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i love these tags this person is so right

actually, can you imagine if dave was raised by B1 roxy?

i wanna get into this actually

(ok i had to spend a few hours rewriting this because IT DIDNT FUCKING SAVE AFTER FIVE HOURS OF WRITING WHEN MY COMPUTER UPDATED WHILE I WAS AFK so it would mean a lot to show this post some appreciation. i LOVEEE hearing what other people have to say)

even though these things mom does are presented in an extravagant, kitsch, jokey way, her intentions always came from a place of sincerity. she is simply Funnie

but rose reads too far into it and assumes things that aren't there, that her mother is passive-aggressively feigning interest in rose's interests simply because the things she does are so extra. "why do all of this if not to mock me"

im telling you right now if dave lived in this household he wouldn't assume antagonism, he'd go,

don’t forget who LITERALLY patented tangible jpeg artifacts as their post-scratch adult self and scattered shitty scummed up statue of liberties all over the planet. theres no way some of that overboard artful shit wasnt post-ironic / circling back around to genuine funny sincerity

dave's natural state is funny sincerity like roxy. he's had the natural capacity for this type of humor from the start and this is the direction he goes towards when he grows out of his brother's shadow by the end of the comic. dave and roxy share an earnest “so bad its good” type of humor

(lots more under the cut; the length of this meta analysis just got unwieldly with all the pictures and whatnot)

despite the alcoholism, roxy is a supportive mother. she's not the ideal guardian but hells of a lot more supportive of her kid than bro is. if she knew dave's interests she would totally indulge in them with some over the top silly goofy haha shit as a genuine gesture simply because she loves him

rose isn't too keen on it though. but she is more similar to dirk in her natural state of thinking of overthinking shit and assuming the worst, like the tags said

and yes dave got the sweet cuddly yet sometimes backhanded ouppy gene from roxy, probably even moreso lol

roxy's even said rose "sounds like girl dirk"

side tangent here, but this is something i wanna talk about.

i dont think bro should ever be in custody of children ever but if theres anyone who would be up to the task it's rose probably. i know she'd be able to keep up with him. not only does she have a defined personality (dave is more malleable and absorbs his environment like a sponge), if anyone can pick apart B1 dirk's batshit brain and probably be right on the money it's her. lil cal has been pumping patriarchal nonsense into bro's head and rose would be able to bring the fucking facts to the table without losing her own and being a living example of a badass little girl. i also don't think bro would try to force masculine roles onto rose like he did with dave, seeing as she is a girl, so she would actually have more of a leg up and get some passes that dave was never afforded. and rose wouldn't stand idly and accept any bullshit; she is no doormat. and i think this would earn bro's respect

but anyway, from this, couldn't we conclude roxy "sounds like girl dave"?

yeah okay. we havent even gotten into their penchant for funny typos or misspeaks, deliberate or otherwise

so, dave's environment

the sentiment "god you hope you can be as good as your bro at this some day" might have been genuine at the time when he idolized bro but of course he's not able to express that in any sort of sincere fashion because he's in dirk's fucking household. and this level 10 irony shit isnt doing dave any favors

his role models were the Internet and a vague idea of what Bro was like. So he built up his facade based on irony–not the literary definition of irony, as Rose might be quick to point out, but a popular concept of irony based on the idea that things that didn’t make sense actually made sense in some roundabout way. As a master of irony, Dave probably reasoned, he could see in a way other people couldn’t why a world that was scary and didn’t make sense really did make sense, and could therefore convince those people that he was superior to them. And he would wield his knowledge to maintain the appearance of superiority by calling everything ironic and pretending he didn’t care about things that didn’t make sense, and he would use walls of vaguely rhyming words to keep everyone at arm’s length so they wouldn’t discover his insecurities (source)

roxy's style is the embodiment of post-irony. being raised by mom lalonde would be like being raised by joel vinesauce ok

what can i say ….. (getting meta about this actually, hussie got these jpeg wizard wallpapers from a spyware website. link takes some time to load because internet archive)

rose is quick to read post-irony as actually being a joke/insincere, which in bro's case would be true. but i believe dave's natural instinct, outside of the influence of bro, is to read post-irony as genuine, which is exactly how mom serves it. we see this as early as act 3 from him; he understands her motives better than rose does herself:

and in act 6 intermission 2 i think it's pretty clear

but the thing is, it's always genuine from her. dave wouldn't have to second guess it because he's not one to naturally second guess someone's sincerity; that was learned due to his bro being virtually unassailable

there two types of ironies at play here:

seems like a joke, is actually genuine (roxy)

doesnt seem like a joke, is actually a joke (dirk)

you can make the argument that the second is is more psychologically destructive because it makes you question the reality of what is genuine sentiment and what isn't. dave never knew what was genuine and what was irony so he just sort of existed in this sincerity-ironic limbo and always did the opposite of what he genuinely felt on principle even if it always did originate from a genuine place.

"it just a joke bro i was just being ironic i dont actually x" is so much more trust-breaking and psychologically damaging than "wait are you being serious" / "i am being so fucking fr rn davy gravy" / "ok thats actually pretty fucking awesome. giant ass wizard statue" / "RIGHT"

how much about dave would change do you think? his character arc would be completely different for one thing, i think he'd have it good aside from mom's alcohol issues. he'd be left with the sweet and funny parts of him that we see at the end of the comic. the fake coolguy stuff is out, but this remains. this is dave in his element and we see it as early as act 1

he'd probably have no shades growing up in the lalonde residence* either cause those were given to him by bro straight out of the crater as an extension of his own cool image. and john gave dave ben stiller’s aviators for his 13th birthday to replace them so he could “spread his wings”

dave said he was wearing them for the ironies but i kind of doubt it. maybe post-irony but there was some reacharound to it being genuine because dave never put those pointy anime shades on his face again.

*though... it’s kind of hard to imagine him without his shades at all? B2 dave still got stiller’s shades from stiller himself so maybe getting them is a universal constant. i can imagine mom getting him them as a birthday gift cause shes pretty wealthy and probably could buy it out in an auction. but also itd be cool if john still gave him it as a gift

dave is actually a lot more genuine and easy to read than he lets on even when grappling with his upbringing with B1 dirk (again, see this post). this can be seen all throughout he comic but a good example is the evolution of thoughts about his interest in the preserved dead things in his room:

if B1 roxy was dave's guardian he probably WOULD have pursued paleontology because she wouldve indulged him in it and probably find it cool and worthwhile to pursue, instead of allowing dave to flounder under ironic detachment, being poisoned by irony to the point of gaslighting himself into believing he doesnt actually believe he thinks this shit is cool. even if it was indulged in this such a way; a superficially kitsch and ironic appearing presentation, it comes from a genuine place and inspires genuine interest. just read the comments.

basically, i think if B1 roxy raised dave, their relationship would have a surface level appearance of being bizarre or over-the-top but they’d have an unsaid mutual understanding that it’s completely in earnest and just build on each other's funny and absurd gestures of affection. rather than seeing it as one-upping each other, it'd more like collaboration of some silly bullshit that you take a step back and look at full and just say, "fucking incredible"

speaking of paleontology, mom had the proto-ectobiology lab. maybe they'd be able to use the equipment to appearify paradox ghost imprints of the dead shit to create paradox clones of things from the cambrian era??? sounds like a fun mother son bonding activity. and theyd actually put the sciencey shit in the household to use

oh god i know exactly the kinds of music shed listen too also growing up as a teen in the 80s. she on that (post)-punk/art rock/new wave/new romantic mtv stuff. XTC shit fr. this is a B-52S HOUSEHOLD. maybe the associates for the campy melodramatic flair. so he gets to keep the record on his shirt cause he is an enjoyer of the shit in her vinyl collection. dave would still gravitate towards musical expression and music itself but of more variety outside of just rap, with an 80s-90s, even 70s flavor due to mom’s influence. see this for perhaps a glimpse. ​she probably visited new york city a lot for business trips and because the music scene was cool as hell around that time, imports came straight from jfk airport, she probably got in on that a bit and have remnants in the form of vinyls and cassettes. in this way she could be distributing void to dave (influencing him with forgotten / presently irrelevant music). now he can REALLY rave about bands none of his friends have heard of. “hey davy grvay watcha listenin to” (he holds up vinyl cover) “omg snakefinger”

btw dave lalonde would look like this to me

something about roxy growing up with the knowledge that she is almost completely alone and will continue to be alone on a dying planet and that probably the only way she’ll be able to meet her friends and also her mother is through playing sburb yet still trying to convince them not to play it because of the risk

specifically trying to convince jane who grew up thinking she had a promising future ahead of her and might meet her friends someday under normal circumstances

what if your best friend was from the future and ready to die alone on an abandoned and hostile planet if it meant protecting you from danger and preserving your chance at a normal life she could never have and you didn’t even know it even if she tried to tell you because how could you even begin to believe it

I’m sick of the lack of eldritch homestuck godtier shenans.

Give me Jane Crocker who pulses with vitality, whose eyes glow a bright searing blue, where flowers bloom wherever she steps but if she lingers too long they die and come back again, she can’t go to graveyards because she has so much Life the bones rattle in their coffins, the corpses dance. Worms writhe where she puts her feet, insects and crawling things ooze out of the wet earth and take wing, and she’s heralded always by the buzz and click and the scent of flowers and fruit just on the cusp of being overripe.

I want Jade whose eyes hold the universe, nothing but galaxies and the cold emptiness of space and stars and rings around strange planets, and she’s too big for her skin sometimes and when she walks the earth shakes, and she glows acid green and space twists around her; wherever she lives is a maze of liminal space and distances that aren’t as they seem, hard to navigate, she can be there and not in the blink of an eye, or you can walk towards her for hours and hours and never get closer, or you can take one step away from her and end up miles away.

John’s like. He’s lighter than he should be, his feet never touch the ground, when he’s angry he sounds like a windstorm and sometimes when he talks there’s nothing but the whistle of air; he can change fate on a whim and they say that so much as laying eyes on him is enough to alter lives. Breath is an aspect of Change and Freedom, and he lives alone, detached from almost anything, it’s impossible to tie him down and his acolytes dwell on the highest mountain where the air is thinnest and his voice is always on the wind, always whispering, it’s the breeze that tugs on hair or flips up skirts sometimes in a rush, it’s the gnawing winter wind when he’s angry and alone, it’s tornadoes to topple houses and strip the leaves off trees and scatter them far and wide. he’s everywhere.

Rose is the Oracle and she is hard to look at directly. Her eyes are nothing but pools of glowing white, like suns- like dyingsuns, if you follow the legends closely. When she speaks she is not always herself, but she is Knowledge and truth sought. She burns away ignorance, she burns away lies. She carries needles, her fingers are needles, and she plucks the threads of fate and reads their pattern before weaving them into gloves to warm, a scarf as a noose. Incense burns for her at all hours. The darkness scatters in her wake. She has everything to do with what will be but not always what must be.

Dave is even harder to look at directly; he is inevitability, he is immutable, a law of nature just as Jade is. His heart beats with the rhythm of a ticking clock, and if you are very quiet in his presence you can hear it resonating along all timelines; he plucks them like threads, traces them like grooves on a record. He is what can be, what was, what is, what may be. He flickers between a child and a young man and an old, old being hunched over, eternity in the wrinkles on his fingers. He flickers between a sword through his chest, phantom blood dripping, between a grinning skull in a lime green suit, between orange feathered wings. He walks lightly, he closes doors left open, finishes a sentence, ties off the knot. He completes the circle.

Jake English is the God of Hope, he is gilt-golden, he’s the warmth of a sunrise, the dawning of a new day. He’s the first sip of champagne and the bottle opening, sticky foam filling over fingers and euphoric laughter ringing out. He is difficult to look at for different reasons; his green eyes draw you in, they’re dangerous, even as they’re ringed in gold, even as he sheds tears of ichor and beams and swears it’s alright. When he dances, the world itself revels; swept up in the pace of his joy, celebrations and festivities drawing out long. His is the ache of blistered feet, dancing until straps cut into ankles hard enough to bleed. No one knows what he looks like- he is what you want him to be, he is the bright white of a beaming smile settling down until he’s garbed in skin. He is always exactly what you picture him as. His favors are sought after; he is luck and endurance and Hope beyond all else, stubborn Hope to the point of idiocy, and those devoted to him are the blindly faithful. He is loved like no other. He is lonely like no other. When you dream in despair, he is there.

Roxy is of void, she is the darkness between the stars, soft and comforting. She is not seen, nor heard, but if you have heard laughter in the dead of night, felt an arm drape over your shoulders, heard a voice whispering from the pitch black or the crack beneath your door, she is there. Her eyes are black pools of darkness, unsettling against her dark-lipped smile, unsettling against the mirth written into the lines of her face. Her hands are cold, she dwells in the dark and the dark inclines to her, wraps around her soft as a lover, but so does the light. She swallows it whole. She is secrets kept and strength unbroken, she is a fortress. She is the comfort of night, and the danger of it, too. She speaks softly. 

Dirk is the God of Heart, worshipped and abhorred in turn. He is steel brittle enough to break, iron in the spine. He’s the chain, and its breaking. He is many-selved; when he walks, he leaves trails in his wake. A child, younger than the rest, thin and wanting. A teenager, and a wound slowly opens up on his neck, his head vanishing as the corpse left behind falls to the ground and vanishes, only for the cycle to repeat. He is terrible to look at, because in his dark glasses are a thousand facets, a thousand versions of you. It is worse when he removes them, for his eyes are mirrors, and in them is nothing but you too, all the aspects of yourself you hate and try to hide. He is the truth, with nothing pared down. He is your anger and your judgement and your hatred, reflected back at you, but he is also the parts of you that are precious. He is so firmly himself that you can get lost in it, if you look at him too long. There are cracks running through him, they grow and widen each time a Dirk in his trail dies, vanish and begin again when they revive. He carries with him silence and sorrow and the salt of the sea. He carries with him strength and surety. His hands are clever, his voice the voice of many. 

What about latula? I've actually always found her ultra interesting but i never really got it.

Sorry this took so long! This is a bit of a wall.

Latula Pyrope, Knight of Mind, introduced to us Homestuck Act 6 Intermission 3, page 5263. 

I’ve seen her character get flattened down to just “gamer girl, but like a 90’s gamer girl” on more than one occasion. Taking “Radglare” as the whole. One of the first things you need to know about knights is that if you buy into their most surface-level persona and don’t read beyond it, then you fell for it. 

They are often, in some way or another, hiding behind a wet papier-mâché wall, maybe even a caricature of their own making (intentionally or not). This applies to Dave, this applies to Karkat. It isn’t hard for the people around them to see behind, but they fall prey to their own personal sense of failure. 

Latula, as is the case with all the other Beforan trolls sans Meenah and Aranea, only really has substantial interactions with 3 characters total. In her case, this is Meenah (inevitably), Porrim, and Kankri. Within this short amount of time though, the finest cuts of her character come from her interactions with Porrim in particular. 

Beginning in her interactions with Meenah, we see Latula put on a display so cartoonish that it becomes overbearing. The constant high-fives and the spewing of nonsense lingo that would’ve gotten her weird looks in an actual 90’s-style arcade don’t take very long to get on Meenah’s nerves. 

With Porrim however her behavior plainly gets called out for what it is; a routine. 

Porrim actually gives us some interesting and comprehensive insight into why and how misogyny still exists in Beforan troll society (a take that those who compare Porrim to a men’s rights activist must have either sorely missed or straight up ignored, but my serious salt about that can wait for another day), and this comes to us because she’s making an observation about Latula that is essential to understanding her character; the way she acts is, in some part, a response to internalized misogyny. 

It’s no secret that misogyny was (and still is, to some extent) a problem in many gaming circles, and in the sentiments expressed among or around them. Some girls, in order to adapt to this, took on an “I’m not like other girls”-esque persona, often to a degree that was a bit obnoxious (I’m saying this with experience). This is what Latula is a satire of, largely. 

Latula actually is competent, at least as a mind player. She has a lot more going on under the surface than is immediately obvious. Her conversations with Meenah (for example, where she mentions having pieced together why Meenah killed them all immediately before the scratch) imply that she spends some fair amount of time mulling things over and piecing them together. 

In her conversation with Porrim about the cosmic state of relationships between the Serket and Pyrope families she also alludes to having an intrinsic understanding of karma, implying that it’s something she as a mind player is specifically suited to understand, and then redirects the conversation the moment she’s asked to elaborate. 

She has a bit of an incapability to be genuine even in the one setting she’s most comfortable doing so. While her conversations with Porrim are the most genuine we've seen her, she still defaults at moments to brushing things aside, or perhaps playing dumb in some cases. 

It’s worth noting Latula has some kind of anxiety disorder, and she’s supposed to be medicated for it. She calls her own behavior “neurotic” at one point, though it’s not clarified whether that’s a genuine diagnosis or she meant it in a misused figurative sense (personally I like to believe she is, though it’s still not canonly specified). 

All in all, Latula is kind of a deeply troubled person. Her exaggerated, somewhat obnoxious demeanor isn’t just the punch of a joke, but a special hell of her own creation. What was an unhealthy defense mechanism has now eaten her sense of self (or lack thereof) as she’s mostly stuck with the same other 11 people for, as far as she’s aware, the rest of eternity. The fact that she’s kept the act up for this long speaks to… something. I don’t know what, but it speaks to something for sure. 

Aranea doesn’t give us much backstory on her, beyond there being a non-specified “tragic accident” that left her nasally impaired (which raises a lot of alarming questions of its own), and of the information granted to us it’s hard to draw the precise line where she’s just fucking with Meenah and where she’s not. Because of this, we don’t know too much about her role in the session when alive. We can only really theorize about what happened to her in-session. 

For example, for her to have entirely and permanently lost her sense of smell in a single “incident” of some kind (as opposed to long-term damage, acquired illnesses or things like epilepsy or stroke), she would have had to experience something on the level of chemical burns inside her nose, or a flat out brain injury of her own, which is actually the theory I find the most interesting for narrative reasons. Knights are proposed by some to have a self-perceived inherent flaw with their own aspect, which is supported by canon texts. A self-perceived inherent flaw with mind? While that could certainly apply even without brain injury, it’s interesting in the context of it. It would also add a new layer of framing to her relationship with Mituna, and her protectiveness over him, beyond the general fact that knights just tend to be protective in some way or other. But that's just my brainstorming there!

Anyhow sorry this is so lengthy! To end off on a high note, have this really nice little piece of interaction:

Hope vs Rage: My Two Cents

The relationship between the Hope aspect and the Rage aspect is one that fascinates me, because as far as I’m aware these are aspects that are very easy to misunderstand (though, a lot of aspects are easy to misunderstand in general). I believe this is largely due to what it is we have to glean from in canon material.

The first introduced player of each aspect we get are Gamzee and Eridan respectively, a Bard and a Prince, destructive classes that both wield their aspect and ghost their opposite aspect.

One interpretation I’ve seen around is that Hope is associated with holy powers, and even religion, while Rage is associated with demonic forces, cults, destruction and the like. The idea comes from how angels are directly associated with the Hope aspect, both with Eridan and Jake English, while Gamzee on the other hand is in a sort of juggalo cult.

Now bare with me here, but I think this is only partly right, in my opinion.

Hope is commonly associated with holy powers, but it’s my theory that it is just as equally associated with demonic ones. Hope is the instrument of BELIEF, something that is necessary for both the holy and demonic, and the thing that drives both religions and cults alike, faith itself. Hell, even the angels of LOWAA themselves are described as "awful feathery demons". Gamzee’s place as the last living member of a clown religion is a form of him ghosting his opposite aspect, Hope. He is shown to truly follow his belief in it.

Inversely, we see the opposite embodied in Eridan. The opposite of belief, after all, isn’t “belief in something supposedly a lot more evil”, it’s DISBELIEF. Rage is everything that Hope is not, it isn’t a dark evil inverse of Hope.

Gods and demons alike are something you have to believe in for them to hold any power over you, Rage is refusing to let them hold any power over you.

Eridan is aggressively atheist, he staunchly refuses to believe in anything that doesn’t have a traditional scientific explanation. He doesn’t believe in magic even as he’s holding it in his hand, referring to it as "white science", and his first response upon meeting a land of supernatural entities is to kill them all indiscriminately.

He is a force of destruction all around, being that he's either destroying Hope (which leaves Rage, an aspect already generally associated with destruction) or he's destroying THROUGH Hope (either as a concept or by using a beam of literal holy light energy).

Though the more I think of it, describing it as exclusively the aspect of "destruction" feels a bit misleading. In some cases that'd be apt in a more literal sense, but in some that makes it sound a lot more sinister than it actually is.

I think a better word to describe it in a less antagonistic setting is actually "deconstruction".

Belief is an element of construct. If it doesn't exist physically but you believe in it, it is considered a concept. So the opposite of that would really be deconstruction. You can deconstruct physical things, but you can deconstruct non-physical ideas as well.

Neither Hope nor Rage are inherently more good or evil than the other (I'm disregarding the True Sign quiz). Our first introduced examples for each are both antagonists, and the same principle of evil applies to their Beforan counterparts (though in very different ways). I think this is important to both aspects, that either is just as capable of bad as it is good.

I personally think Hope and Rage make a lot more sense as aspects when you view them both as an extension of or response to suffering, but that's an essay for another day.

Take it from someone not actually in Homestuck: Isn't Mituna legitimately...mentally challenged? (I didn't want to say retarded) Like, was there a reason for the way he acts?

Canonically? No, he isn’t. The little we have been told about his background is that he gave himself massive brain damage saving the other players from some unknown threat, because no one believed his prophecy of impending doom, and now his speech is more or less incomprehensible.

Certain fans can’t read his dialogue and assume it must be gibberish, others took Cronus calling Mituna a retard as fact, and some of them haven’t read that part of the comic at all and are just into the fanon stuff. As a result, a precious bee-themed toddler version of Mituna was farted into existence and people love it way more than the real thing. Other writers literally age him down while leaving other Beforans as teenagers; I guess because a 6 year old having a tantrum is cute and not sad, and then there’s the folks who make up a different personality for pre-accident Mituna, and write him instead.

Bleh.

Here’s a snippet of dialogue between Mituna and Meenah, in plain english and with his speech impediment removed:

MEENAH: You know of anyone else who might be god tier in secret?

MITUNA: No, but I could organize a bubble-wide stripsearch…

MITUNA: Starting with you! HEHEHEHE!

MEENAH: Hey Tuna you want to help me go kill haha I cant even finish this question while staying serious.

MITUNA: No, but what I do want…

MITUNA: Is to maintain precarious but mostly sustained balance on my tight-ass falldown slat.*

MITUNA: Maybe grind on some shit.**

MEENAH: what will you grind on?

MITUNA: I volunteer that thing to be…

MITUNA: YOU!

*falldown slat = skateboard—he is mocking his infamous clumsiness here

**Mituna is fond of raunchy plays on words. This line about  ’grinding on some shit’ has the hashtag #sPORNts, in case it wasn’t 100% clear that he’s setting Meenah up for a really cheesy sex/skateboarding pun.

 Conclusion: he is handicapped, and he is also hilarious, clever, and kind of a little shit. 

im thinking about the relationship between kankri and porrim because its just so fucking WEIRD like theyre obviously important to eachother or care about eachother to some extent but we dont really know why?? like they dont seem to get along very well

she patronizes him constantly (which is VERY loaded considering they lived on fucking beforus) and ignores his boundaries (calling him patronizing nicknames he doesnt like, wiping his face while he tried to push her off) and he constantly makes insensitive bitchy bigoted comments that go against all of her values and make her angry

and theres not the same dynamic dolorosa and signless had where she raised him like theyre the same age so why do they even talk to eachother?? what is their relationship?? like were they childhood friends or something?? itd make sense if they were both a little different as kids and therefore got along better but then why do they still talk to eachother when they really dont now ITS SO WEIRD

It's... Complicated. They go way back, as far as I can tell.

The way I see it, they do not have a "Mother and Son" relationship- I find that most who assert this often place far too much maturity onto Porrim, who is literally 19 years old. It's more like an Adoptive/Found Sibling relationship between someone with a severe case of Eldest Daughter Syndrome and the social conditioning of a higher-end Midblood on Beforus, and someone with a chronic case of Only Child and the social conditioning of a Mutant Lime on Beforus. The relationship makes more sense to me when you view it this way. It's just... A fraught sibling relationship, formed under societal pressures we can't even fathom. Porrim Maryam, trained by society to cull those beneath her, trying hard not to, and for the most succeeding outside of someone very close to her, and Kankri Vantas, culled and isolated his whole life, becoming a total suck-up to the deeply misogynistic, ableist, hemoloyal culling system as both a method of self defense and as a wielding of the only weapon he really knows. It was used against him all the time, and it works, doesn't it? If sucking up to Able-Bodied Male Highbloods and ridiculing everyone beneath that golden standard is the best way to ensure safety, then he's gonna do it. He's essentially a lifelong voter for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

Ultimately, I think what keeps Porrim by his side is that... I think she believes in him. It's like watching yourself lose your sibling to the Alt-Right Pipeline. I think she thinks he doesn't actually believe most of what he's saying, and that this is all deeply reflexive. She's smart enough to recognize the real systemic issues at play here, and that he's essentially caught in chains between 5 different machines that all want him dead. And she's right. When you actually read the shit Kankri's saying, it becomes almost immediately apparent that he's spouting bullshit, and that he absolutely knows this. I think what keeps Kankri by her side is that he knows she cares about him. There isn't any denying it. She might infringe on boundaries, or be generally annoying to him, and keeps doing that frustrating little thing called seeing through his and everyone else's bullshit and calling them out on it- not just including but especially his- but she cares. I think he knows that at the end of all things what he'd have left is her. Is this to say that if you got Kankri to grow a spine and genuinely believe in things that aren't spoonfeedings of the latest Conservative Highblood Talking Point/Psy-Op, he'd be a good person? Hell no. No way. He has a raging savior complex and is way too eager to throw other people under the bus and insult/ridicule them to their faces. He's an asshole. Just completely slimy.

But, again, sibling relationships know no bounds. This kind of dynamic just feels so... Realistic to me. The way their relationship is so strained but still so strong and ongoing just feels so human. I don't know. This is pretty meandering, I just think about them a lot.

Thought I'd ask about the dancestor who left me the most awestruck, what do you think, about kankri vantas

I have a lot of thoughts about Kankri Vantas. Many essays worth of thoughts and then some. Here's a highlight reel of sorts:

Deep Dive into Kankri's Culling.

More on Kankri's Culling.

Notes on Kankri's AroAcehood.

Kankri's Relationship with Religion.

If you want to go through all of my posts, I have a tag for analyses about him. Have fun reading! Or don't, I'm not your boss. Either way, you'll gain some new levels of knowledge and understanding!!

Wanted to ask, is Eridan's relationship with his dad ok? Like when Eridan was learning how to use his harpoon gun he seemed very much distressed and not enjoying any of it

The only real canon characterization we have of seahorsedad is that the version of him that's Cronus's lusus is "stern, fatherly" and that he ditches Cronus for Hussie, although that last one is mostly just a Bit so I don't really count it as characterization. He's also willing to go along with Eridan "doing something ridiculous," though, again, that's kind of a Bit and it's unclear how canon that is.

((cw for abuse and stuff beneath the readmore))

As such, pretty much anything I say is going to be pure extrapolation that serves my characterization of Eridan, and I can't really back it up with hard textual evidence. But, personally, I think Eridan believes his relationship with his lusus is "good" in the way that many children growing up beneath strict, emotionally neglectful, and even outright abusive parents do.

We know that Eridan has very few friends. He doesn't even really talk to half the people in their group chat, and according to Feferi, he's never spent more than a few days underwater, total, in his whole life. Add onto that that lusus murder (and, by extension, the culling of the orphaned troll) has been his duty long enough that he describes it is "the only thing i evver did," I think it's a reasonable assumption to make that he also has no IRL friends, aside from Feferi.

And to give an idea of how old Eridan was when he started having to murder lusii, here's how old Vriska was when she was expected to start feeding spidermom:

This, and the fact that Dualscar was called "Orphaner" because the job of feeding Gl'bgolyb was his even into adulthood (as he lived before the Summoner's rebellion and the removal of adult trolls from Alternia), and the fact that no one, including Feferi, ever shows any gratitude towards Eridan for performing the job, supports the idea that feeding Gl'bgolyb has always been a violet blood's responsibility. After all, Feferi makes overtures about not being better than other trolls, but she sure does revel in being royalty when she can get away with it. It'd be in character for her to not be particularly grateful to Eridan because she sees lusus murder as fundamentally being his responsibility, especially if he started when they were both REALLY young.

In other words, Eridan was expected to start murdering lusii (and by extension, other trolls) from the moment he was old enough to do so, which, judging by how old Vriska was when she started killing trolls for Spidermom, is not very old at all.

Also, given the lifespan of violet bloods, it's entirely possible - and my personal belief - that Seahorsedad was Dualscar's lusus as well as Eridan's. Even without that being the case, since it was always Eridan's job to hunt and kill lusii, the biggest possible culprit for inducting him into his role would be his lusus.

And let's be clear, I think the fact that having to murder lusii/trolls is the biggest culprit for what's fucked Eridan up the most. The pressure of having the safety of the entire race on his shoulders, the fear of Gl'bgolyb and what happens if he ever fails, and the guilt of taking lives (which we do know Eridan thinks about) have left him with genuine struggles caring about other people, a nasty martyr complex (which isn't unjustified), extremely unstable and negative emotions, shattered interpersonal relationships, and a deep, nihilistic sense of resignation towards his place in society. The latter has directly led to him attempting to embrace that place by tricking himself into thinking he believes in hemocasteist, sea dweller supremacy rhetoric - which his actions contradict - because, without the game's intervention, he had no other options available for him but to become a key figure in the imperial army, continue murdering other sapient creatures until he died, and watch all his few friends die before him, either when they got culled, killed on the battlefield, or purely dropped dead of old age.

And, like... a parent who does that to their child, even if we assume the absolute best (that Seahorsedad does genuinely care about Eridan), can't possibly have a fully healthy relationship with said child. And I think it's not unreasonable to assume that the best is not what's happening between Eridan and Seahorsedad, because Eridan's psychological profile is so fucked up that I highly doubt he was receiving much, if any, actual affection or support from his lusus. Personally, I think his lusus was "stern and fatherly" in the worst possible way - high expectations, no emotional warmth, and complete disregard for Eridan's psychological well-being, as long as he was producing adequate results.

Because Eridan craves attention, and has very little distinction between good and bad attention. He's naive and trusting to a fault, hardly ever suspects anybody of lying to him, and has basically no social skills. These all say to me that Seahorsedad is just, like... not giving him any emotional attention at ALL.

And poor Eridan is just 13 years old - still too young to fully realize how poorly he's being treated by people who are supposed to care about him. Like, yeah, he's completely obnoxious and exhausting to talk to, and you can't really blame Feferi or Kanaya for being sick of listening to him, but at the same time, some of the shit they do to him as a result is honestly just mean. Like Kanaya is just actually bullying him- training him up to be a wizard as a joke, shitting on him behind his back with Rose, making fun of him to his face - and yet:

He's just that fucking desperate for people to care about him and support him; I can't help but think he's just not getting that at home, you know?

So I think if you asked Eridan, he'd say that his relationship with his lusus was good, and that his lusus was proud and noble and stoic, and absolutely a great custodian, and there were no problems at all.

But I think if you were to dig deeper into their relationship, you'd start to hear worrying things like that Eridan never got to celebrate Twelfth Perigrees, and was instead dragged out to go lusus hunting because it was particularly easy to do so on that day. Or that his lusus had to pull the trigger FOR him the first time they ever went hunting, because his own hands were shaking too hard. Or that he'd be locked out of the hive every time he cried, until he stopped crying altogether. Or that he thinks he's never been sick a day in his life because he was never allowed to have an off day and not go hunting and now he's just used to ignoring any and all symptoms. So on and so forth.

He reacts EXTREMELY POORLY to Feferi saying she feels like she needed to look after him - more poorly than to the initial news that she was trying to break up with him:

And I think that's because weakness was punished in his household growing up. He wasn't allowed to be weak - he was nobility, royalty. He had duties, responsibilities. If he faltered, their whole race died. And when you consider the fact that "you have to kill things for the good of everyone you care about, all the time, constantly," is the abject lesson that's been hammered into him since he was old enough to walk and talk, the fact that he's so incredibly fucking adamant about murdering angels starts to be a little... sad. He's just stuck in that mindset. He doesn't know how to escape it.

So... yeah. In summary: his relationship with his dad is great!

GOD the way you draw Eridan's capes is so good!!!! do you take inspiration from anything or does it just come to you in visions?

Thank you!!! I'm actually pretty interested in fashion (only on the level of a hobbyist, haha), so I do actually look at a lot of capes (#1 clothing fad we need to bring back imo). In the case of eridan's disgrub outfit, it's drawing inspiration from two main places: the first is that Eridan is specifically noted to model himself off great despots of history (so, going for an evil military vibe), and because in the roleplay, he's started leaning into his Prince of Hope stuff (so, going for kind of a regal/royalty kind of look). I also read like, an embarrassing amount of otome isekai manga/manwha, so i have a million be-caped prettyboys floating around my unconscious

longer explanation below:

And on top of these inspirations, the main consideration is, like, what I'm trying to convey with the character design, which I touched on above - Eridan deliberately dresses like Dualscar in canon

(Hence the rings, the cape, the striped pants)

The dweebishness of his outfit kind of overshadows the fact that, by troll standards, Eridan actually looks FUCKING TERRIFYING - it's outright noted in Gamzee's introduction that he shouldn't stay on the beach, as sea dwellers are outright dangerous

The first thing anyone's going to see when looking at Eridan, even from a distance, is going to be his massive violet cape in his sea dweller blood color

And on top of that, Eridan is literally an orphaner, like Dualscar.

By troll standards, Eridan is BAD FUCKING NEWS, like Karkat probably shit himself when Vriska added her new kismesis to the group chat (and when he brought along his moirail, the heir fucking apparent LOL). And he dresses like that on purpose - he pretty blatantly advertises that his appearance is something to run scared from. And also Dualscar and Eridan are pirates. So

The final outfit I landed on for the Disgrub combines these elements as best I can - military, pirate, prince, and supervillain. You can easily imagine more straps and gold decorations and embroidery and such if I weren't too lazy to draw it out.

So at least he can look scary before he opens his mouth.

hello can i ask what your Ancestor typing quirk hcs are

HELL YEAH theyre below

-mod dave

Keep reading

I don't have any strong opinions about humanstuck trolls except that the dating drama in Karkat's friend group has to be utterly fucking insane. I mean convoluted enough that if asked Karkat brings out a white board just to explain it all. like you need a doctoral level dissertation just to explain what's even going on here

Do you think mituna would make gyatt jokes

No, because he's actually funny and doesn't need to rely on misused AAVE to make a joke about ass.

I’ve seen some discussion on this, so allow me to explain something.

Some people do not seem to grasp why artists like me draw so much fashionable Eridan. He’s not fashionable at all, just look at his canon outfit, they say. Well, it is simple. Eridan is one of the few trolls actually experimenting with fashion at a young age in the comic. Look me in the eye and tell me you too weren’t a hot mess trying to dress “fashionable” in middle school. Yet, chances are that if you had that awareness and drive early on, you will also develop a sense of style and grasp on aesthetics earlier in life compared to your peers. This was my experience. I was well known for being very stylish as a kid, but this didn’t happen overnight. Indeed, if you were one of these kids you most definitely started off with some odd or disharmonious clothing combinations that you threw together in an attempt to express yourself aesthetically despite inexperience in that type of self-expression. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I usually draw young adult Eridan. Obviously given some time, his tastes would develop and mature into something derived from those original aesthetic visions, but far more cohesive.

It’s clear he’s trying to assert his individualism and status in his clothing choices, and most of y’all shrug him off as having bad taste while not also foreseeing the intent and vision behind those choices. I see it, and so do other artists. We differ in how we portray this derivation because there are frankly a dozen different directions he could take it depending on the circumstances of the post-canon/fix it scenario. This is why you may see me refer to the Eridan in my depictions as “my Eridan”. I don’t presume to depict something identical to Homestuck proper, nor am I particularly interested in doing so. If you’re the type of person who is married to the events of canon and cannot consider a scenario involving an older Eridan who was allowed to grow and change, this is why we are not seeing eye to eye— and I’m certain this is the root cause of various other discourses as they pertain to portraying the character in post-canon fanworks. That’s fine. That’s your choice. My choice is different.

Eridan consistently demonstrates concern (an excess, really, which backfired for him in the cruelest of ways poor thing) with respect to how he is perceived, hence the consciously thought out image-crafting and classic Eridan façades that his own peers call him out on for being poorly executed, transparent, and otherwise not believable. They were kids. This is normal. Of course he doesn’t have himself figured out yet. It’s a process. Some people in this fandom believe his façade in the most literal and uncritical of ways but this is all a story for another day. Is his drip game shit though, without regards for fan interpretations? If you’re asking me, I don’t think it’s really that bad considering his age. I really don’t think it’s that bad. That kind of scarf with the cape is a bit much to wear around the neck. Maybe he’ll swap the big scarf for something similar in function and category but less top heavy— a cravat, jabot, bandana, or lavallière? If the cape is too overwhelming for the rest of the outfit, a smaller caplet, shawl, or a coat will work. To accommodate some of the alternative neckwear, a shirt with a collar would be preferable. What many people perceive as a turtleneck sweater, need not be entirely sacrificed. Put a sweater vest on that boy. I see lots of complaints about the shoes and pants. More discreet pinstripes and more formal shoes (field boots, paddock boots, oxfords) will work. Of course he can go in the opposite direction, less formal, in that case the cape can go and the long scarf can stay, get some cool sneakers, consider denim bottoms or casual slacks in a single color, accents welcome. However this isn’t the derivation I pursue so I feel less qualified to speculate. He could ditch all of it even. Start new and fresh especially if he were to go through a markedly subversive reclamation of identity and character redemption sort of process. In any case, he can work with it!!! You just have to believe in him.

I believe Eridan had a lot of narrative potential that was wasted, possibly out of disinterest for the character. It’s only predictable that artists like me simply want to devise a world in which these characters had a chance to actually live their lives. I truly do not understand why there has to be so much confusion over this. That‘s all.

neocities guide - why you should build your own html website

do you miss the charm of the 90s/00s web where sites had actual personality instead of the same minimalistic theme? are you feeling drained by social media and the constant corporate monopoly of your data and time? do you want to be excited about the internet again? try neocities!!

what is neocities?

neocities is a free hosting website that lets you build your own html website from scratch, with total creative control. in their own words: "we are tired of living in an online world where people are isolated from each other on boring, generic social networks that don't let us truly express ourselves. it's time we took back our personalities from these sterilized, lifeless, monetized, data mined, monitored addiction machines and let our creativity flourish again."

why should I make my own website?

web3 has been overtaken by capitalism & conformity. websites that once were meant to be fun online social spaces now exist solely to steal your data and sell you things. it sucks!! building a personal site is a great way to express yourself and take control of your online experience.

what would I even put on a website?

the best part about making your own site is that you can do literally whatever the hell you want! focus on a specific subject or make it a wild collection of all your interests. share your art! make a shrine for one of your interests! post a picture of every bird you see when you step outside! make a collection of your favorite blinkies! the world is your oyster !! here are some cool example sites to inspire you: recently updated neocities sites | it can be fun to just look through these and browse people's content! space bar | local interstellar dive bar creature feature | halloween & monsters big gulp supreme peanutbuttaz | personal site dragodiluna linwood | personal site patho grove | personal site

getting started: neocities/html guide

sound interesting? here are some guides to help you get started, especially if you aren't familiar with html/css sadgrl.online webmastery | a fantastic resource for getting started with html & web revival. also has a layout builder that you can use to start with in case starting from scratch is too intimidating web design in 4 minutes | good for learning coding basics w3schools | html tutorials templaterr | demo & html for basic web elements eggramen test pages | css page templates to get started with sadgrl background tiles | bg tiles rivendell background tiles | more free bg tiles

fun stuff to add to your site

want your site to be cool? here's some fun stuff that i've found blinkies-cafe | fantastic blinkie maker! (run by @transbro & @graphics-cafe) gificities | internet archive of 90s/00s web gifs internet bumper stickers | web bumper stickers momg | gif gallery 99 gif shop | 3d gifs 123 guestbook | add a guestbook for people to leave messages cbox | add a live chat box moon phases | track the phases of the moon gifypet | a little clickable page pet adopt a shroom | mushroom page pet tamaNOTchi | virtual pet crossword puzzle | daily crossword imood | track your mood neko | cute cat that chases your mouse pollcode | custom poll maker website hit counter | track how many visitors you have

web revival manifestos & communities

also, there's actually a pretty cool community of people out there who want to bring joy back to the web! melonland project | web project/community celebrating individual & joyful online experiences. Also has an online forum melonland intro to web revival | what is web revival? melonking manifesto | status cafe | share your current status nightfall city | online community onio.cafe | leave a message and enjoy the ambiance sadgrl internet manifesto | yesterweb internet manifesto | sadly defunct, still a great resource reclaiming online social spaces | great manifesto on cultivating your online experience

in conclusion

i want everyone to make a neocities site because it's fun af and i love seeing everyone's weird personal sites that they made outside of the control of capitalism :) say hi to me on neocities

Why the Alpha Timeline is the Alpha Timeline

I figured I'd make a post, since it's pretty subtle and I think it genuinely passed a lot of people by? Homestuck is made up of a lot of words, haha.

The alpha timeline is described by Doc Scratch, functionally, as "the timeline that causes LE to exist."

The path which alone has my absolute mastery is the alpha timeline, a continuum I define as that which boasts exclusive rights both to my birth and to my death, two circumstantially simultaneous events.

Aranea also gives the explanation that the alpha timeline is the one where reality is perpetuated.

AG: Reality itself is using you and many others to propagate its own existence. Strictly speaking, there is only one path to its successful propagation. 8ut it still permits you to make choices.

Caliborn also states that his quest as a Lord of Time is coming to terms with the inevitability that everything, ever, in all of time, will be because of him - that he'll be the one to shape it, including the circumstances of his own defeat.

uu: AS A LORD OF TIME. I THINK I'M GOING TO MASTER TIME. NOT WITH MY BRAIN. WHICH WOULD BE TOO HARD. BUT WITH MY INSTINCTS. uu: LIKE IN A WAY THAT WORKS WITH MY NATURAL IMPULSES. SUCH AS MY AMBITION. MY WILL TO COMMIT MAYHEM. MY DESIRE TO PUNISH THOSE I DESPISE. uu: SO IF I WANT YOU TO BECOME STRONG. SO YOU CAN CHALLENGE ME LATER. AND I SEE EVIDENCE. THAT YOU PROBABLY BECOME SUCCESSFUL. uu: I THINK TO MYSELF. WHY SHOULDN'T I BE THE ONE TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN? IF IT'S GOING TO ANYWAY. uu: I THINK PART OF MY PERSONAL QUEST. IS TO BECOME AT EASE WITH THE FORCES OF INEVITABILITY. uu: INEVITABILITY THAT ALL THINGS SHOULD AND WILL FALL IN MY FAVOR. THAT ALL CAUSALITY ANSWERS TO ME. AND THAT ALL OUTCOMES NOT ONLY SERVE ME. BUT CONSIST OF MY BEING. uu: SO I FEEL THAT. THE MORE I GROW IN POWER. uu: THE MORE STUFF IT SHOULD TURN OUT I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR. uu: UP TO AND INCLUDING. EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENS. uu: EVEN IF IT HAS TO BE. uu: RETROACTIVELY.

Aradia's stint as stewardess of the afterlife is explicitly described as "service to the lord of double death," and Dave explains that he acts instinctively - like Caliborn does - to fulfill the conditions of the alpha timeline. It's also worth noting that their classes, Maid and Knight, are roles that directly serve a Lord in the real world.

TEREZI: LUCK1LY YOU M4K3 4N 4DOR4BL3 H4NDM41D TO TH3 M4ST3R OF D34TH, 3SP3C14LLY 1N YOUR CUT3 CH3RRY P1X13 3NS3MBL3 ARADIA: you think so?

GG: well youre from the future right? GG: dont you know already if itll work? TG: yeah more or less TG: i never really studied how it went down all that closely TG: i just figured when the time came to sort it out the right thing to do would be obvious TG: like it is now TG: managing the loops is a balance of careful planning and just rolling with your in the moment decisions TG: and trusting they were the ones you were always supposed to make TG: by now im pretty used to having my intuition woven into the fabric of the alpha timeline

I'm starting with all that so I can explain that the GAME OVER timeline doesn't end when the time players disappear from it, like doomed timeline offshoots normally do, because it IS the alpha timeline: the sequence of events that causes GAME OVER to occur is the sequence of events that Caliborn/Lord English have chosen: one where (nearly) everyone dies, all hope of victory is lost, and his servant, the Condesce, gets to claim the Ultimate Reward, perpetuating the same misery and oppression in the new universe, and presumably all universes to come.

We see from Caliborn's chess match with Calliope that his (and by extension, LE)'s modus operandi is to follow the rules to the letter, while manipulating his opponent, tricking them with "shitty twists". It's always been explained that LE's actions have been "sanctioned by paradox space," that is, everything he's doing is explicitly allowed, nothing he's doing is against the rules - including the fact that he must be defeated. He has, via his mastery of time, perfectly engineered a situation where the only viable reality is the one where yes, he IS defeated... in the dream bubbles, by the dead and doomed, whom he sent to the dream bubbles in the first place via Condy, Jack English, and all the other boss fights. And his will, his ideals, are imposed on the new universe in spite of his defeat.

In a completely Watsonian read of the text, Lord English is an incredible villain because - subtly and unsublty - he IS basically responsible for every bad thing that ever happens, ever, to everyone. He has legitimately been the puppetmaster pulling the strings the entire time, pretty much all because Caliborn is a huge asshole who loves to hurt other people, and wants to do it as much as he can, to as many people as he can, for as long as he can.

But I think he's especially interesting through a Doylist perspective, through a reading of the text as a coming of age. Homestuck is a worth riddled with theme and symbolism, and thematically, Lord English represents everything that these kids need to overcome in order to mature into kind, empathetic adults who will be one day responsible for the care and oversight of a new universe. He represents selfishness, sadism, greed, destruction, oppression, fascism, murder, genocide, and hatred. And also literally the patriarchy.

And, you know what? Don't take my word for it. Here's Andrew Hussie's commentary from Book 6 Act 5 Act 2 Part 2:

Much of the logic [for who contributes to Lord English] orbits around these negative traits associated with men, or more specifically, the “toxically masculine” aspects often linked to certain male personalities. Dirk has a lot of these traits, which are central to Dave’s feelings of tension and abuse concerning his bro. The intellectual aggression, the power of assertion, the knowitall-ism, the mansplaining. That’s a lot of Dirk stuff when he’s at his worst. Equius shares a lot of those traits too, with some different points of emphasis. Both of them have this creepy-guy streak running through them, with strange or offputting interests, and seem to get a quiet kick out of making others uncomfortable through demonstrations of these fascinations. They are actually pretty similar characters in this way.

He's invited into the trolls' universe (and, by extension, the kids' universe) via the Dancestors, in an original sin kind of way. I'll let Hussie explain on their Formspring (emphasis mine):

We learn more about the troll race, as a once peaceful species and such before kid-ancestors as players scratched their session, though the short term relevance of this is mainly as a preamble to Scratch's religious story. Establishing an Eden-like paradise from which there is some departure through sin is sort of the boilerplate basis for religious lore. ... The failed players from peaceful Alternia made a classic "deal with the devil" move by causing the scratch after being given a choice by the mother of all monsters. (Echidna. Hey, she's a big snake!) By doing so they brought Scratch into their universe, and therefore all the things you'd expect that comes with summoning the devil.

The Dancestor's "departure through sin"? It was the fact that they couldn't get their shit together and grew up inside the Medium. That's why they're the age they are, 9 sweeps - adulthood by troll standards. They aren't kids anymore because that's the ultimate sign of having failed to do a coming of age. Symbolically, the Dancestors represent a prior generation of grown-ups that fucked everything up, leaving a huge mess for their descendents to clean up after. In fact, Doc Scratch even describes the alternate choice Echidna gave them:

The heroes could either accept their defeat along with the extinction of their race, and put no others at risk.

In other words, they could have stopped LE if they'd simply chosen not to Scratch. But once more, in line with their behavior up until that point, they chose the selfish option, and bore descendants into the world they ruined. They're immature, nasty, mean-spirited, cruel, callous, and shallow on purpose, because their role in the story is antagonistic. They're aligned (even if unwittingly) with Lord English, as they're the ones who directly invited him in via their failure to grow the fuck up.

There's also a reason why SBURB/SGRUB directly tie achieving godhood and reaching the Ultimate Reward to planetary quests fundamentally designed to help children mature. God-tiering is supposed to come at the end of one's quest, as achieving it directly teleports you to the Battlefield for the final boss.

AG: I really think how successfully they mature is tied to success in the game. It challenges the players in all the ways they need to 8e challenged to grow, which is different for every individual, and veeeeeeeery different for every race. AG: I don't think we were so hot at that aspect of the game. In fact, I'm sure we were quite awful. Hell, even I wasn't that gr8 at it! I actually just kinda fell ass 8ackwards into the god tier, to 8e honest.

And there's a perfectly functional Watsonian explanation for this - in order to increase the odds that the new universe will successfully propagate new universes, it's ideal to leave it in the hands of kind, mature people. But the Doylist explanation is, again, even more interesting.

Hussie has spoken extensively about the comic having always been about two things at its core: first, a creation myth... and second, a coming-of-age. These are complimentary themes, as Homestuck also makes statements about society and its effects on kids. In the real world, the kids of today become the voters, revolutionaries, and lawmakers of tomorrow. In Homestuck, they create, and are responsible for, a new universe.

I always saw HS as an exploration of young people developing relationships over the internet […] There’s a lot more to HS than just that obviously, but if there’s anything which it’s been about through and through, it’s modern kids relating to each other from afar, developing as people and growing up.

In fact, all the initial kids' entry artifacts are metaphors for "departures, loss of innocence, and sometimes the journey from childhood to adulthood outright." John biting an apple, symbolizing the act that cast Adam and Even from Eden. Rose breaking a bottle, the act of christening a boat, and an item integral to the main means by which she relates to her mother, alcohol - an adult substance. Dave hatching an egg, literally the act of bringing new life into the world. Jade shooting an effigy of her dog, both symbolic of Old Yeller, and of breaking a pinata, an act often done at quinceneras.

There comes a point in childhood where the child stops being a child - the safe, familiar, comfortable world that they knew stops existing, and they can never get it back. They are thrust into a world that is alien and massive, and forced to grapple with the weight of their future duties. They deal with losing their guardians and finding direction in their absence. They must decide how they want to grow up, and then are responsible for shaping the society that comes after them. In other words, SBURB/SGRUB in this metaphor represent adolescence.

Within that context, God-tiering is actually interesting because it symbolizes adulthood - a semi-permanent state that a child is supposed to reach at the end of their SBURB/SGRUB journey. And, in fact, it's treated that way - none of the characters reach god-tiering the "proper" way... and of our god-tiered characters, nearly all of them have some sort of emotional struggle with growing up too fast. Vriska with the expectations of her shitty society, Rose with her emulation of her mother, Dave with his abusive brother, and the Alpha kids with substance abuse (the jujus) and romantic drama.

Anyway, sometimes when Mario's running sideways he gets a star that makes him magic and invincible. OH. YOU MEAN HE BECOMES TRICKSTER MARIO. Yes, but less stupid. So for a while he becomes flashy and hyperactive and nothing's challenging anymore. He just starts barreling over mushrooms and leaping over pits as fast as he can, then gets to the end and jumps on the flagpole and that's it. Mario "wins". But the point is, he didn't really win. That magic star was actually devastating to his development as a human being. WHY. Because he skipped over many critical trials on his spiritual journey. Mario NEEDS to stomp on all those mushrooms. He NEEDS to bonk those bricks with his head, for the sake of his personal growth. By using the star, he is denying himself many powerful moments of catharsis.

Like... I dunno... seems pretty blatant to me!

So with Homestuck so firmly being a coming of age, and with the Dancestors - whose primary failure is that of unrelenting immaturity - being cast in an antagonistic role, doesn't that make Caliborn's position of ultimate final boss extremely fitting when we take this conversation into account?

You may be destined for bigger things, but you’re still an atrocious, stupid child. And you may have won the “game” with your sister, but that doesn’t mean it was the best thing for your development as a person. You had her dream self killed, which is not an opportunity your species typically gets. So she died prematurely, instead of allowing the conflict within you to settle itself naturally. In short, you forced your predomination to happen a little too early, and now you’re stuck. STUCK? Yes. Your personality is stuck in some sort of cantankerous prepubescent limbo. You are going to be a stunted, miserable tool forever.

He's literally a child who chose to stunt his own growth so that he could reap all the game's rewards for himself. Someone who so stubbornly desired the selfish, greedy, and immature option that he was willing to hurt himself to achieve it. Caliborn - and by extension, Lord English - is a direct symbol for the refusal to mature, to be kind, to care about other people. By including Dirk, Gamzee, and Equius at their worst, he also comes to represent misogyny, toxic masculinity, the patriarchy. He's the Condesce's master, and so by extension, he represents fascism and oppression; as Doc Scratch, he gets off on abusing girls, and so he also represents predators and abusers. And his goal is to perpetuate himself, his ideals, what he symbolically represents, down every successive generation. Much like how these cycles of abuse and oppression seek to perpetuate themselves in the real world!

And that's why the alpha timeline, the GAME OVER timeline, is the way that it is: it's one where Lord English WINS. In Lord English's version of the story, everything is fucked up forever. He might be defeated, as is the timeline's inevitability, but his politics, his bigotry, and his ideals live on.

Except.

Our Breath player gains a power that literally unsticks him from time.

Now, personally, I don't believe that the ending we got is the one that was originally intended. I don't feel the need to elaborate upon that here, but suffice to say, given how clearly and consistently these themes are set up throughout the entire rest of the comic, it just makes sense to me that the ending we got, where characters stay dead, never finish their character development, etc. etc., is a MASSIVE tonal and thematic departure, which smacks of external pressures and influences. Everything after [S] GAME OVER is soft canon to me for this reason. But there's things that survive in it that are really really interesting, so I'll mention some.

First, the pre-retcon versions of the characters still exist, as we see from (Vriska). That means that everyone who died in GAME OVER would not necessarily have stopped mattering to the plot. I firmly believe that the original ending would've seen Lord English confronted by the GAME OVER (characters), who would also have the most karmic claim to beating Lord English's face in. This would also satisfy his whole deal of playing by the rules - he knows he HAS to be defeated, he just gets to choose the circumstances of his defeat; without realizing that John's retcon powers can rewrite a timeline, he would've set up his own death to be in the bubbles, at the hands of the already-dead, while Condy claims the Ultimate Reward - thus making it so that he still wins in the end.

But Breath represents freedom, choices - and the retcon powers are something John gains mastery over after completing his personal quest, which we've established is directly tied, both literally and symbolically, into growing up and maturing. By becoming a kind, empathetic, mature adult, John is able to choose something else.

Second, that the Ultimate Self is brought up at all, which seems to me like it would mitigate the bittersweetness of the (characters) from GAME OVER staying dead - because, in my head, the original plan for the retcon was that it would bring everyone back, and therefore, all the (characters) from GAME OVER would live on through the surviving post-retcon gang, who will eventually achieve Ultimate Selfhood, as Davepetasprite^2 says they will. This would also directly mirror the words Godtier!Calliope gives to her counterpart:

CALLIOPE: bUt then... CALLIOPE: what shoUld i do? CALLIOPE: you don't need to do anything. CALLIOPE: be who you've become, and who i didn't. CALLIOPE: consume the fruits of an existence i could never understand. CALLIOPE: live.

Third, there's just so many outstanding plot threads, even for the characters that DO survive. Jake's prophesized to defeat Lord English, Dave never actually gets over his hesitance about time travel and defeating Lord English, Karkat has multiple means of bringing his dead friends back to life and doesn't say anything, Vriska and Terezi still aren't 100% reconciled, Gamzee's tragedy is never addressed, Jane, Dirk, Jake, and Roxy never really figure out their situationship, etc. etc. etc. ... to say nothing about all the plot threads left dangling for the characters that stay dead.

And finally...

Isn't that just kind of a better story? One where the kids get to grow, change, learn from their mistakes, and create a better, kinder universe, after defeating the avatars of cruelty, oppression, and immaturity?

Is it just me? Haha.

What do you mean in your previous post pls explain my neurons aren't working well lately

i was rapid firing posts srry could u tell me which one u meant?

“Eridan is genderfluid and no one really has a problem with it. The girls mostly address him as female and the guys address his as male (except for Gamzee who likes to call him ‘wicked sis’).”

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im literally always thinking about 'the crowd goes wild with dismay, and then commits mass suicide' btw. who is doing it like him. what the fuck is wrong with karkat that he can just come up with that out of nowhere

sure jade is a really silly girl and all (that's literally how she's introduced lol) but something a lot of people seem to forget is that she's probably one of the smartest homestuck characters if not one of the smartest kids! Her introduction literally notes that she has "an uncanny knack for nuclear physics" which that's pretty darn impressive to say the least, she spends her time tending to a nearly house-wide garden all by herself and keeps it in pristine condition, and tinkers with probably insanely dangerous machinery on the daily. she's straight up an insane child prodigy but usually gets written by fans as JUST the silly girl. guys a character can be sweet and have cute tendencies and still be deep and complex! Jade has on multiple occasions called people out on their bullshit because she shows visible hate towards stupid things and stupid people, like come on. she's arguably one of the most mature characters in the comic. It's one of the reasons she's my favorite character, it's rare you see a relatively lighthearted female character have complex interests and be able to take themselves seriously. I love you jade you're my favorite silly dog girl but you're also so so much more than that