Do you ever rewatch the flashes, and realize just how many talented people worked on Homestuck, and what a miracle it was to find so many skilled people willing to come together and create something so incredible? Every artist, programmer, musician, merch designer, community manager, community member, writer, cosplayer…
Trying to comprehend the scale of it all is so overwhelming, but I am so grateful everything lined up perfectly for Homestuck to become what it did.
fffff now i’m crying thanks a lot Rune
god
Homestuck is good
In this episode, we break down the rules of the Alchemy system, and take a glimpse at how the ability to create anything is exploited by the kids playing Sburb. We also begin our exploration of how this mechanic is used to advance Homestuck’s philosophy.
In the next, we will see that philosophy come to fruition.
[This is the reuploaded link with the audio issues fixed! Please reblog this version. Thanks! :D]
My honest opinion is that Hiveswap is probably going to bring the fandom back and then some because it looks….really really fucking good? But it depends on what your friends are interested in. I’d suggest holding out to start them off with Hiveswap, or mmaaayybe trying my youtube series and seeing if those videos strike a chord with them? I don’t want to come off self-shilly or presumptuous, but that’s…what I’m making this series for, is for non-fans who would like to get oriented/interested in Homestuck in an easier, accessible way. I hope I’m succeeding at that and I’ve received some positive responses, but I’d be interested in hearing how your friends respond to them :B
Past those suggestions I honestly dunno what to tell you! My own track record for getting friends interested has never been particularly great.
I’m not like, super convinced? But I haven’t like, revisited Act 5 in detail quite the way I have with Act 6, and considering how hard people misread…everything about Jake (and Tavros), I’m willing to think it’s possible we missed some pretty obvious stuff with Vriska and Terezi, too. I’d personally like to see more references to canon to back up that ideas, but even if it’s not LITERALLY TEXTUAL I think it’s fine for someone to read the story in that way, since again, it seems to me the FEELINGS were there–if too repressed to manifest into an actual relationship per se.
For the most part though I just find myself collecting takes on Vriska and Terezi to consider in preparation for the Epilogue. I didn’t claim the kiss canonically happened, I just don’t think it’s really that much of a stretch since the (Vrisrezi) sequence is already explicitly flushed and romantic–they literally meet on a bright red flushed quadrant.
I don’t always 100% agree with the views I reblog/boost, but I do think that new/varied opinions on the comic are valuable in an of themselves so I try to reblog a wide variety of viewpoints. This is to an extent–there are of course readings I think straight up hurt understandings of the canon, and I wouldn’t really reblog those without voicing criticisms. (The obvious place to go here is stuff like “Dirk is bi” or “Calliope’s Malice” or “Gamzee did nothing wrong” or “Pages are a Passive class”) This particular one I think is worth having a conversation about, and since it only adds a sense of romance to an already explicitly romantic relationship, I don’t really see the harm even if it isn’t drawn 100% from the text, if that makes sense?
do u ever think about how calliope lived exclusively in a 100ft radius her whole life in a bleak shitty room on a bleak shitty planet with a gross red sun and a stupid asshole brother who is probably like 90% of the reason she hated herself so much and an uncomfortable hard sarcophagus bed and now she’s living in the lap of luxury as a queen in a palace full of bright colors and probably gets to sleep in a really massive royal bed next to the love of her life and she finally loves herself and is happy
Yo, yall, I saw someone in the cherubplay tag asking about a guide for this and I like to think I’m pretty good at Dirk roleplaying, so let’s go.
I was going to try and keep this away from most “fanon vs. canon” stuff, but as a heads up, with both Striders it’s fairly impossible to avoid talking about that because they put up such fronts that get read as their actual character. (More on that in a sec.)
While on the one hand you have the misreadings of Dirk that result in desperate, clingy, whiny “looking for doms” bed starfish, on the other hand, you have the suave, domineering, puppeteer Dirks who control literally everything their friends do, are always in control, and definitely never panic in a bad situation. While both of those misreadings are bad, I’d actually argue the second is more OOC than the first, and this is a post about why.
Anyway, this is gonna be a really long post because I like talking about Dirk and his complexes way too much, so hit the readmore.
Dirk might not be a Knight, but he has all the same hallmarks as Dave of desperately armoring himself in “being cool” to avoid letting people see the raw underbelly underneath. If you come out of Homestuck reading that Dirk believes he’s the best thing since sliced bread, then … well, then he fooled you. You saw his front, accepted that for all he is, and moved on, and somewhere, the metafictional concept of Dirk probably let out a sigh of relief and wiped sweat off his forehead.
I’m reblogging this specifically because I think it’s relevant that Dirk acting as a Knight is objectively correct? Like, not just in terms of his characterization echoing Dave’s–in the sense that Dirk actively tries to roleplay a Knight throughout his narrative, in his emulating Alpha Dave.
So I think it’s pretty cool that someone picked up on this element of his characterization now that I think it’s like…a literal, explicit game mechanic, consistent not just in Dirk but throughout all of Homestuck (and Hiveswap, considering what we’ve seen up until now).
Classes are cool, y’all. Also Dirk Strider owns and I love and will protect him.
Fun fact: we can acknowledge that Vriska abused Terezi when their relationship was flushed, and simultaneously acknowledge that they are both healthier and happier together in a pale relationship than they ever would be apart, given the circumstances of their universe.
obviously, the two are individuals, but so much of their characterization is tied together, if you try to logically explain half of the story without explaining the other, you don’t even have half of the understanding
(Terezi) and (Vriska), too, are important to the understanding of Terezi and Vriska’s endgame relationship.
(click through for what essentially amounts to an essay on their relationship status throughout chronology, and my own thoughts)
I don’t have much to add to this–just that I’d never read Terezi and Vriska as being flushed that early on before, and it’s an interesting reading since I think the feelings are definitely there, if repressed.
Unsure how I feel about Vriska and Terezi’s moirallegiance being healthy, too, but I’m genuinely not sure how the comic is aiming to present that and suspect I won’t until the Epilogue and Terezi finding Vriska in the bubbles. Guess we’ll see!
Either way this was an interesting read and I’m in a vrisrezi mood and jesus fuck i’d never seen that kiss panel so that exists. Vrisrezi is gay
oh yeah, the parallels between vriska’s and aranea’s reaction to finding out their relations to mindfang are definitely solid. i also don’t think the Page’s god tier outfit being visually similar to peter pan’s is a coincidence, either; there’s a deliberate link between pages and youth, immaturity, and a struggle to realize themselves, making theirs the most arduous and lengthy of all the classpects’ journey of maturity.
vriska’s is also a unique journey in terms of thieves; while the thief class sets up the player for a journey of learning to be altruistic instead of selfish, vriska has to go through the additional step of learning that she is a thief in the first place. she frames all of her self-centered choices as selfless ones, done either for the good of another person (tavros, john) or for the general group. she wants to paint herself as a sylph, working for the good of others, even though most of the time, her choices are rooted in altruism only insofar as that altruism can come back to benefit her. i.e., she wants to be a hero, but only so that she can ultimately profit from it.
this comes back in the Dream Bubbles, when she meets another thief and starts dating her. (vriska) is a demonstration of Vriska at her most ‘thief-y,’ totally absorbed in her own world and her own relationships, and willing to give up on altruism entirely. the problem is that although this is technically progress in the right direction, it’s not the thief’s ideal endpoint; ideally, she would come to terms with her own nature and start working towards genuine selflessness. this doesn’t happen, not in the least because she’s dead, and has a dearth of opportunities.
aranea, on the other hand, is a sylph through and through. what she does is for the “good” of others, she’s just very bad at realizing what the good of others is; and she’s too utilitarian (mind-controlling people, killing others, desperately making a power grab) about it. aranea has a vision for the greater good of all people, but the brutal methods she’s willing to use to get to that vision damn both her and the attempt.
Oooooh damn I’ve been arguing for a while now that the Active/Passive distinction inherently includes Selfishness/Selflesnsess respectively but it didn’t occur to me to consider that part of the roleplaying mechanics I’ve been uncovering, that does say a lot about Vriska I think!
Interestingly it suggests Alpha Vriska hasn’t wholly moved on from her Mindfang mentality either since one of the ways she tears into (Vriska) is specifically noting that she thinks (Vriska)’s behavior is selfish.
Man I want the epilogue what the fuck is Terezi going to do about this mess 😦 i believe in her
Flying through Storytelling 