One idea that recurs fairly prominently in Homestuck’s Gnostic roots is the duality of the material and the notional, the World of Matter and the World of Ideas. And with the advent of the Extended Zodiac, one idea that took root in my mind was the possibility that this duality extended to the Aspects themselves.
I don’t have solid evidence for this yet, but I do have a lot of anecdotes, below the cut. Regardless of whether it’s truly canon, though, I do think it’s a potentially useful and interesting way of thinking about the Aspects and Homestuck itself.
This is pretty interesting to me. I tend to consider Aspects as simultaneously notional and material, but the idea that they might have a bias one way or another has a lot of potential for fleshing out how we understand them in relation to each other, I think.
One of many ideas I’m not entirely committed to, but consider as I look through the text and consider the ways it might be evolving now.
You may remember the year 2017. Wow, guys, that was a bad one. In a very sad move for us, we had to halt production on our extremely ambitious webcomic, NEO-KOSMOS.com
However, that was not and is not the end of the project.
I am happy to announce that we are in the midst of adapting NEOKOSMOS into a series of highly illustrated novels. That’s right, folks. Now you can read about your favorite miserable characters… with words. And pictures, still, I promise. So many pictures. We currently have the first novel completely outlined and are about 22k words into the first draft, with progress steady.
But… we can’t do it without your help! If you check out our new patreon page, you will find that we now have our own discord server for patrons! On this server you can hang out with the creators, and receive access to development notes, sketches, and much more!
There is even a special tier where we will send you PDFs of our drafts to read along with the story IN REAL TIME as we write it, and give your feedback!
Come join us, and support the creation of your favorite dark and mysterious LGBT comedy sci-fi universe! We’d love to have you aboard.
An animated birthday present for @joyfulldreams ! I got a little carried away with the animation.
For context, we talked at one point about Dirk making little pixel art doodles of Jake. I figured he might have some time to practice pixel art on Earth C. He’s still as quick with the sword as ever, though…
this feels like the beginning of a game i desperately want to play
There are many things that cloud the minds of Homestuck’s protagonists. Many things they lean on, that they draw strength from, that they consider a positive influence in their lives, but that nevertheless serve to distract them and poison their hearts and minds. For John, it is innocence. For Karkat, it is the warrior ethos. And for Terezi, it is justice.
Justice drives many of Terezi’s actions and her understanding of the world. It’s how she justifies helping Vriska feed countless to her giant spider lusus during flarp, it’s how she justifies siccing Scratch on Vriska when flarp goes too far, it’s how she describes the nature of doomed timelines and those doomed individuals who originate in them. It’s the language she uses when psyching herself up to personally kill Vriska once and for all.
Justice, to Terezi, is about violence. Retributive violence, a punishment for evil action. It is a way to understand and interact with the world she inherited from Alternia, and it is riddled with the influence of that awful place, with its utter disregard for life, dignity, or any form of mercy. It is a means of justifying murder.
Justice, to Terezi, is a drug, and it is one she only manages to shake once she kills Vriska and finds that in the face of such enormous action its effects as a palliative are lacking. She relapses, of course, wrapping herself in the blindfolded visage of justice when seeking violent revenge on Gamzee, but this no longer brings her strength against his inexplicable juggalo pro-wrestling skills and begins a sequence shortly leading to her death in the Game Over.
Ultimately, Terezi chooses to shed justice entirely, choosing to use John to resurrect Vriska and, critically, to disrupt her initial pretend game of justice during her introduction, symbolically (and, to an extent, actually) freeing her from its curse.
The other big reference to justice that comes to mind: Aimless Renegade immediately prior to blowing some shit up and trying to kill people that end up being his friends.
I think I’m inclined to agree with seeing it as a corruptive influence. I should go through the text and see if it’s bad in every circumstance it shows up in, or if it’s toxic for Terezi in particular as linked to her Knight roleplay.
I don’t know the answer to this but I do know that whatever it is Rose and Dirk argue bitterly over it
rose enjoys hunchback, even the fucking gargoyles. dirk cannot let this stand
theres no fucking way rose enjoys those fucking abominable gargoyles. that nonsensical tonally dissonant garbage goes strictly in the dave wheelhouse. I will fight you
I will concede but I will also propose: dave starts talking about how great they are and rose, seeing dirk starting to open his mouth in longwinded protest, immediately jumps on the bandwagon just to see how mad he gets
I literally think the second dave was like oh yeah those gargoyles I love those guys dirk would open his mouth and swallow his entire tongue while meekly saying oh …….. oh yeah ……. me ……… too ………………………………… because he wants dave to like him so fucking badly and of course rose overhears this and immediately saunters up, chin in hands, oh really? tell me more, father. tell me more about how you just love the delightful antics of the most jarring and out of place so-called “sidekick” characters in all of disneydom. educate me, please. I especially am interested to know what value you believe the gargoyle wanting to fuck the goat brought to the film. rewind it, dave. let’s see that again
Maybe? I don’t really like jossing headcanons, but I’ve never really read a version of this idea that feels compelling to me, personally.
I think it’s more accurate to say Pages tend to either A) Attract the attention of others who mean well, but can be unpredictable in how they go about “helping” the Page, or B) Serve themselves their Aspects in very selfish ways.
I don’t think Jake in particular reads as “lacking” Hope. Understanding the impact Jake has on Dirk when they’re 13, specifically through the vector of his Hope, is instrumental to understanding both their characters, imo.
Well, I think that saying that Pages “lack” their aspect is very much oversimplifying it, and it’s worth noting that we never actually hear it stated this way in the text, not even from Calliope or anyone who gets info from Calliope. It is, however, present in patterns, just as it is for Princes – “lacking” the aspect is a signifier for them, too. Let’s review:
-Tavros is the simplest and most literal application of this signifier, and is probably where the concept originated because of it. He lacks freedom, both physical (due to his confinement in a wheelchair) and social/sexual (due to his constant victimization by Vriska). And this is not a failing on his part! Tavros is aware that freedom is something he does not have, and is not happy about it! Freedom sounds pretty good to him! Eventually, he gets it. Good for him.
-Jake, then, presents us with the other interpretation of this concept; that of having a bad relationship with one’s aspect, in which that part of one’s life is unhealthy. Taz can source this better than I can, but while Jake is very hopeful, he is naively so. Jake is a hopeless optimist, a person who thinks that if he just believes in something hard enough, it will eventually come true. If he believes that he’s a rugged, badass adventurer, he’ll become one! If he believes that his friends are all Good Pure People With No Issues who he can have Straightforward, Easy, Uncomplicated Relationships with, that’s what they’ll be! Everything will work out, you just gotta believe. Jake’s journey – one that as of Act 7 he has only just begun to make serious progress on – is that of understanding that hope is not enough, that in order to make the world the way you want it, you have to strive for it.
(Despite his other issues, I think we see the end of this road in Grandpa Harley – one does not become as accomplished in as many different fields as him by wishing in one hand and seeing how quickly it fills up!)
The concept holds up pretty well with the Princes, too – Eridan has hopes and dreams, but they all get smashed to pieces and his moment of greatest power and greatest impact on the story comes at his moment of utter hopelessness. Dirk certainly has a soul, he has emotions (indeed, Dirk’s biggest problem is arguably that he can’t stop feeling way too much, all the time, forever) – but, like his counterpart Rose, he’s very bad at dealing with them and processing them, and he’s constantly held back by difficulties placed in his way by his Self or versions of his Self (such as Hal) and by his own literal Self-hatred. Kurloz we don’t see too much of, but he’s a Rage player (anger, chaos, doubt, purifying truth) who is always 100% calm and collected, and dedicates himself to a god who cares nothing for him – hardly a righteous or truthful faith.
So there’s my counterpoint – I would say that yes, Pages do lack their aspect at the beginning of their journey, but that’s only one way that their difficulties can manifest, and interpreting that too literally is limiting and inaccurate. It might be better to say that early on Pages (and Princes) have a weakness corresponding to their aspect.
A solid add-on! I think I could still make an argument that Tavros’ issues stem from an unhealthy relationship with his Aspect, or a fundamental misunderstanding linked to it. But I agree on the broad points, and I think this is a pretty solid way of conceptualizing the parallels.
We’ve gotta start with the fact that as the third Hope player, Jake is subject to a magical prophecy passed down from Cronus. All three Hope players roleplay Magicians at some point.
Eridan and Jake both use Hope to force an enormous amount of emotional labor out of a Life player. And both Eridan and Jake piss their respective Life players off so much they revoke a symbol of mutual friendship. Eridan does this by using willful ignorance to keep his belief in a legacy of destruction, and then selfishly choosing to destroy Hope to save his own skin.
Jake is more complicated. He actually foreshadows his own behavior when he tells John about his Grandma in his letter, back in Act 4. It’s telling that tells John he likes to be honest, because he’s anything but for the first half of Act 6.
Jake uses willful ignorance to get what he wants without having to be honest about it. In so doing, he ends up keeping secrets–not just from all his friends, but even from himself. Only the part of his brain that takes the form of Brain Ghost Dirk is fully honest about Jake’s true awareness of his surroundings.
Secrecy comes fairly naturally to a Witch. Jade’s plan in its entirety is shared with no one until the end, Damara is secretive and cryptic about her actions, the Batterwitch is noted for her secrets, Feferi doesn’t fill anyone in on the nature of her bargain with the Horrorterrors until after she’s already Dead…so on.
This seems to be an element of his Grandmother’s Jake emulates, but it doesn’t come naturally to him. He mentions that secrecy wears on him and leaves him feeling jaded, which is exactly how he ends up feeling about his relationship with Dirk.
Jade: Becquerel (Space) Damara: Lord English (Time) Feferi, The Batterwitch: Gl’bolyb (Life) Rose: The Horrorterrors (Void), Doc Scratch (Light)
The interesting thing is, the relationship between a Witch and her Familiar always seems to be described in terms of Service. Serve is the verb inherent to Knight/Page, with Knights often Serving for the benefit of others, and Pages often benefiting from the service of others.
It’s from Dirk that we get the best description of Witches’ Familiars, as he describes the relationship between Gl’bolyb and the Batterwitch.
And as it happens, it’s also an excellent description of the sum total of Jake’s experience of Dirk, himself. Which is fitting, because Dirk is also an intense roleplayer–one who roleplays a Knight.
Brain Ghost Dirk is the manifestation of Jake’s faith in Dirk as both his personal bodyguard and his secret weapon–a window into how Jake sees Dirk at his best. Here he parallels Bec saving Jade from the meteor or from imps. While Bec is powered by Space and Dirk by Hope, the image is of a devoted, hypercompetent protector.
Jake’s faith also has a hand in creating AR, however, and Hal becomes the interpretation of Familiars as foreboding and controlling figures. This Dirk most reflects Gl’bolyb imposing its will onto the Condesce’s desires, or Lord English imposing his onto Damara’s.
ok so i totally failed at making that quick or short but that’s the loose gist of it. I could write a lot more but i really need to learn how to make these points concisely so i am hoping this is short and concise enough to get the point across.
Flying through Storytelling 