#you win this one andrew hussie...... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

probablystupid · 5 months

Text

HELLO EVERYBODY LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOMESTUCK-

Four kids, best friends who have known eachother online for years, decide to start a new and still in Beta multi-player game called SBURB. It all starts with our main character John, who gets his package on his birthday. Little did these four freshly 13 year olds know that this game would end the world as soon as they entered. Now the mission is to complete the game and win the prize: a new world for them to shape. Along the way they meet some other players from another world, aliens called Trolls. And there's a few deadly glitches to be bugged out....

The first act is a lot of character introduction and buildup, aswell as early art style as it was being worked on by only one dude for a while. Impatient people don't get past the beginning unfortunately, but its absolutely worth the read, even the beginning! Quality jokes

Homestuck, A History;

Andrew Hussie, a person (now going by any pronouns) then known for various obscure things around the net, made an interactive reader-driven comic-type-thing called Jailbreak where he would draw panels demonstrating the events of the story as dictated by other posters in the thread, putting his favoured suggestions in the narration and responding in kind. The happenings and variables were influenced by his own strange brand of humor and set of fascinations, such as rap, the Starsky and Hutch movie and the cast thereof, horses, clowns, and H!rry P!tter as a cultural presence. He would eventually compile this, along with the unfinished followup, Bard Quest, on its own website.

The third installment of the so-called MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth, was a massive step up in production value, featuring impressive art and output speed as well as evolutions such as some pages being flashing gifs. This sort of thing was considered to be one of the best demonstrations of the potential of the internet. It ran for about 1650 pages over the course of about a year.

Homestuck was the followup to that, running 8123 pages from April 13th 2009-2016 with numerous hiatuses in the latter half of that time. It featured such advancements as colored panels as default, videos with sound, small WASD-controlled computer games on various pages, and most importantly, actual conversations between characters, allowing them to become three-dimensional and truly sympathetic. (Hussie, it would soon be revealed, was heavily skilled at writing compelling and unique character voices and dialogue writing in general.)

Homestuck was definitely the most complex MPSA, with a grand overarching plot being integrated into the results of the actions of the readers. The plot revolved around an in-universe game called SBURB with the power to influence reality, sort of a Jumanji with time-travel mechanics that would soon be revealed to be the centerpiece of reality itself, a program that destroys the home planets of its players to motivate them to enter the world of the game and fulfill an unknown grand purpose, complete with millions of fully sentient NPCs.

Homestuck has been described as "a story that's also a puzzle", and this lens has gained authorial approval. This is the sort of story where the Author appears as a character to explain things to the audience, another character ends up changing the color of the site to his own scheme and narrating in his own voice, and the Author bursts through a literal fourth wall into the world of the story, hunts him down, and beats him with a broom. This is the sort of story where one specific person has killed another three times across multiple iterations of both themselves and the universe, and three of the killee are alive at the end, despite all of them being versions that were killed by the killer, who himself has one alive at the end, and both of those people have four-letter names, the first two letters of which are the same.

Eventually the suggestions from readers became so numerous and difficult that the suggestion boxes were closed near the end of the first year, but their influence carried on; one easy example is a character only seen from the top half initially being theorized on the official forums as using a wheelchair, a fact which would not only become Canon, but highly relevant.

The early MSPAs curated an audience through programming humor and 80s-90s film references as filtered through the styles of Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, and Something Awful, but the audience for Homestuck, due to the nature of the characters, was markedly different, especially after the Trolls showed up.

You've probably seen them.

The Trolls, initially presented as some extremely odd and bothersome fellows on the internet, were soon shown to be a race of grey-skinned, orange-horned aliens that had undergone a SBURB Session that they claimed had been influenced by the lead human characters. Trolls possessed multicolored blood in both organized castes and clear deviations, psychic abilities, unique typing styles, incectoid traits as opposed to hominid, and near-univeral bisexuality.

I cannot express how perfect the Trolls were in terms of catching on. Tumblr loved these fuckers and it's not at all hard to see why.

It's also worth noting that this wasn't the only market-perfect part of Homestuck; Classpecting, the equivalent of Hogwarts Houses, featured a 144/168/288/336/384(depending on who you ask and what they count)-strong grid system of human personality traits that not only seemed eerily accurate as a personality mapper, but corresponded to what elemental powers one received in the game of SBURB.

So... yeah. Homestuck was an incredibly complex and engaging work in both plot and presentation, driven by a single incredibly talented and flawed creative voice above all, and which was perfectly made to attract a massive, unabashedly bizarre/proudly cringe, and notably largely queer fanbase across a younger internet. The style of presentation, art, and character writing was instantly recognizable and relatively easy to imitate, leading to fanfiction and even fanmade adventures galore, most of the latter hosted on MSPFA.com.

The main site for Homestuck is broken now-it's recommended that new readers download the Unofficial Homestuck Collection, and starting with Problem Sleuth to ease into the format and writing is a pretty popular choice. The ending is also considered generally quite poor in a number of ways, particularly regarding unfollowed forshadowing and blatant abandonment of character arcs, with some fans even making their own works as substitutions. Few speak of the epilogues. Fewer still speak of the sequel.

Content warnings for Homestuck include: blood, clowns, dicks-out furry art in the background of like ten pages, brief black-and-white nudity, swearing, the R-slur, a joke about an acronym organically forming the F-slur, child abuse, discussed child abuse and homophobia, mocking of the disabled (as an unsympathetic action), cartoonish levels of sexism (as an unsympathetic action), mocking of otherkin, minor characters being racial stereotypes of Black (Meenah) and Japanese (Damara) people, minor characters being stereotypes of disabled people (Meulin and Mituna), a controversial and prominent depiction of blindness, underage alcoholism, written depections of noncon (as an unsympathetic action), jokes about pedophilia, and child grooming (textually 100% non-sexual, but sexually-coded).

Also: when I said the Trolls type weird, I wasn't kidding. Every character gets at least one color for their speech text, plus a pattern for how they type, generally worse for the Trolls, ranging from "no caps" to "British" to "drunk" to "ebonics" to "aLtErNaTiNg" to WH4T3V3R TH3 FUCK K1ND OF L33TSP34K BS T3R3Z1 1S DO1NG. So that's worth a warning.

And that's as abridged as you can get when summing up Homestuck.

#homestuck #karkat vantas #explained #lefttumblrandsworetonevercomebackbutheyhereiamgoinginsanebecauseofthiswebcomicthanksandrew

4 notes · View notes

davekat-sucks · 9 months

Note

One of the things that irritates me is how I cant get a good read on how powerful the Homestuck characters are because their powers are not really all that well explained. And we have a lot of reality bending abilities in Homestuck.

Like, Dave has the power to time travel, which seems like a really super good and powerful ability, but at the same time, he still seems like an ordinary kid that you could just punch in the face and win if he wasnt time traveling. Jane is the big bad of HS2 but shes never really been the combat type, it seems like it would be pretty easy for some of the heavier hitters to fight and defeat her, but I guess that wont work for whatever reason. I know its not a battle anime, but it has battle elements, but I cant fucking figure out what those elements are.

Jane is also a god tier, but I guess people have concern about her Life Powers and assume maybe she can use it on herself even if taken damaged. But yeah, some of the powers are barely explained even when some can be broken. NOBODY STILL KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK BLOOD IS FOR!!!! There are theories of aspects reflect to another, but that's all speculation. Andrew Hussie admitted he just made it up on the fly and didn't know what the fuck he was doing.

#Homestuck #Andrew Hussie #Aspect #Classpect

6 notes · View notes

pandoratheprocrasticreator · 2 years

Text

Homestuck Poll Round 1 Results:

Beta Kids: 226 votes

Dave Strider: 31% - Winner

Jade Harley: 27%

Rose Lalonde: 22%

John Egbert: 20%

Lowblood Trolls: 275 votes

Aradia Megido: 41% - Winner

Karkat Vantas: 30%

Sollux Captor: 15%

Tavros Nitram: 14%

Midblood Trolls: 356 votes

Nepeta Leijon: 31% - Winner

Terezi Pyrope: 28%

Kanaya Maryam: 23%

Vriska Serket: 18%

Highblood Trolls: 314 votes

Feferi Peixes: 40% - Winner

Gamzee Makara: 24%

Eridan Ampora: 22%

Equius Zahhak: 14%

Alpha Kids: 655 votes

Roxy Lalonde: 51% - Winner

Dirk Strider: 28%

Jake English: 13%

Jane Crocker: 8%

Miscellaneous Characters Pt. 1: 171 votes

Calliope: 42% - Winner

Meenah Peixes: 24%

Caliborn: 23%

Aranea Serket: 11%

Miscellaneous Characters Pt. 2: 164 votes

Davesprite/Davepetasprite: 46% - Winner

Mayor (WV): 30%

Dad Egbert/Dad Crocker: 30%

Doc Scratch: 9%

Cursed Characters: 35 votes (I forgot to tag this one)

Lil Cal: 37% - Winner

Sweet Bro: 26%

Hella Jeff: 20%

Andrew Hussie: 17%

Villains: 164 votes

Spades Slick: 45% - Winner

The Condesce: 25%

Bec Noir: 24%

Lord English: 6%

Comments:

The kids and trolls got a lot more votes than the miscellaneous characters. That makes sense. We spend more time with all the kids and a lot of the trolls compared to the miscellaneous ones so I guess more people searched up their name in the Tumblr tags

That being said a sample size of only a few hundred is WAY too small. Especially for a fandom as big as Homestuck. I'll go off of this in the next poll ofc but to get a good idea of who the fandom ACTUALLY likes I need like at least a few thousand votes. Maybe more idk how big the Homestuck fandom is now. I know @abraxas-calibrator is planning to make a comprehensive poll with every single character in HS someday and they a) have more followers than me probably so more people will see the poll, b) is more of a "Homestuck blog" than me so more people will know what they're talking about, and c) will probably organize this poll better than I did so. Check out their poll when they do it I guess.

The alpha kids got a LOT of votes. From the tags it seems people have been trying to get their followers to vote for Jane and Jake who were less popular. Didn't work, as you can tell. I love Jane but I don't think her reputation in the fandom ever recovered after HS2 unfortunately. Also I guess ppl just didn't pay attention to her before HS2 either.

The midbloods had a lot of people voting and a relatively close race between Nepeta and Terezi. In the tags of the poll I said Terezi was my favorite but I didn't expect her to win. I expected Vriska to win. Vriska made waves a few days ago bc ppl were APPALLED that she was having such a tough race against Katya Goncharov. Can't believe she's one of THE Tumblr Sexywomen but she came in last in a poll against characters from her own comic. I mean I voted for Katya in that poll bc Vriska sucks (affectionate) but still. She deserved to win that one and I'm surprised she didn't win this one.

That being said for both the midblood and the highblood polls I get the feeling that people assumed that more Tumblr Sexyman characters like Vriska and Gamzee would get all the votes so they voted for the least controversial characters to compensate? Like I have no doubt in my mind that people ACTUALLY like Aradia and liked her enough to beat out Karkat. But. Do people actually like Nepeta and Feferi more. Actually maybe they do. Maybe I'm just cynical. I like characters that are a little problematic bc they're more interesting that way. I guess a lot of people don't see it that way and like the characters that they would genuinely want to be friends with. That's valid tbh.

Some of these brackets weren't well done tbh. The midblood bracket had all popular characters and there were several miscellaneous brackets with characters that aren't most people's favorites. But because I put them together in one poll it forced people to choose their favorite out of the selection. The winners of different polls will be going into the next round but it doesn't really reflect the actual popularity in the fandom. Maybe doing them in batches of 2 would have been better than 4. Ah well. I'll do that for the Tumblr Sexywoman poll I'll eventually put on. I don't have the energy to do all that for this one. Same with the Danganronpa one I want to do later they're still going into batches of 4.

Roxy is literally the only character who won the majority vote. And that's only by 1%. The other polls all have votes split more evenly 3- or 4- ways between the characters. Again, I wonder if any characters would have come out on top if I did a 1v1 poll for them?

Yall really like girls. 5/9 winners of the polls are girls, and 4/5 of the kids/trolls polls had girls win. And for a bunch of the polls where a girl didn't win a girl was the runner-up if there was one in the group. In conclusion wamen I guess.

I have homework so round 2 of polls will be up tomorrow. There are 9 winners in round 1 so for round 2 I'll put them in batches of 3. And the final round will also be in batches of 3. I tried to make 8 batches last time bc it was the Vriska number but also bc then I could do 1v1s but I thought of more characters in the last second. Ah well, I'll refine my methodology for other polls. Peace.

Pandora

#homestuck #homestuck poll #shut up pandora #if only i put this much energy in my meteorology homework

8 notes · View notes

nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 2 years

Note

Do you have a favorite character from the Teen Girl Squad?

There are probably plenty of people reading this who could answer this question better than me, but I can at least offer my own two cents:

I actually got into Homestuck because it looked like it was fun (which is, I gather, kind of unusual). I think I was drawn to it by the "I-AM-A-NANOMITE-I-AM-A-NANOMITE-" aspect of Hussie's work, along with various descriptions that sounded like they might be funny. I was never a "fan" in any actual sense -- like, I didn't read Homestuck in any regular way -- but at the end of all that I was excited to see what was going to happen in the comic.

Anyway, I feel like most readers are like me: Homestuck was interesting to us because it was hilarious, but we were just trying to be entertained by a story -- or not even that. I don't know that there was a singular "character" I latched on to as the main figure of my favorite character, because there were so many and none of them ever stood out to me as the "main character." (A lot of this is because there were a bunch of characters who stood out as potential main characters, only to be killed off as soon as they emerged, so my experience was like "huh, this character died? I should have paid attention to them in the first place." The two characters that made an impression on me in the end were "Vriska" and "Kanaya.")

Some specific instances of "hilarious" characterization are, in order:

1) Andrew Hussie likes to make fun of himself. So does every other person who writes any kind of fanfic of Homestuck. A lot of this humor is kind of mean and it isn't always easy to tell if it's meant as some kind of mean-spirited attempt at lampooning other people, but it's funny, and in the end you have to laugh at it anyway, because Andrew Hussie wrote this thing.

2) The character most analogous to myself in the comic is Dave, the guy with glasses who doesn't know how to fight but is trying his best. His characterization does not involve him being a jerk. There are many reasons why I would consider Dave's character "the best in the comic," but some of the most important ones might be:

1) Dave is very good at picking up on other people's social cues, and when he doesn't know a given thing he wants to learn about, he works hard to get it from someone who does know. He has a lot of scenes that are just dialogue between him and one of the other characters -- he does a lot of the "talking without saying much" thing -- and these scenes are often very good and funny.

2) Dave is really funny. I'm not sure I can really say anything more specific than that. Dave's characters have a lot of moments that are funny by virtue of being the kind of thing Dave would be likely to say.

3) Dave's characters get into situations where they really shouldn't have the capability to win, but they still keep going and winning, and that's kind of cool. The most common example of this is something called "Game Over," which involves a very good character called Vriska who, for some reason, "wins" a lot of these confrontations by doing really stupid things. I don't understand all the details of her powers, but the way I remember it, they allow her to make people who are on opposite sides of the conflict into enemies so that she can fight them directly and kill them (something that, of course, is against the rules and thus makes people go to jail). She is also a really, really mean, aggressive person, so things always come out in her favor.

4) Homestuck as a whole has a kind of very, very broad narrative that covers a lot of characters and their respective stories. And the broadness of this narrative does a lot to convey the sense of humor. The more specific a scene is, the more specific its "clothing," if you will.

Dave is the most general character in Homestuck, which is part of why he gets so many good interactions and so much comic relief. In a broader sense, most of Dave's dialogue with most of the other characters is really funny, because there's a large amount of comedic potential, both in the way he talks to them and in the way they talk to him. When he talks to people, we know exactly what's going on. When they talk to him, you can't tell if it's going to be funny or not, you just have to trust the author.

----

All this is a roundabout way of saying that Dave and his friendship with Andrew Hussie is what I like to think of as the "best" thing in Homestuck. This is the aspect of the comic I would give an award to. But, as I said in the beginning, this is probably just a bunch of nitpicking (and it's worth noting that even Dave is a lot of nitpicking). There are characters I like a lot after Dave, even if Dave is kind of important. And characters I like a lot before Dave, although they are sometimes (sometimes) made kind of important by the comic's broader structure. So the real answer to this question is "I don't know" -- the people who actually like Homestuck are a bunch of nitpickers who are willing to say that, when they're right, they're right.

And if you say this, you can have some fun by thinking of an example of the character you would most like to have been the "main character." I have no idea who is this character for me, but it must be one of the many characters who is important but not necessarily well-defined.

#vacuouslytrue

5 notes · View notes

candyredterezii · 2 years

Note

you just said you dont care for hs but goddamn I still think about terezi and how nothing for her has gone right. Andrew hussie completely lost the ball with her. like what the fuck. this isnt girl bossing you've given the patron saint of weirdgirls clinical depression and a horrible ass girlfriend to make up for it. god! my fucking god!!!

Like tbf Terezi's depression has been something that definitely existed for a long while but the fact that they play it as 'she needs and wants Vriska to feel complete and happy' and everyone painting it as omg girlboss love wins!! is just like. unnerving and sad.

Like honestly I was thinking about this last night but the whole retcon REALLY was a cop out. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it was obvious to me Hussie just wanted this thing done already and just didn't have the passion they used to and possibly even grew a bit cynical.

Like narratively it makes NO SENSE for Terezi to tell herself to basically abandon her feelings for Karkat after they had a few moments of reconcile and growing closure.

And also, this is what I was thinking on last night, it genuinely pisses me off that Vriska is the thing that 'saves' Terezi from her abuse with Gamzee. Like Vriska being there is the one thing that stops her from going into an abusive relationship.

And It upsets me like, how Vriska is THE SOLE THING TO FIX EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE'S PROBLEMS AND WOW SHE IS SO GREAT !!! but it rlly pisses me off with like.. Just that Terezi is one of these people that needed that.

And also like. Side tangent, really annoying how it seems Vriska stopping Roses alcoholism with just public shaming/embarassment and like that's all that needed to happen like IT REALLY FELT LIKE ALL BAND AID QUICK FIXES.

Like. If anything, I just wish the comic in the end explored more on how Terezi really was in an unhealthy relationship with Vriska, who was very controlling and demeaning to Terezi.

I remember I was the only one pointing out "hey Terezi is VERY QUIET and subdued and EASILY SHUT DOWN with Vriska that's not normal" but everyone was too excited that Vris/rezi is finally canon to really notice or care.

Like. Ghost Terezi and Ghost Vriska are fine, because Vriska had her character arc and learned and grew from her past mistakes and is a better person because of it, yk?

This Vriska isn't and is instead now entirely #girlboss #godcomplex queen.

and I remember we barely saw Terezi AT ALL at the end flash, and she wasn't even with anyone either. Everyone was paired up together in their cliques and happy and Terezi is just faded into the background

Terezi got fucking Aradia'd - KSDFJG

#candyredassk #anonymous #it rlly sucks speaking of how aradia is ALSO a very compelling and fun and wonderful character who got snubbed a lot both in comic and in #fandom fr fr

20 notes · View notes

the-meat-machine · 3 years

Text

ok okay 0k: a study in Homestuck style

Long has a vital issue in Homestuck fandom gone unaddressed. It's a question of style. Of canonicity. Of narrative convention itself. This very important question is:

How does each character spell that word that begins with an "oh" sound and ends with a "kay" sound? Do they spell it as "ok"? "Okay"? Heaven forbid, "O.K."? And are there any differences between the different characters?

This is a question that I am sure has haunted every Homestuck fan, but be haunted no longer, for I am here today with an answer. Drumroll, please…

Almost all characters in Homestuck prefer the spelling "ok". However, there are two major exceptions:

Kanaya almost always spells it as "Okay".

Tavros uses "oK" and "oKAY" about equally often, sometimes switching between the two in the same conversation.

This is so consistent that I feel confident in saying that Kanaya and Tavros's uses of "okay" are deliberate stylistic choices. In fact, so dedicated is Kanaya to "Okay" that her dialogue accounts for over a third of all "okay"s in the whole comic.

Here are some other general takeaways about how Homestuck characters spell this word:

Some characters who normally spell it as "ok" might add in extra 'a's if they're elongating the second vowel, a la Vriska's "Okaaaaaaaay".

Andrew Hussie spells it as "ok", both within the comic (in narration and the self-insert's dialogue) and outside of the comic (in news posts etc.) This is presumably why "ok" is the default for most characters and "okay" is the exception.

No one ever spells it as "O.K." Seriously, who does that.

No one ever capitalizes it as "OK" unless their typing quirk involves capitalizing everything.

So those are the main points. But if your curiosity is still not sated, no problem! Join me under the cut for even MORE details about this very important issue!

Okay, but like, how many "okay"s are we talking here

Here are all the characters who have ever used "okay" along with how many times they used it (not counting elongated "okaaay"s and the like):

Kanaya: 47

Tavros (including Tavrosprite): 26

Jake: 13

Jane: 5

Feferi: 4

John: 3

Jade: 2

Nepeta (including Nepetasprite): 2

Vriska: 1

Gamzee: 1

Equius: 1

Roxy: 1

Calliope: 1

Davepetasprite^2: 1

Note that all of the above characters, even Kanaya, have also spelled it as "ok" at least a couple times in the comic, and all of them other than Kanaya and Tavros use "ok" far more often than they use "okay". Even Jake, our third-most-prolific "okay" user, still uses "ok" four times as often as "okay".

Ok, so who are the ones who never compromise their artistic vision?

Here are all the characters who have at least one attested use of "ok" and who have NEVER used "okay":

Rose

Dave

Dirk

Lil Hal

Caliborn

Aradia

Sollux

Karkat

Terezi

Eridan

Rufioh

Kankri (9k)

Porrim

Aranea

Kurloz

Cronus

Meenah

Davesprite

Jadesprite

Jaspersprite

Jasprosesprite^2

Erisolsprite

Andrew Hussie

The Gamebro writer

Bro (if we assume the "Hello Rowlf" comic was written by him)

HATLIKER

WANT_MORE_SOCKS

At least three salamanders

(No, I didn't count the actual number of "ok"s each character used because that would take way too long. There are a ton of "ok"s, let's leave it at that.)

Okey doke, any other variants?

Other variants on the spelling that have been used in the comic:

Aradia and Sollux, of course, are often 0k.

Likewise, Kankri is 9k.

Jake gets two instances of "Okey doke".

Meulin wins for most unique spelling with her single "OK33DOK33". In fact, this is the only time she ever says any variant of the word, making her the only character who uses some variant of this word at least once but never spells it as "ok".

Ok, let's wrap this up

These statistics only include Homestuck proper. I haven't analyzed the post-canon, though I am curious now whether Kanaya's vitally important character trait of using the spelling "Okay" has been retained.

Hope you enjoyed this absolute nonsense! Go forth and have an 0k day.

#homestuck

33 notes · View notes

maybetheyregiants · 3 years

Text

I Appreciate Homestuck On A Much Deeper Level Than You

1/22/22 12:00PM

--------------------

Dennis, Dennis, Dennis.

This bitter eBay bidding war has gotten out of hand. Why should we tear each other apart like this? Yes, the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff hardcover has not been available online since 2013 and is highly sought on the collector's market. But is that any reason to drive the price north of the $92 mark, with two days, seven hours, and six minutes remaining, no less?

As I have said repeatedly, let me win this auction, and I will happily let you scan the bonus material for your own use. Just let me get my book at a fair and reasonable price. If we had joined forces on this, I could have used the "Buy It Now" feature and saved us both a lot of money—money that could have gone toward those rare Dave Strider vinyl figures we both want. But look where your pride has led us.

Why should you be the one to give in, you ask? The answer is simple: As the greater and more dedicated Homestuck fan, by all rights the book is mine. Plainly and obviously, I appreciate Homestuck on a much deeper level than you do.

Please recall, if you will, the night I first showed you Act 5 Act 2. It's bad enough that you hadn't grown up loving the act, but afterwards you called it, and I quote, "funny." Not "a deeply spiritual and highly personal statement of ambition tempered by ethics," but "funny." Was it "funny" that The Signless refused to Judas his race to a corrupt dictatorship, even though it meant giving up his life?

I never should have let you go to the kitchen for more Pringles during Vriska's big "Heroism" speech to John —the emotional apex of the comic. But as bad as that was, Dennis, you've committed far worse sins. And I think you know what I'm referring to. To call Hiveswap superior to Homestuck amounts to nothing less than blasphemy to true Homestuck fans and all other sensible people. Hiveswap, as you well know, is the first Homestuck project made after the departure of Hussie. How can it be the best when it is missing the man who was the heart, soul, and voice of the Homestuck universe, Mr. Andrew F. Hussie?

This is not even to mention the absence of Hauntswitch.

Hear me now: Andrew Hussie was Dirk. Lalo Hunt is a Hussie impersonator. Admittedly, a damn talented one—her Dirk, in particular, nearly captures the neuroses and intellectualism of the original—but the equal of Hussie? Step back from the brink, Dennis.

If you like visual novels so much, you need to get yourself a copy of Namco High and see how the real Jane does it. Or the transcendent Psycholonials. Or even To Be Or Not To Be. Anything but Pesterquest, for God's sake.

Mark my words, history will record post-Hussie Homestuck products as distinctly inferior. On that I would bet my ultra-rare autographed copy of the pioneering graphic novel Whistles: The Starlight Calliope.

I am trying to contain my Karkat Vantas-like frustration at your arrogance, but how can I speak reasonably to a man who prefers the plodding Bard Quest to the delightful, far more imaginative Problem Sleuth? Do you really fancy yourself some kind of expert Homestuck archivist just because our local convention doesn't carry Homestuck merch, forcing me to rely on you to scan the old tarot cards for me when you visit your friend who gets the For Fans by Fans booth in New York?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only copy of The Homestuck Epilouges read by you is the online version, which you read only for the Meat route. It's bad enough that you would be more swayed by that metanarrative trainwreck—a painfully gushing love letter to a sub-par literary tool—than you would by me, a genuine fan. Adding insult to injury, you probably haven't even read the other route in that very story. Why, I bet you couldn't tell John from Jake if your life depended on it.

The final insult, though, was that time you made fun of me at Ken's house for saying that the [S] Terezi: Remem8er flash of Act 6 made me teary-eyed when I read it shortly after Sept. 11. That, plus your admission that you stopped reading after Game Over. Am I to believe that someone who's never experienced the profound "Do You Remem8er Me" musical number is entitled to outbid me on a Homestuck book? The five representative comics in the Homestuck Volume 1 book are simply not enough for you? You honestly feel you deserve to own the "Nancho Party arc" in print more than I do? Try again, Tavros.

As we both know, this is about more than just a book. Throughout the years I've known you, you have consistently failed to give Homestuck it's proper due. Who taught you to read morse? Who taught you and or expression? Who taught you the data structures you enjoy to this day? Homestuck did. And you thank it how? By not even being able to distinguish the real Dirk from the new one? To a legitimate fan, the difference is incredibly obvious, almost as clear as the one between the post and pre retcon Vriskas (don't get me started).

I swear on Nepeta's grave, I will not stand idly by while you sow the seeds of animosity and discord between friends. Can't you see that you should have matured beyond this kind of behavior years ago? I urge you to overcome your foolish, Kankri-Vantas-incomprehensible grandstanding and let stand my bid for $92.50. Such is my advice. I am now done talking to you.

Oh, and regarding your MSPA forums post of a month ago: Your fanventure is not a "perfect" simulation of Problem Sleuth. Among myriad other errors, Diamonds Droogs is a non-canonical character who made his debut in the donation panels in extra episode 13 and never appeared in the original comic.

Now grow the hell up.

#homestuck #the onion #i appreciate the muppets on a much deeper level than you #andrew hussie #mspaintadventures #sweet bro and hella jeff

25 notes · View notes

rosemary-is-in-pesterquest · 4 years

Note

HS2's themes are fuckin wack crap cuz like... idk it all starts with the epilogues, right? the thing that the epilogues are trying to say is that all conflict that the characters face within the narrative is there because the audience cast their gaze upon this story and demanded entertainment. something has to happen on the stage to keep us watching, thus, it is the audience's fault that the characters suffer. but that's bullshit for so many reasons. for one thing, it ignores the role of the author. audience demand doesn't force an author's hands to write... that's a decision that the author made. we could've lived with nothing at all.

and conflict comes in many flavors. some stories hardly have any conflict at all. the whole iyashikei genre exists, like, I think we're well past understanding that cynicism, tragedy, and destruction are not the only forces that can drive a narrative. "conflict" is not the only reason for a story to be told. once again, stories tell us as much about the author as their audience. the kind of story an author deems worthy of telling is just as relevant to consider as the kind of story an audience deems worthy of attention.

and even in conflict driven stories... it matters what the conflict is, who wins, how, and why. as a simple example, when the conflict is a battle between good and evil, good wins, it does so by way of the power of friendship, and the reason it is presented this way is to promote the idea that you should be kind and help others... that's a story with a purpose. obviously this is like, children's cartoon level simple, and a story can be written to say different or more complex things, but I should always be able to ask those questions and come up with an answer.

if, as an author, Hussie wanted to accuse his audience of being culpable in the suffering of his characters, he would at least have to present the reader with a meaningful choice. and at first glance, it would almost seem like he did. meat and candy, even by their naming convention, seem as though they are giving you the option to consume a light or dark tale. but even in the names, there is a seed of judgement. Hussie has described the concept of a narrative containing both "meat" and "candy" in terms of story content, wherein meat is anything heavy in terms of plot or drama, and candy is anything that provides levity as a counterbalance, such as jokes or feel good fluff. these categories are already identified as "substance" vs. "a lack of substance" which places value on the cynical, dark route as being more truthful... conflating cynicism with realism.

and already I can see making a case for the idea that neither route is legitimate, because no story should subsist on just one or the other... both need to be at play for the story to be balanced. and you could even argue that the lampooning of the epilogues' legitimacy was the point... that they were supposed to be outside of canon and regarded as illegitimate all along. but then not only does that negate the author's ability to let the audience choose the kind of story they're participating in, but the story itself doesn't play by its own rules.

does candy truly read like some fluffy pandering fanservice filler, the way one might expect it to? and is meat totally devoid of any levity, while focusing only on plot machinations and/or the characters' dramatic downward spiral? I would argue that, even though the consensus seems to be that both routes are equally dismal, neither even gets dark enough to live up to that end of the bargain either. the execution is messy... the concept doesn't hold up.

and what of the initial concept? that the audience's observation of a story forces the characters to enact a conflict for the sake of our entertainment? is that really what's going on here? from the initial pitch, you could already tell that the answer was no. nobody asked for this. and so we cast our apparently destructive audience gaze onto Homestuck 2.

but there, we find another curveball. the story is... almost becoming self aware? in that it casts a character in the role of the author, and also identifies him firmly as the villain. but see, this is still a blame shift. and maybe that would've been less obvious if Andrew Hussie had not introduced himself as a character inside of his own web comic throughout the original narrative. the true author is already here.

the villain of homestuck was never the audience, and it was never a fictional character. if we're really shattering the 4th wall... if we're really ceasing our suspension of disbelief, pulling back the curtain, and acknowledging that these characters are fabricated, manipulated entities with real people behind the wheel, then there is only one conclusion we can possibly come to. the author has control over the narrative... no one else. and the things the author chooses to say with the platform they've made for themselves? those things are on them. what are we to understand about the author, as his audience?

this is why people are looking past the story entirely and engaging with the creative team, for better or for worse. if you break your story enough, it won't work anymore. and when the audience finds it in shambles, completely unusable as a story... you know, the thing it was intended to be? they might actually look to the people who broke it and ask them why they did that. it was a nice story. it performed several functions that people actually enjoyed. was dismantling it like this really the most fulfilling thing they could've done with it?

and I'll tell you another thing. part of why people take it so personally is because, just like how Andrew Hussie, the homestuck character, was a stand-in for Andrew Hussie, the human being... many of the characters in homestuck were stand-ins for us. John Egbert was for people who had an obsessive nerdy interest in movies, Rose was for people who wrote fanfiction, Nepeta was for people who ship characters a lot, she and Terezi were for people who RP, and also... Dave was for people who were trying to act cooler than they felt, Jade was for people who were lonely, Kanaya was for people who wanted to help people and be accepted, Vriska was for people who were hard to love and felt judged for that.

who do these writers think they're messing with?

and I just want to make it clear that I'm not condoning any kind of harassment of them, or anything like that. ultimately, my point here is that we are not our effigies. and in the same way that an author can't blame shift onto a fictional character, a person cannot claim the direction of a fictional story as a reason to do real harm.

but homestuck was always unique in that it spoke very directly to its audience. when Hussie added real pieces of us to his fake people, he had a powerful vehicle for the messages that he wanted us to hear. lots of stories have characters that are written to be relatable, but you'd be hard pressed to find ones that feel quite so specific as the cast of homestuck. to our era. to our humor. to the values of people growing up in our online cultural circumstances.

if this specific author is going to choose to act like a villain, at least in the small-scale context of this comic, then what is that setting us up to be? maybe nothing so presumptuous as a hero... maybe just like, Dave of Guy, y'know? but Dave made normal a pretty heroic thing to be... I think it's up to us to just be normal and have normal fun, in spite of the shit show. regular old homestuck already said all the valuable stuff it was gonna. for my part, I'm just gonna take that and run off with it. ignoring HS2 doesn't make it go away, but paying attention to it doesn't make it good either... so I guess whatever.

that's the themes. the themes are just a big "so what" shrug. most complicated way to say "who cares" I've ever seen.

This is a really good analysis

#long post /#I should probably start using that tag just in case it clogs up people's feeds

72 notes · View notes

just-antithings · 3 years

Note

that last homestuck anon made me crack up, because the idea of Andrew Hussie introducing any aspect of homestuck as an “apology” to fans is, uhhhhhh, wildly optimistic, i would say? Hussie himself predicted that Rose/Dave would tank after the sibling reveal with all the trollish delight that was typical for him, and then was gleefully appalled when it did not. some people definitely did jump ship, but it was a fairly subdued, drama-free affair because fucked up stuff didn’t get the kind of heat in fandom pre-2015 that is does now—there were some people who were loud and angry (as there always are) but most people simply decided it wasn’t for them and hopped on a different ship. a fair amount of people also started shipping (or started shipping it harder) BECAUSE of the sibling reveal—this was a point in fandom when phrases like ‘incest is best’/‘incest for the win’/‘incest is wincest’ got thrown around and no one so much as batted an eye, plus the extra angst was especially welcome in this particular corner of fandom. Rose/Dave definitely became less of a powerhouse as more characters were introduced and more ships became possible, but it never really lost steam and continued to be a big ship long after the reveal—iirc Rose/Dave (and ships containing it) had strong turn outs for the Homestuck Shipping Olympics and World Cups. (and you ARE right about literally anything being shipped, the HSO was a very good time if you were into wild, nonsensical fandom bullshit)

when it comes to trolls and incest: i think the general consensus in fandom was that, because of “genetic slurry”, any relationship between two trolls actually was likely to be incestuous to some extent, but since everything’s blended up like a jizz protein shake, we’re probably still dodging a lot of the genetic complications people worry about when it comes to incest—it would be like a very mild, distant cousins flavor of incest. there’s just flat-out no incest taboo for trolls culturally, tho, because there are simply no family units among trolls; no incest taboo if there’s no family to fuck. (a few people DID try to replicate a similarly fucked-up taboo with pitch/pale quadrant flips, tho, and that was fun!)

dancestor ships were interesting because ancestors were trolls with whom their descendants shared a lot of traits and likely had a very similar genetic makeup, which led to them being referred to as both incest and clonecest (in ways that ranged from negative to neutral to positive). from what i recall, tho, dancestor shipping wasn’t unpopular because of the incest/clonecest aspect so much as it was because everyone already had well-established ships they were invest in and a lot people simply didn’t like the ancestors all that much. i do think that timing-wise, tho, the introduction of the ancestors lines up with increasing panic over moral purity in fandom, so that might have also factored into things!

i don’t think there’s any way to say conclusively that the impossibility of troll incest WASN’T an apology, but considering Hussie was someone who was (a) writing a story by throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what stuck, while his audience just. ate all of it, even the floor spaghetti, and (b) fairly infamous for doing things he knew would piss off readers and thriving off the fandom mayhem he wreaked, i would say it being an apology is VERY unlikely.

(if this is all stuff the mods already knew, my bad. i just can’t hear about homestuck and not jump in 😅)

You're probably right, hussie has always been a troll. I'm personally fairly familiar with homestuck fandom so it's always cool to see another person talk about it!

#mod magma #mod RHO #the incestuous slurry jokes are forever etched into my brain #ask

17 notes · View notes

rabble-dabble · 3 years

Note

Rabble please don’t explain how the hell C!Techno discourse is similar to Homestuck epilogue discourse

Please the people must know

ahhh well there's probably a TON of people who could explain the discourse better than i could, and considering i avoided most of it for my own mental health you might wanna take what i say with a grain of salt (and that my own perspective and somewhat bad memory may not have everything accurate)

but it was like....preeeeety bad??? like you had people who liked the epilogues and people who HATED them. like i mean, you could say both sides were drastic- you had people who outright defended the actions of the characters (like, uh, jane's stuff, and dirk's stuff, and just general character actions that 'could make sense' if they were 'adults') and then you had the other side, which was more like gathered hatred for what Andrew Hussie (creator of Homestuck, webcomic) and his writers did to some of the characters and their development (jade and davekat...kanaya and rose....terezi and vriska/john...) worsened by actions done by characters in-universe with a LOT of things that were barely properly warned for.

one of the worst things to happen was the june/john discourse.

so, okay, a thing to explain: Andrew went out and planted some toblerones (like, the chocolate) in the real world for fans to find and essentially "grant" the wish of whatever the fan asked for. one fan asked for a headcanon for John Egbert, a trans girl named June, to become canon. Andrew "granted" this wish to be true.

and, uh....the fandom had some opinions about that.

this was after Homestuck had finished, by the way, so take that into context while reading this.

i could remember how horrible it was. i will say, it was bad on "both" sides - meaning, the people on twitter who horrifically bullied those who didn't accept the headcanon about trans girl june, to the point of accusing transphobia and people hating trans women, and to the other end of the wild spectrum of those who argued against the trans headcanons that people put forth (but, like, clearly in a transphobic way). in any case, it was not good. horrible. bad.

obviously, it was not the entire fandom doing this. it was just those "bad apples" you'll find in any fandom, yknow? but it was straight-up awful. people could NOT be in the middle ground- you were either found transphobic for not accepting the june headcanon, or a hardcore "june truther" for being okay with the headcanon. i remember seeing asks in the tags just about the discourse, being terrified to even mention john/june because i thought i'd get barricaded with asks or being "called out" in the discourse.

and in my own personal experience, if you look in my blog, you'll find the ask i did get from someone who claimed i was transphobic for "liking john better". at that point in my blog, i was drawing JohnKat, a ship that involved John.

you wanna know something ironic about that ask, claiming i was being transphobic?

i'm a trans male. i'm literally trans. i got told i was transphobic because i chose to headcanon john as a male instead of a female, even though it was my own right to headcanon john/june as i chose. as much as anyone else had the right to chose to headcanon june as a trans girl, i had to headcanon john as a guy.

so, yeah, it wasn't too good.

if there's anything i'd improve on from back then? to just say to believe in what you wanted to believe and not bully other people into believing what was "canon" just because it was canon. i don't like participating in a lotta discourse that happens because it either eventually blows over or it was simply a lotta arguing about nothing. if you argue with someone who CLEARLY sees the story differently, you're not really gonna win the "battle", y'know? there's no point in wasting your own time trying to convince someone that canon is "one way or another". it's up to interpretation, and if someone's interpretation is wildly different than yours, then that's just what it is.

#answered #ask #homestuck #epilogues #dream smp #discourse #june/john taggers sorry!!!#this is explaining homestuck discourse so you might wanna skip this post #the last part is my personal experience w/ the june john stuff #it was honestly TERRIFYING. to be a trans male and being told i couldn't headcanon male john??#to be told i was transphobic?? even though every headcanon of john was valid? it was just emotionally scary #and like no one should HAVE to say they're trans to headcanon a trans character. or even just a characters gender in general #the thing is people were more okay with trans roxy than trans june that it was fucked #there was a LOT of transphobic things said....and it was so bad for the trans women who actually liked june and had it ruined for them #by people who would 'defend' june. it was just SOOO bad #the dsmp discourse seems so mild in comparison bcs there just isn't that 'type' of discourse rlly #i mean theres a lot more focused on than trans characters. so its like just a whisper in the wind yknow???#anyways im tired so jist of it is that discourse sucks so don't do it lmao

5 notes · View notes

luna-almighty-god · 3 years

Text

An Ampora doesn't cry n°5 [HumanStuck]

Click here to read on Ao3

Homestuck belongs to Andrew Hussie

Please don't refer to this fanfic if you are looking for canonical information.

Rating M : presence of lemon / threesome becoming a foursome

Enjoy reading!

=== ===

Previous chapter

=== ===

The following week arrives quickly, and Eridan is proud to reveal, for the first time, his apartment. He took the initiative to invite the three idiots -yes, he insists on calling them that- using the excuse that "Since Gamzee is going to move in, we might as well take a look to see how he's going to settle in. And by the way, the other two can come so they'll know where to crash now."

Sollux remains dumbfounded, as do Gamzee and Karkat.

" ... An apartment big enough for two, you say? Damn it Eridan, you could house the whole gang, this isn't an apartment, it's a castle!"

Eridan answers them with a big smile. Well, he admits it, he was very modest when talking about his home. His apartment takes up a whole floor of the building, one would almost believe in a real house! The entrance hall leads directly to the large living room, which is itself connected to the kitchen. American style kitchen, beware! There is only a counter to separate the two rooms, giving a large open space. The living room has a large couch located in front of a flat screen TV, and Karkat is the first to get outraged:

"Holy shit, you have a curved TV?! You're kidding!"

The smallest one leaves to rave about the screen, while Gamzee quietly goes to open the doors. There are no corridors, the living room is the place to go from one room to another. Gamzee just takes a quick look: an office, Eridan's bedroom, a bathroom - gosh, there's a shower AND a bath? - as well as a laundry room...

" ... Wow bro, this is so cool!" comments Gamzee, his eyes sparkling, even if he doesn't seem that surprised. He must have lived in this kind of place before his parents kicked him out.

Sollux and Karkat don't know where to look anymore. It's not only the luxury of the apartment that disturbs them, but also the impeccable cleanliness. The living room is so... pure, devoid of personal belongings. You'd think no one lives there, that it's just a picture in a design magazine.

Sollux looks at Eridan, searching for the right words before asking:

"...isn't this...too big, for one person?"

In other words: didn't you feel fucking lonely the whole time?

Eridan gets embarrassed, pouts, looks away and shrugs:

"Better too much than not enough, right?"

In other words: Yes, but now I'm not alone anymore.

This makes Sollux smile, and he decides to relax and make himself at home. He goes to join Karkat near the TV:

"I brought my switch. Shall we connect it to the screen? It can be really good.

- Oh yeah ! A mario party ! Karkat is delighted.

- No, more like Mario Kart.

- In your dreams, you killed the game! There's no fun in playing when all you do is win!

- Winning? I don't win. I DEFUND you."

Sollux approaches a mocking face and Karkat blushes with shame:

"YOU'LL SEE, IT'S ME WHO'LL DEFEAT YOU!"

Eridan holds back a laugh, deciding to let them settle in while he joins Gamzee in... shit, where did he go? He glances around the other rooms, only to find him in his own room, collapsed on his bed.

Eridan clears his throat, hoping his embarrassment isn't too obvious. Other than Feferi, no one has ever been in here, let alone a handsome guy who has ever touched him a little too intimately.

"Gamzee?"

The respondent, who was staring at the ceiling, straightens up on his elbows and smiles at him::

"Hey bro~ Sorry, your bed looked so comfortable, I couldn't resist~"

Eridan shrugs, continues to look at him in silence, before hesitating:

" ... Are you alright? What were you thinking about?

- How lucky I am to be here! Eheh, this is great, too great!"

The taller one grabs him, pulls him to fall on top of him. Eridan lets out a squeak, turns crimson. Shit, he definitely can't get used to this kind of gesture.

"You're the best Eridan, frankly the best bro of all time!

- Pff... obviously, yes."

Eridan tries to keep his head up, to swallow his embarrassment, but it's hard to stay calm when someone is hugging you like that, on your bed, in your room, and then comes to kiss you on the cheek, then on the edge of the lips... and on the mouth...

"S-Stop!" exclaims the host, placing his hand over Gamzee's mouth.

The taller man blinks in surprise, and Eridan bites his tongue before looking away:

" ... L-Listen... it's not that I don't like it, but there... no. Not there, not like that, not here.

- ... Like this? Here?

- ... I... both of us... In my room... it's..."

Gamzee stares at him again, trying to figure out what he means, and Eridan holds back from calling him names for causing him such embarrassment. Damn it, does he really have to explain it like that, out loud?!

Eridan desperately flees his gaze, and feeling his breath against his palm doesn't help.

"...This is...too intimate..."

Gamzee finally seems to understand, as his eyes widen slightly. But instead of stopping, he grabs Eridan's wrist to take it off his mouth, and offers a mischievous smile:

"You want to close the door? The bros won't bother us~"

Eridan jumps to his feet and his expression is one of laughter. He winces under the panic, the embarrassment, the intense embarrassment that clutches his heart and makes him want to run away:

"NO!!!"

He has lost control of his voice, his scream echoes throughout the apartment. That's the problem with having a big space: the echo is too good. He and Gamzee stare at each other, one dead of shame, the other stunned. Eridan takes off, rushes towards the exit, crosses the living room to the kitchen. Gamzee follows him, his big legs allow him to catch up easily although he does not dare to touch him:

"Hey, Eri, was that a joke?

- Your jokes are shit!

- Well, maybe it was not completely a joke...?

- It gets better and better!

- You know I'd never force you to do anything, right?"

Eridan didn't answer. The memory of the amphitheater comes back to him, but he refrains from bringing it up. It would be too mean to accuse him of having forced him at that moment, knowing that Eridan somewhat indulged and enjoyed the treatment. But damn... !

" ... You're fucking boring." he said, sulkily, as he walked around the counter and focused on making a hot drink, just to keep his hands busy and not have to look at the others.

That doesn't stop Gamzee from coming and sticking to his back and hugging him shyly, with the attitude of the one who made a mistake and is trying to be forgiven:

"Sorry... are you mad at me?"

Eridan glances at him, tenses at his puppy dog look, finally growling as he refocuses on his drink:

"...no. It's not that.

- What is it then...?"

Karkat looks at them from across the counter:

"He's embarrassed, you idiot! You can see he's not used to it!"

Gamzee pouts:

"Is that true Eri? Are you embarrassed?

- N-No, I'm not embarrassed! I'm just...I... Argh, yes, I'm embarrassed! There, happy?"

Eridan gets out of his grip and goes to lean against the worktop, his drink in his hands. Karkat rolls his eyes and looks at Gamzee:

"You have to take it easy, idiot. Not everyone is comfortable with physical contact.

- Like you?

- I'M VERY COMFORTABLE WITH IT!"

It' s Karkat who is now crimson, and Gamzee laughs. He goes around to join the smaller one, leans over, winks at him:

"Well go ahead, show me~"

Karkat swears, comes to kiss him, but with such vehemence that their teeth clash, and the noise makes Eridan wince, as well as Karkat, while Gamzee blinks and finally explodes with laughter:

"Ahah, too violent little bro !~

- S-Shut up!!!"

Gamzee pats his head, amused, then walks away to join Sollux on the couch. Karkat seems to be the one pouting now. He joins Eridan in the kitchen, hands in the pockets:

"Tch, how boring..."

Eridan hides his smile and just shakes his head. He then proposes:

"Do you want to drink something?

- ... Mm... water, for now."

The host nods and serves him a glass. Karkat grabs it, takes a small sip, before setting the container back down on the counter without seeming to care more than that. He looks at Eridan hesitantly, seems to want to say something but finally remains silent.

" ... Is something wrong?" asks the one with glasses.

Karkat twiddles his fingers, eyes glued to the ground, wincing as he desperately searches for words. And obviously, being unable to speak, to explain himself, frustrates him enormously, makes him blush with shame. He just seems to want to run away, but is tugged by his ego, which is pushing him to face up, trying to get him to talk.

"I..."

Eridan isn't sure how to help him. So he remains silent, attentive, patient. What could the smaller one have to reveal, that it seems so hard to talk about?

"FUCK!" swears Karkat, who gets angry at himself, at the words that still don't come out.

He stamps his foot, opens and closes his mouth several times. Eridan feels bad for him, guesses how humiliated he must feel to give such a show. But even if he would like to reassure him and to take him in his arms, he is afraid that it doesn't help, that it embarrasses his comrade only more.

But Karkat suddenly grabs his hand, squeezes it hard, shaking, before closing his eyes, taking a breath, and unpacking in one go:

"CanIkissYou?!"

He almost screamed, and now he remains frozen, eyes closed, waiting for his answer like an ordeal.

Eridan blinks, bewildered:

" ... Kiss me?" he repeats, fearing to have misunderstood.

Karkat empourpre, nods sharply the head without daring to repeat himself. Eridan remains silent, taken by surprise, he clearly didn't expect such a request.

Suddenly, Karkat lets him go, moves back, as if he had been burned:

"No, No forget it, forget it, it was shit, forget it!"

He goes to leave the kitchen but Eridan holds him by the hand, sensing that something is wrong, that Karkat is no longer just nervous but downright panicked.

"But no, I was just surprised!

- Rah, no, leave it the fuck alone! I shouldn't have asked, I don't even know what I was expecting! I'm not Gamzee or Sollux, I don't even know why I'm trying!"

Eridan widens his eyes, before frowning and pulling him up, forcing him to face him, to look at him:

"But you don't have to look like them to kiss me!

- Of course I do! I'm not... I don't have the same ease or the same fucking way of turning the head! Look at this, in front of them you lose control, in front of me you talk to me like I'm a kid!"

Karkat releases his hands and brings them back against him, crossing his arms, shoulders hunched, closing in on himself as he looks down feverishly:

"You all do this... always treating me like I'm a fucking kid! They don't even give me a chance to be ..."

But he pauses, bites his lip, so hard that Eridan already perceives a little reddish liquid appearing. He understands that this isn't just a problem with him, but a problem with Gamzee and Sollux of which he has no knowledge. Although... he suspects, deep down, the nature of the problem.

"...I'm borrowing the bathroom from you." growls Karkat before leaving the kitchen...only to blush when he sees his two lovers staring at him from the couch. Shit, yeah, it's true that this fucking apartment doesn't have the concept of "private space."

Gamzee straightens up, concerned:

" ... Karka..."

But the smaller one ignores him, slams the bathroom door behind him. He doesn't seem so much to be mad at the others but rather at himself.

Sollux grimaces and leaves the couch, moves closer to the shower room, knocks gently:

" ... Karkat, open please."

Silence. Sollux insists:

" Can I come in? Only me? ... If there's a problem, I'd rather we talk about it."

A click. Sollux opens the door and rushes into the bathroom, taking care to close it behind him.

Eridan leaves the kitchen in turn to get a visual on Gamzee but is surprised not to see him. He walks around the couch, only to realize that he has curled up on it after pulling his hood down over his head. He looks so small and vulnerable in this position, Eridan feels his heart clench. He gets closer, sits down beside him, comes to rub his arm gently.

"...I'm such a fucking bad friend, aren't I...?" asks Gamzee piteously, hiding under his hood.

- ... No. You're just clumsy, like anyone else."

Gamzee shakes his head:

"... no... no, I'm such a jerk, I do nonsense... I do nonsense for my parents, nonsense for my buddies, nonsense for my boyfriends... I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm like this..."

Eridan would have cried about it. But it's not his place to be comforted now. He resumes a hard air, grabs the hood of the other without warning to pull it abruptly, revealing the defeated face of Gamzee. This last is startled, looks at him, the wet eyes, before remaining bewildered when he sees Eridan approaching and taking him a kiss. A long, voracious kiss, an experimental kiss too. Eridan has never done this, but he doesn't fancy a simple brush. No, he tries to devour his mouth, and this while pushing him back against the pillows.

Soon, the host finds himself astride his guest, breaks the kiss, breathless. Gamzee remains mute, breathes as fast as he does, and the situation seems so incredible. The taller man doesn't believe he's ever experienced this, no one has ever managed to just...submit him?

"F-Fuck bro..."

Eridan glares at him, and his voice becomes implacable:

"Apologize again for being yourself, and I'll slap you, is that clear?

- ... but...

- You're not an idiot, or a freak, or whatever the hell you've been told! You screwed up, it happens, but don't feel sorry for yourself for hours either!"

Because Eridan knows all too well that feeling of being the most laughable being in the universe, that feeling of shame and loneliness that makes you want to hide in a corner and never come out again. And there's no way he's going to let his loved ones experience the same thing.

Gamzee's laughter returns, more tender, more cheerful:

"Ahah... you're really... really the best."

Eridan relaxes a bit, finally laughing back:

"Yeah... Yeah, I know."

They take some time to calm down, before Eridan stands up, letting Gamzee straighten up. He goes back for his hot drink and takes the opportunity to bring one back to his comrade. They then sit down, one beside the other, in the sofa, waiting patiently for the two others to come back.

After about twenty minutes, Sollux is the first one to show up, very quickly followed by a Karkat with an elusive and slightly red look. Eridan and Gamzee hold back any comment but understand that he has probably cried.

Yet the smaller one stands in front of them, although he doesn't look directly at them:

" ... I'm sorry. I..."

He hesitates again, but this time he takes a breath, and suddenly glares at Gamzee:

"I WANT YOU TO LET ME DOMINATE! IT BORES ME TO BE ALWAYS PASSIVE! "

His face took again a beautiful red tint, but Eridan holds him in respect to be so honest on a subject which he considers so embarrassing. Gamzee, for his part, blinks before tilting his head, confused:

" ... Okay, yes.

- ... Seriously? You accept so easily? Karkat is astonished.

- We never tried, so yeah I'll try. Sorry little bro, I didn't think you were serious about it. I thought this 'want to dominate' thing was some kind of role-play where I had to submit you.

- BUT ARE YOU SERIOUS? I ASK YOU A MILLION TIMES!

- Yeah, every time we were in bed, so I thought it was a game?

- FUCK IT, I JUST HAD TO ASK YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONVERSATION LIKE THAT? BUT HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO FIND THE OPPORTUNITY! IT'S FUCKING EMBARRASSING!"

Karkat plunges his face in his hands while howling of rage. Eridan realizes that Sollux, remained in the background, stifles a laugh behind his hand. He keeps himself from laughing, sympathizing with the poor Karkat who is dying of shame.

Gamzee opens his arms:

"Do you want to try now little bro?

- Wh- BUT NOT!

- Just a kiss?"

Karkat cusses, grunts, looks everywhere but at the other three boys. He finally gets closer to Gamzee:

"...If you mess with me, I'll take you apart...” he threatens.

He climbs onto the sofa, settles between the legs of the taller boy, puts his hands on his cheeks and looks at him shyly, seeming to gauge the situation, thinking about how he's going to handle it. Gamzee keeps his smile, curious and patient, while Eridan observes them from the corner of his eye with the embarrassing feeling of being a stalker.

Karkat finally comes to put his lips, much more lightly than the previous time, letting their mouths move one against the other. Without moving away he moves his head a little, changes the angle, presses harder while pushing Gamzee against the back of the sofa, coming to stick his body all against his. He comes to nibble the lower lip, licks it with the end of his tongue, and the bigger one shudders while opening gently his mouth. Karkat embraces his shoulders, deepens the kiss, slides his tongue against his sister in a hot sigh.

Eridan tears himself from his contemplation, the burning face. He fixes an invisible point, trying to ignore the movements of the couple, the wet noises which invade the room. Shit... Shit, they really don't know the term "privacy", do they?

He is startled when Sollux enters his field of vision, and he guesses at once that he has an idea behind the head. Difficult to ignore the one with the two colors of eyes when this one approaches you and that, in spite of his glasses, you feel his glance piercing your being. Eridan swallows, moves back by reflex against the back of the sofa. Sollux approaches an amused smile, takes him quietly his cup of the hands to put it back on the table, before climbing on the sofa and stuck it there.

"Relax..." he whispers.

He brings his face closer to his, and Eridan almost perceives a laugh when he asks:

"Can I kiss you?"

Even when Sollux whispers, his voice remains mesmerizing. Eridan struggles not to look away, especially fearing that the other two will continue kissing. My god, what is this situation? That appears normal to them, to them three, to kiss each other like that, in the middle of the living room? He raises his glasses feverishly, bites his lip, finishes by nodding gently.

Sollux loses his smile, becomes more serious while he puts his hands against the file, on both sides of the head of Eridan. He mimics Karkat and begins with a tender, patient kiss, to begin the contact, to feel their lips brush against each other, to caress.

"...open your mouth..." he whispers, and Eridan shudders and complies.

When he feels Sollux's tongue between his lips, he closes his eyes tightly and holds his breath. He thinks he hears the other laughing again, but he is too embarrassed to get angry right away. He is nervous, too nervous. The tongue brushes against his, wringing out a squeak, and Eridan opens his eyes in surprise, in a flinch that causes Sollux to back away.

"... uh... are you okay? " questions the one with the vairons eyes, a little worried to be gone too far.

Eridan hides his red face behind his arm :

"No! No, you irritate me, moron!"

Sollux finds his smile, takes his hand, obliges him to show his ashamed and shy expression. He comes back to kiss him, without begging the authorization this time. A muffled moan is perceptible, difficult to say who pushed it. Eridan wriggles, closes his eyes, the heat rising to his head. The tongue of Sollux returns to titillate his, their burning breaths mingle, and in this flow of sensation, Ampora seeks to what to hold on. He claws the sofa, but startles when he feels a hand taking his, intertwining their fingers. He half-opens his eyes, only to glance at it, to realize that it is Gamzee's hand.

But Sollux prevents him from thinking about it and pushes him to close his eyes, intensifying the kiss, tearing him another unspeakable noise. Shit ... He feels the hands leaving the file to settle on his shoulders, come to untie his scarf, exposed his neck to the free air. A shiver seizes him, followed by a weak whimper when the fingers come to caress his nape.

Sollux moves aside, and Eridan takes advantage of it to catch his breath. At least he thought he had the time, but he reopens his eyes abruptly as a groan, very strong, very real, escapes him and resounds in the living room. Sollux, that bastard... ! At what moment did he slip his face in his neck, did he have the audacity to come to put his lips there, to suck his skin?

Humiliated, Eridan tries to push him away with his free hand, the other still imprisoned by Gamzee's.

"Wh- Sto-StopAH!"

He finds himself unable to articulate, his throat is devoured, snatched up by greedy lips, pressed. Nibbled by teasing teeth, he squeals, twists, arches. Each corner of his skin seems to burn him, as marked by the least contact.

"S-SOL-UGH!"

He hiccups, his vision blurred, taken by a fever that he does not explain. He looks for air painfully, his heart beats too much, he hears almost only that. That and his indecent moans, those obscene noises he tries to keep quiet, in vain.

Is it good? He doesn't know, he doesn't understand, it's close to the sensations that Gamzee made him feel, he feels himself going just as crazy, and yet his intimacy is not touched, there is only his neck that is taken by assault. Is this normal? Is it normal to be in such a state for this, to moan like he does, to have this feeling of losing your mind?

The pleasure is being choked by the panic that grips his throat, by the apprehension of what is happening and what is coming next, what attitude he should have... what attitude is he supposed to have?

"S-STOP!"

Beyond the scream, it's the sob that petrifies Sollux and causes him to sit up, to look at Eridan.

Eridan who can't take it anymore, who gasps for air as he can. His skin is hot, his neck marked by hickeys and bites - not very deep, but still. Eridan, who doesn't even stare at him, but on the contrary flees eye contact, pulls himself out of Gamzee's hand to wipe his face, to try to dry the tears that have escaped him. He sniffs, feels ashamed to almost cry for that, does everything to regain his calm.

The silence strikes him. He realizes that he had to interrupt the other two, and guilt tightens his stomach. He didn't want to spoil the moment, he only wanted to slow down Sollux, to calm down the game. He doesn't dare say anything, doesn't even manage to apologize as the "sorry" itches his lips. But the silence that lingers scares him, he still doesn't dare to look at the others. Did he piss them off? Are they mad at him?

" ... Sorry, I scared you..." Sollux whispers softly to him.

Feverishly, Eridan looks at him out of the corner of his eye, and a wave of relief washes over him when he doesn't blame him for stopping him. But pride obliges, the Ampora bites his lip and crosses his arms, haughty:

"No! But we had said 'kiss', just 'kiss'!" he scolds, and this in spite of his glance still shining of tears, in spite of the traces that it left on his cheeks.

Sollux grimaces by observing him, doesn't believe for a moment in this false anger. He dares to stretch out his hand towards him again, Eridan tenses up but lets him put his hand on his cheek and caresses him gently with his thumb.

" Yes, excuse me, I rushed. Is that okay?"

Eridan hesitates, looks away, passes a hand over his eyes to wipe away the last of his tears.

" ... Yes.

- And the truth?

- But it's okay I tell you!

- Tell me again, looking me in the eyes."

Eridan gets annoyed, looks at him again, but swallows when he sees Sollux taking off his glasses, plunging vairish pupils into his own. It's unfair...it's really unfair, how can he answer with that penetrating look on him?

" ... I..."

Eridan purses his lips, and no matter how hard he struggles, he finally lowers his gaze. He tries to hide his weakness by taking off his glasses in turn, only to pretend to clean them, as he searches for his words, searches for a way to not humiliate himself further:

"...I just didn't expect you to do that, that's all. It's just surprise.

- Did I hurt you?

- Wh- But no, but it's not that!

- Fear then?

- No, no I wasn't scared!"

Sollux grabs one of his wrists, Eridan is startled and raises his head, and this time yes, this time it is well of the anger which starts to seize him and which pushes him to throw a black glance to his interlocutor:

" Let me go!

- Eridan, it's okay to be afraid, especially about this kind of thing.

- I am NOT afraid!

- You're shaking.

- NO! I'M NOT SHAKING!

- You're screaming.

- BECAUSE YOU'RE PISSING ME OFF!"

Eridan doesn't know with what strength he manages to straighten up, to push Sollux and make him fall from the sofa. Sollux who doesn't hide his astonishment by ending up with his ass on the floor, while Eridan stands up mad with anger:

"I DON'T NEED YOU TO THROW OUT THE OBVIOUS, I DON'T NEED YOU TO PATRONIZE ME, I DON'T NEED YOU TO MAKE FUN OF ME!"

Sollux frowns:

"What?! But I'm not making fun of you!"

And as he straightens up, he spits with deep annoyance:

"Stop being paranoid, shit!

- Paranoid?! No, but it's getting better and better! You're the first one to say I need to find the right partner, then you jump down my throat and I'm not even allowed to take it wrong?

- I didn't jump down your throat! And you should have stopped me earlier if it bothered you so much!

- I tried to push you away, you didn't want to hear it!!!

- Because you were moaning! You liked it, didn't you?!

- BUT I DON'T KNOW! I NEVER FELT THAT WAY BEFORE!

- I THOUGHT GAMZEE HAD ALREADY TOUCHED YOU?!

- THAT'S NOT THE POINT!

- YES OF COURSE! WHEN IT'S GAMZEE IT'S OK, WHEN IT'S ME I CAN GO FUCK MYSELF!

- THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID!"

They are silent, only to catch their breath, their voices hoarse from yelling, but they continue to stare at each other. It's up to the one who will start again first, the one who will dare to break this brief moment of calm, the one who will provoke new hostilities...

But they are preceded by Karkat who interposes himself between them:

"Guys, seriously, calm down!"

And for it to be him who orders this, it is that they have to go. They break the visual exchange to observe the smaller one, only a few seconds, before Eridan turns away with a pest, putting a hand on his neck, hiding the marks on his skin. He makes about face and gains the bathroom, his steps clattering dryly on the ground, sign that his anger isn't appeased.

Karkat blows a blow, reassured that that doesn't start a fight... but it is Gamzee who makes the blow of grace by observing Sollux:

"Damn, he's the only one to make you scream so much."

Sollux chokes, blushes - of anger or embarrassment? - and retorts a magnificent "SHUT UP!"

Karkat rolls his eyes and gives him a blow of elbow:

"He's not wrong. First time I see you lose patience so quickly.

- Tch, I didn't ask you anything.

- Don't pout, Captor, and go apologize instead. Problems are best solved by talking, as you so aptly put it."

Sollux doesn't miss the mockery in the smaller boy's voice, though the latter is serious. He grumbles, massages the nape of his neck, before blowing and going in the direction of the bathroom, not without forgetting to put back his glasses. To believe that he is going to spend his evening in this room...

He knocks, but contrary to previously he opens without waiting for an answer, to fall on Eridan who stands in front of the mirror and who seems to disinfect some bites. There is a blank, the Ampora observes it in the mirror before simply ignoring it, frowned. Sollux enters and closes the door behind him, but the uneasiness is present. If he knows how to calm the game with Karkat, it is more difficult in front of Eridan.

"... I really thought you liked it." ends up saying Sollux, hands in pockets, without letting him out of sight.

The host grunts, continues to pat the slight wounds of his cotton, before taking out some cream and spreading a dab of it on his neck :

"... fuck you.

- I'm trying to have a conversation here. Can you be more open?

- To say what? To yell at you again that I DON'T KNOW? I don't know if I liked it, if I hated it, if you fucking hurt me and I want to do it again! I don't know, Gamzee drove me as crazy as you did, and if you must know I ended up crying in his arms! There, happy?

- ... But... Fucking happy about what?! I don't understand you, what's the problem exactly ? Are you angry with us ? Because we forced you ?

- No way! You didn't.. RAH!"

Eridan turns to him, annoyed:

"Forget it, get out, go back with the others, I'll join you!

- NO! Are you mad because you don't know what you feel? You always have to try new things, it's like with the motorcycle, you have to...

- I'M TIRED OF EMBARRASSING MYSELF!"

Sollux opens his eyes wide:

"...huh?"

Eridan nervously runs a hand through his hair:

"I'm tired of humiliating myself with every single thing I do, every single thing that happens! I'm sick of crying in front of you, saying stupid shit in front of you, freaking out over nothing, ruining the moment, just... shit, just shit, that's it! When I tell you that 'it's ok' can't you just accept it without questioning, without insisting and trying to do a fucking psychoanalysis? No because I have a shrink for that! Or I'll ask Lalonde, trust me that girl doesn't need a certificate to give you a full analysis!"

Sollux stares at him without a word, then massages his temples as he takes it all in:

"...no but...Damn it, Eridan Ampora, what's keeping me from hitting you?

- Wha...

- How do you expect me not to ask questions when you pushed me back to the edge of the tears? I forced you to the point of crying, and you want me to turn a blind eye to that? But who do you think I am, how can you expect me not to care if you cry? There is no humiliation! If anyone is humiliated it's me, me and my fucking guilt!"

Eridan further:

"Ok, I pushed you away too hard, but you were going too fast! That doesn't mean you should blame yourself, damn it! I don't need to be mothered at the drop of a hat!

- How should I know?! We've only been together for a week, let me learn to find the fucking balance, a relationship doesn't just work like that, at the snap of a finger!"

The tube of cream falls on the ground, surprises Sollux who is astonished, throwing a glance on the ground before looking again at Eridan who has the bewildered face.

"What? What?" he panics, fearing to have said a new bullshit which will start again a violent argument.

- ... We' re a couple?"

Eridan's voice was stunned. Sollux remained blissful.

" ... Huh?

- ... What?"

They looked at each other for a long time, equally confused.

" ... Eridan... We're... Yeah, we're together... ? No ?

- B-but I don't know, You tell me!

- What do you mean I have to tell you?! You should know!

- But how?! Well, kissing and touching me all the time doesn't mean we're a couple!

- Are you kidding me?! Do you let anyone touch you like that?!

- Of course not !! Only you!!!"

Eridan becomes flushed, brings a hand to his mouth as he looks away, suddenly more shy:

"B-But, it's just that... that I don't know, there was no... I never imagined... me, with you? It's...It's unthinkable."

Sollux frowns, takes a step forward:

"And why?

- But... But because it's me? I know you said you liked me, okay, but... Shit, look at me! Can you see yourself having a relationship with ME? A REAL relationship?

- Of course!

- I'm not talking about friendship or sex friend or..."

Sollux grabs his face, forces him to look at him:

"Eridan! I'm talking about being in a romantic relationship! Not just fucking!

- B-But...

- You, with me, Karkat and Gamzee! We all three agree, so..."

Sollux hesitates, bites his tongue:

" ... would you agree? You've already experimented a little... We thought you were already... okay?

- ... Honestly? I haven't thought about it at all...

- I mean, really... ? You let yourself be kissed without thinking?"

Eridan pouts, giving him a light flick on the forehead:

"Fuck you, it's hard to resist you..."

This time it wrings a smile from Sollux:

"Really? Why?

- Fuck you!

- We are irresistible?

- Damn it, Sol!

- Oh yes, sorry, you don't like my 'psychoanalysis' sessions ~ "

Eridan disengages with embarrassment to give him a blow in the shoulder, whereas that with the eyes vairons sneers. Annoyed, the Ampora picked up the tube of cream which he hastens to arrange, before passing his comrade to leave the bathroom. Sollux follows him with a smile in the corners:

" Come on Eri, say it! Say that you love us too~

- Rah, shut up!

- I won't let you go!

- I'm going to kill you Captor!"

Karkat and Gamzee see them return and exchange a look, holding back their relieved laughter. It's good to see that they've calmed down and are going to have a quiet evening again.

=== ===

Chapter 6

=== ===

My other accounts:

Twitter

DeviantArt

Ko-fi Account

#homestuck fanfiction #homestuck #humanstuck #eridan x gamzee #eridan x karkat #eridan x sollux #eridan ampora #sollux captor #sollux x gamzee #sollux x karkat #karkat x gamzee #karkat vantas #gamzee makara #fanfiction #ao3

8 notes · View notes