horror at once, a true Hussnasty grotesque. For some time, Hussie builds up the mystery of Jade's guardian (using, I think, Dave’s remarks and Grandpa’s weirdness to build a sense of unease), only to shock the reader with an ugly revelation that carries echoes of horror-movie jump-scares. The man in the foyer is no man, but a symbol of death, a skeleton, a mummy, a rotting corpse in the place where a protector should be.

Grandpa's fatal flaw is absence itself.

[This is maybe the psychological motif mmmmmalo's picking up on? I feel like you could very easily read Jade’s feelings of horror and disgust as an echo of this suicide, and thus see Lord English as a mythic echo of Grandpa's absence as much as his presence. That’s my take, anyway.]

Hence Jade's anger in the foyer. He has left her alone, forced her to take up the responsibilities he failed to uphold. She pretends he's alive and imagines him chiding her for not being prepared to face the wilds alone--a situation she knows he put her in. Hence her snapping back at the corpse that she's already perfectly prepared, thank you very much. The scene mixes nostalgia, grief and anger in the saddest way.

This fits with the way Grandpa is themed around DEATH. Not only is he a mounted corpse, his collections of knights, mummies, big game, and degraded beauty shop photos evoke history and the dead, echoing his undead presence in Jade's life. (They also suggest he carries memories of Jake's friends: an orange knight, a pink girl from a land of pyramids, and a blue beauty, furthering the connections between Grandpa and Jake.)

But Grandpa, like Jake, is also themed around FANTASY. Or ESCAPISM, perhaps. Grandpa lives the life of a millionaire explorer-physicist, the boy howdy rough-and-tumble existence that never existed out of Boys' Adventure Comics and Teddy Roosevelt. His trophies and relics suggest a life of constant fantasizing, a retreat into his own self-image to avoid facing the world. After all, if you move to a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, you never have to interact with anyone else. This is astoundingly consistent with what we know of Jake's flaws: he constructs narratives to hide from responsibility and his own mistakes, from ignoring Jane's anger to ignoring the unaddressed issues in his relationship with Dirk to ignoring Jane's romantic interest in him the moment he finds a convenient excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway. Grandpa seems to be cast in very much the same mode, and his whimsical relics further the theme.

For Jade, though, Grandpa's ESCAPISM has also been harmful. Because Grandpa left her what must have seemed the ultimate moment of escapism: a tea party with a stuffed blue doll. Think of what Jade must have thought later: that Grandpa went out lost in daydreaming about a beautiful blue girl. That maybe he planned that as a way to end it all. Her anger is fueled in part by the fact that he ran away from the responsibility of raising her, into his fantasy world instead.

Of course, as readers we know that's not true: Tavros was the one who, through Bec, shot the gun. But there's a grain of truth in Jade's perception of the situation: while not suicidal, Grandpa was being irresponsible. Lost in his silly tea party, he missed the fact that his granddaughter was about to shoot herself with a flintlock pistol. She was saved by Tavros's redirection, while he paid the ultimate price for his distraction.

So Grandpa's flaw, like Jake's, is one of absence and escapist irresponsibility, death and fantasy. Grandpa really did harm her by his absence. And in his absence, all he left her with was necessity.

Jade takes care of herself, because what else can she do? She feeds the dog. She does what she needs to do to survive. She goes about her day. She defines herself in opposition to her grandfather: if he was irresponsible, she will be responsible. She will do what's necessary, no matter what it takes.

And she represses the fuck out of her grief.

This is way buried for most of the time we know Jade, but it comes to the surface when we meet Jadesprite. See, in addition to having a reminder of her Grandfather's mortality, Jade has spent her life face to face with her own. Her dreamself, which represents the one place in her life where she let herself go along with fantasy and escapism, is already a stuffed corpse. Consciously or subconsciously, she knows that happy escapist world will also die. When she prototypes that body, though, she's acting out of responsibility and necessity as part of an effort to defeat the threat of Jack Noir. She expects that a version of herself will share that desire.

But Jadesprite presents what is to her the most nightmarish possibility: that she might prefer living in the fantasy to responsibility. She tries to comfort her alt-self at first, but quickly becomes disgusted that a version of herself could feel that way. But it's not surprising: Dream Jade was the only version of herself who could let herself lay down responsibility and necessity and admit to herself the extent of her fear. Unfortunately, this isn't the way Jade would like herself to be. Jadesprite is exactly what she represses. There's a seeming moment of catharsis when Jade and Jadesprite become one, but, as I've noted before, Hussie ultimately suggests that spritefusion isn't enough to fix what Jade struggles with.

None of this is Jade's fault. It's the way she's been shaped by the outside force of her grandfather's death. Her grandfather was flawed, she lives with the consequences, picking up the pieces of the loss, doing things out of necessity.

SBURB recapitulates that tragedy, forcing Jade to reckon with her trauma and her perception of her own relation to it.

The SBURBan Tragedy

Is SBURB evil? I used to see it that way. These days I'm not so sure. Conversations with revolutionaryduelist have shown me that, despite its dangerous side, SBURB is usually presented in a neutral light in canon, more amoral than deliberately cruel. It's a Game that can be put to different purposes. RD argues that SBURB is ultimately little more than an extension of its players' wills, and I find a lot of reasons to agree.

As I've argued before (particularly in my Self Pile Essay, though my feelings have evolved since), I strongly feel that the ending of Homestuck relies on a critique of SBURB, that it depicts the Game as inherently tragic. You wouldn't think this would jive with RD's notion of "do what you will," but I actually think these two perspectives can be easily reconciled. A Game that's an extension of everyone's wills can still have a tragic effect on its players, especially on those who don't realize their own power within the system. I'm sure we can all think of times when the wills of others were an oppressive force in our lives. Our critique of SBURB, then, is really a critique of the uses to which the Game has been put, by overpowering wills like that of Caliborn/Lord English, who makes the alpha timeline bend to him without realizing how much it echoes his own limitations.

Like Grandpa Harley, Lord English (the unseen conductor whose riddle is absence itself) forces others to reckon with the implications of his choices. The complex web of time loops and paradoxes LE leaves in his wake forces our heroes to act out of necessity and to take responsibility for their escape.

So while I might talk about SBURB in negative terms here, understand I'm talking about the mess of all the loops, all the implications of the many harmful wills and choices our kids have to deal with. Jade in some ways most of all.

Initially, Jade experiences SBURB as a positive force in her life. It allows her freedom and happiness; companionship among the people of Prospit while in her most optimistic, worry-free mindset. She participates in its necessities, its enforced time loops, not out of obligation but in connection to her dreaming happiness.

As the kids' game goes on, though, Jade loses Prospit and her dreamself, and loses, too, the easy release from herself that they represent. Like all the kids, she becomes aware of the threat of Jack Noir, and directs her responsible mind towards the necessity of dealing with him--leading of course, to her clash with Jadesprite. Later, this focus shifts to take in the true cause of everything that went wrong in their session: the unseen guiding hand of Lord English.

We all know what happens to Jade because of this. In the original timeline, all our kids' efforts fail, and all of them die in the events of Game Over, Jade first and most surprisingly. John retcons the timeline using his retcon powers, and achieves victory by changing the course of events. However, it's a victory that causes Jade to suffer deeply: in the final timeline, she loses and grieves John and Davesprite, her closest friends on the Battleship voyage, and for a time wonders if she was responsible for their horrifying, baffling death. Later, she learns from a mysterious sentinel (Alt-Calliope) that it was all part of a larger plan. This is a relief to her, but as much as she'd like it to, it doesn't erase her grief.

This is brutally, totally unfair. And that's the point.

I've seen folks point out that the retcon could have gone many other ways: for instance, merging the populations of the meteor and the battleship. That's true, but it misses the point a little, I think. The Retcon is an arbitrary solution to a large problem in Paradox Space, acting out of necessity to bring Caliborn's will to a close. Remember that John didn't choose how his retcon would go: he worked it out with the Game itself through his Denizen. Not only did the Game bring forth the very tools to end Caliborn and close his time loop, finishing what his will started, it also worked out the logistics of the timeline that would get them there. And that's the tragedy.

John had only the vaguest idea how his actions would affect Jade, knowing only that either he would die or people would grieve him. By working with his Denizen, he mastered his powers and managed to create a reality where everyone could escape the will of Lord English. But it created an awful situation for Jade, and indeed, he's horrified when he finds out that was the result.

For me, the victory our kids experience over Lord English and his will as manifest in SBURB isn't presented as an unambiguous one. Rather, it's triumph mixed with shades of tragedy. John's reformulation of reality has consequences. The loss of our kids' coherency of self (see the Self Pile) is one of them--I do think it's meant to be at least a little disconcerting that it's new versions of our beloved characters who get the victory. And it's Jade who represents that tragic element the most, because she suffers the brunt of it. The fact that Jade suffers because of the Retcon tells us that for all the positivity of the final scenes of Homestuck, there's still a dark side to the system of SBURB.

Because there was never any point at which any of this took place outside the system of SBURB. It gave Caliborn what he wanted, and then took it back again, not because it had any intentions towards him, but because his will was self-defeating and self-limited. And through the Denizens, it gave our kids the escape they wanted: but they still had to deal with the necessity of responding to Caliborn's intentions, and perhaps SBURB'S own limitations, too. It could give them an escape, but not without certain consequences.

It's no coincidence that Denizens make a resurgence near the end of Homestuck. They are the Game's way of engaging in dialogue with its players, and they preside over every aspect of everyone's ending. Yaldabaoth gives Caliborn his deal, while Echidna signs off on the birth of the Genesis Frog once she's had a chance to inspect its guardians. Echidna is also the one who guides Alt-Calliope towards ending Caliborn's reign. And Typheus lets John become a retcon master so that he can win his friends their complicated victory.

Thinking about this has helped me make sense of a scene that initially baffled me. Near the end of Collide, the story turns absurdly positive: our kids win victory after victory over every opponent they were facing. And then, suddenly, disconcertingly, the scene begins to fade out and flash with static, while strange cries are heard. Then it freezes, and the mechanical contrivance that Hussie once used to represent Homestuck's Acts and narrative is all we can see, frozen in black and white.

Those strange sounds are the sounds that played in scenes with Denizens. And not just any Denizen: the specific whale-song we hear is the voice of Typheus, the Denizen who helped John negotiate his retcon and who, through blowing up a duplicate John and Davesprite on LOWAS, is the most directly responsible for Jade's suffering.

The message of the end of Collide, then, brought spectacularly home by this juxtaposition of victory poses and sudden distance, is that the victory achieved, while real, was negotiated by the systems of SBURB and Skaia every step of the way. This, too, is the message of the Spirograph that suddenly appears at the end of Act 7: our kids have left the Game for good, but the Game goes on without them, and always will.

Jade's experiences show what the costs of that might be.

The Gnostic Triumph of Jade Harley, Witch of Space

And yet.

Jade also achieves victory. An even more powerful victory, in fact. In a deeply Gnostic moment, she confronts the arbitrary suffering of SBURB in a way none of the other kids ever do. She directly confronts the Game, and the cruel intentions unleashed through it by Lord English, by moving beyond them altogether and claiming her own agency.

It's Davepeta who helps her see it.

Once, Jade thought she was responsible for her friends' deaths. Later she learned from Alt-Calliope it happened as part of SBURB's cosmic plan. She was able to take some comfort in that: but it didn't keep her from her grief. When she meets Alt-Calliope again, Jade continues to try to make sense of her experiences through the lens of necessity, through the lens of a responsibility she has to fulfil.

Let's look closely at the difference between what Calliope says about the Space role, and how Jade interprets it for herself.

CALLIOPE: why the hurry? CALLIOPE: you have already proven your heroism in the moments when it was needed most. CALLIOPE: it is important to know when the greatest good is best served by remaining dormant. CALLIOPE: whether that burden is for close to eternity, or only a few more minutes. CALLIOPE: it is something to learn as a space player. CALLIOPE: space falls back. it yields. hosts the play silently. CALLIOPE: then, it roars to life when its time comes, showing all who is really the master. CALLIOPE: and so too when the time comes, it collapses in on itself, taking all else with it.

Calliope argues that Space is about patience, that patience itself is heroic. But Jade interprets this to mean that loneliness and suffering are a cross she must bear. As she says shortly afterward:

JADE: as a space player... someone who "falls back" as she said JADE: maybe being pushed aside by fate, and like JADE: being deprived of important people and experiences JADE: no matter how painful it is, or how much you feel like you need them JADE: i guess thats just how it goes for us JADE: i think i never appreciated how much of a burden your aspect was to you JADE: but i think im starting to get it now JADE: it just took a long time to figure out what mine really meant

But that's not what Calliope is saying. Alt-Calliope is talking about Space, to be sure, but she's talking about it in terms of her own role. Alt-Calliope is a very different person from Jade, one who is entirely comfortable with placing her identity and agency in the hands of necessity, with sacrificing everything for necessity. But what works for Alt-Calliope won't work for Jade. Jade needs friendships, needs her own life and happiness outside the Game in a way Alt-Calliope does not. (And a Muse of Space is a very different creature than a Witch of Space, a much more active and self-oriented role.)

And Calliope knows this, too. While she teaches Jade about her own understanding of Space, she doesn't ask that Jade follow her into the Green Sun, nor does she ask that Jade construct her life in the same exact terms. Again, it's Jade, not Calliope, who tries to suggest that losing all her friends is her Space-y burden to bear. Calliope, however, reminds Jade that they're very different creatures, and need different things:

CALLIOPE: you are still quite young, and your kind is soft. CALLIOPE: the ability to absolutely dominate is better housed in a being designed for seclusion, singularity of purpose, and remorseless resolve. CALLIOPE: it is too much for one like you.

(And here the domination Calliope's talking about isn't just Lord English's, but her own Muse of Space response to that domination, the reshaping of Paradox Space by falling back and then roaring to life.)

Calliope suggests that Jade might choose to go along with the sleep that keeps her from being a danger in the final fight, but she doesn't require it. Instead, she says:

CALLIOPE: if you must have advice, i will give you some similar to that i gave your other space-playing friend. CALLIOPE: i told her to live, where before she had not. CALLIOPE: so too, you are similarly imprisoned by various inertias. CALLIOPE: these weigh on you. CALLIOPE: you are a child, belonging to a race for which that distinction is understood to correspond with experiences of "enjoyment." CALLIOPE: perhaps you should try to have, CALLIOPE: "fun."

Calliope doesn't need what Jade needs. But she knows Jade is more than a means to an end. Jade needs fun, she needs friendship, and she needs happiness. Even though Calliope sees advantage in Jade remaining asleep, she goes out of her way to tell her about the alternate possibilities that might free her from imprisoning inertias.

This leaves Jade somewhat confused. She wants to make sense of her life in terms of the mandates and loops of SBURB/Lord English, fulfilling every necessity. But Calliope rejects that notion for Jade and emphasizes the difference between their species.

So when Davepeta comes along, Jade is wrestling with the strangeness of the Calliope encounter.

JADE: calliope said i was too strong or something JADE: but she also said i should have "fun" so JADE: i dunno JADE: i guess im just waiting around for the right moment

She's trying to make sense of Calliope's offer while still trying to see herself in terms of necessity. Davepeta, though, rejects that completely. When Jade tells them her statement above, trying to describe herself in terms of someone who "has to" be pushed around by the rules of Space, Davepeta responds extremely skeptically:

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < so THATS what space means? DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < bein lonely??

Note the incredulous extra question mark. Jade continues to try to describe herself as someone who has to follow the mandates of others and systems outside her control. And yet as she talks about it, she reveals how dissatisfied she is with that notion of herself:

JADE: but i think that can be one of the results of gaining a deeper understanding of it JADE: or becoming connected to it more... JADE: i dunno, this stuff is all pretty mysterious :p JADE: i dont have it all figured out yet obviously JADE: i just feel pretty sad that as i get closer to understanding my abilities and true nature JADE: it apparently means being deprived of some important experiences JADE: like i get closer to my aspect, but further away from everyone i love, and further from... JADE: feeling like a person? JADE: its just a really empty feeling after a while JADE: empty like... JADE: space i guess JADE: heh

I don't think we're to take this as an absolute statement. While there's truth in Calliope's depiction of space as receptive and patient. I think we're to take these lines as Jade wrestling with her own feelings about the way she should be. Davepeta doesn't argue that Jade should accept this description of herself. Instead, Davepeta opens up a startling alternate possibility: that Jade is more than necessity, bigger than her circumstances, larger than her suffering. If Jade's suffering is an echo of the arbitrary unfairness of the way SBURB divides up our protagonists' selves to bring Lord English to an end, then Davepeta suggests that the key to escaping suffering is to see the self beyond those individual identities:

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but you werent actually deprived of important experiences DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < stuff like us dating and johns stupid birthday parties and playing shitty ghostbuster mmos DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < that stuff all happened to you, its just you dont have access to the memories DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < they didnt happen to shape this particular version of yourself DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but they all played a role in helping like "greater jade" grow if that makes sense DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everything that ever happens to every version of you is an important part of your ultimate self... like a superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space and unlike god tiers or bubble ghosts or whatever, it really IS immortal DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but in your physical form there are all these partitions in your mind that prevent you from remembering any of that which makes your existence f33l totally linear DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < which is probably for the best! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in a regular body s33ing all that would be too overwhelming DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in an advanced sprite form like mine tho its fine DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < i guess the same spritey magic that makes it possible to suddenly understand so much is also what makes it possible to make it bearable all at once DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < not even just bearable actually sorta liberating and cool DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < and after it sinks in for a while you start coming to this understanding of a greater self

AVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < im not COMPLETELY sure because im not like some sort of ASPECT MASTER but DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < my avian slash feline intuition tells me that all roads will lead you here eventually DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < gaining the d33pest possible understanding of any aspect will bring you to the same final conclusion about your ultimate self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < so maybe thats starting to happen for you too DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < the space aspect sounds like a hard and lonely road to travel... i think they probably all are DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but youre gettin there jade DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < you are doing great and im so proud of you!

Once again, this isn't Davepeta saying that Jade needs to be happy about what's happened to her--they acknowledge that living in SBURB is painful, a hard and lonely road for anyone of any aspect. But seeing oneself as this "ultimate self" allows one to see a bigger picture, to find meaning in one's actions even when buffeted by what seems to be the cruelty of fate. In a Game whose tragedy is that divides people up into different manifestations of themselves, each going to an arbitrary fate, that's the way to find victory, to find happiness beyond each tragedy. That's the balance that Homestuck's ending is deeply concerned with, and Jade Harley represents it all: both the suffering and the remedy.

Davepeta's proud of her for coming this far. I'm proud of her, too.

But does this understanding work for Jade? Does it free her from the way she saw herself as an instrument of fate, a tool of necessity? I think it does. Because after talking with Davepeta, Jade starts to live her life differently.

We see this clearly in Collide and the events leading up to Collide. Jade was ready to accept that she had to stay asleep merely because it was what others expected of her. But Davepeta convinces her that she should wake up if she wants to wake up:

JADE: i guess im just waiting around for the right moment DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < nah thats dumb DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < you should be able to do whatever you want JADE: really? DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < well at least she was right about the having fun part DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < maybe thats what she meant?? DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < maybe she was leaving it up to you in a mysterious way JADE: leaving what up to me? JADE: the decision to wake up?

Davepeta's message to Jade, informed by their deep understanding of life beyond one lifetime, is that Jade can do things for herself, rather than do them as a reaction to necessity. And the secret is that that choice makes all the difference.

Jade does choose to wake up, and after waking up, rejects any idea that she should go back to following necessity, or other people’s commands:

DAVE: jade DAVE: god dammit DAVE: GO BACK TO SLEEP! JADE: NO WAY!!!!! :P

JADE: i am very much awake! JADE: and i intend to stay that way :)

Jade chooses to take Calliope up on her offer: she chooses to go have fun. For the first time, she pursues her goals completely and utterly for her own reasons. She chooses to take on the mission of dealing with the Omnidogs Bec Noir and PM...pretty much because she wants to. And she does it in her own way: she doesn't get in a fight, but plays with her dogs, recreating the fun times in her life with Bec by warping around and dancing around in the sky with them.

While she ends up getting punched out by PM, it's mostly comic: she isn't hurt or upset--she had a fun time, and did what she wanted to do. She's asserting her own agency, not responding to the will of anyone else, be it Lord English, Dave, John, or any of the other players. She takes on SBURB's boss mechanics in her own terms and enjoys herself doing it. And what she's able to achieve by this is *reshaping the rules of the Game.* Because of her, PM beats Bec Noir. For the first time in the known history of SBURB, White beats Black, Prospit beats Derse, entirely thanks to her presence. This change is subtle but huge. It represents what Jade's doing on a cosmic level: she's creating the Game, creating her reality, for herself, not responding to anyone else's intention, but putting forth her own to shape the world.

The Gnostics of ancient times said that the material world we lived in was merely an illusion created by the tyrant Yaldabaoth, and that all we needed to do to escape his tyranny was to look within ourselves. Because we were made of the same stuff as the True God, filled with the same wisdom as Sophia, and if we could truly know ourselves, could know exactly who we were, we could walk back through the gates into the Garden of Eden, knowing that we were God, part of a true divine reality bigger than anything Yaldabaoth could understand.

So, too, does Jade Harley, GardenGnostic, in that moment, know that she is bigger than anything that once defined her. Not her grandfather's death and failings, not her role as a link in the prophecies of Skaia, not Jack Noir, and not the limitations of a single Jade in a tragic timeline. None of those things define her. She is greater still, the JADE beyond Jades, and she has just as much power to make SBURB, to make all of Paradox Space what she wants it to be as any would-be tyrant. She stares Lord English in the eye, and knows she is as great within this contest of wills as he is. They all are.

And that makes Jade a little bit different from her fellow gods: she knows in full what the rest of them are only beginning to understand.

When we next see Jade after Act 7, in the Credits sequence, we see her growing plants again after a long time away from her garden, returning to her own personal Eden, and we see her spending time with John, Dave, and Karkat--all the people that she loves.

Knowing who she is, she has escaped all the inertias that once bound her, and is turning reality into what she wants it to be.

In the world of SBURB, that's the way to find a happy ending.

[Next time: Maybe I’ll do that reception of the ending thing I promised last time? Or maybe not? Maybe I’ll be too busy playing Hiveswap? Maybe life is full of infinite delicious possibilities, and we’re all riding this magic train out to the Pleroma together? Who knows, man. Who knows.]

#jade harley #grandpa harley #homestuck analysis #jake english #homestuck #off-the-cuff homestuck thoughts extravaganza 2017 #gnostic influences #gnostic themes #alt calliope #space aspect #freedom to live #THE ULTIMATE SELF #homestuck ending #understanding homestuck #suicide cw #csa mention

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