davepeta being taken for granted and not getting the attention they deserve in this fandom is a crime. ive seen so many people insist that theyre 100% dead, even if killing off the only confirmed trans character in such an unceremonious and vague way wouldnt completely suck, and also when davesprite had this longstanding meme of being written off and thought of as dead by other characters in canon multiple times only to come back like a goddamn phoenix. or even worse they just count the davepeta/jade kiss as being a lead-up to endgame dave//jade which lmao, fuck you
using the endpoint of a different character who had their own arc separate from alpha dave, a character who suffered specifically from thinking they were lesser than alpha dave and even telling jade to go be with the “superior dave” cause he thought he was worthless (even tho jade made a constant effort to separate him from alpha dave, telling john to call him “davesprite” and saying that there were a lot of differences between them and regular dave) as a stepping stone back to alpha dave//jade is completely missing the damn point and just kind of really shitty. the other thing is like, thats basically saying that dave//jade gets to have this explicit on-screen
symbolic
kiss scene as a “lead-up” to being endgame while davekat didnt get anything. none of that adds up dude.
davesprite and davepeta are characters of particular interest to me because they explore a hs theme that i find pretty cool
ive seen a lot of people insist one or the other – that davepeta is their own character and not dave and nepeta at all, and that you cant gather any info about either of them from davepeta. then ive seen people say the opposite, that theyre basically just nepeta and dave taking turns at piloting a 3d holographic card in person form. then ive seen both factions insist the other one is completely wrong.
honestly i think it comes straight down the middle. i think davesprites arc is an exploration of the dichotomy between mind and heart. davesprite is a divergence from dave – we see very clearly how he reacts differently to things than dave (getting pissed off at john for being ungrateful while alpha dave tells john its nothing and not to worry about it right after), davesprite saying hes just a janky dave knockoff and not worthy of having friends or relationships of his own, and john very notably telling davesprite to fuck off and that he couldnt wait to meet up with the real dave when he got angry at him during his birthday. davesprite underwent different experiences, different choices, and is different from dave in a measurable amount as a result. this is where you get people insisting that davesprite is his own character completely separate from dave. and while i agree in the same way that bro is not the same as dirk, grandpa harley is not the same as jake, kankri is not the same as the signless, etc, it doesnt mean that davesprite doesnt illuminate certain things about daves character and personality and how he would react to similar situations or his general thought process. (you see this get sort of lampshaded in this conversation, where davesprite says that he just noticed he likes to talk to himself, wonders if alpha dave also made that observation and concludes that nah, he had to be a bird for 3 years to come to it. meanwhile….alpha dave at about the exact same time has this monologue where hes come the same realization, sans birdness factor) its the balance of nature vs nurture, and while davesprite comes swinging in heavily on the mind/nurture side of things (with some indications that its not a complete divergence) and this contributes to his lower self esteem and identity crisis, once he merges with nepeta (a heart player) a more balanced view of this is achieved. davesprite, through davepeta, gains an understanding that hes still technically connected to the greater platonic entity of dave just as much as the current alpha version of dave is and is just as important to the grander scheme of things, which was the main source of his inner turmoil.
this is where you get a lot of complaints saying that the ultimate self resolution to davesprites character went completely against his previous conflict, and while i understand people who say this…. this isnt really taking into account the other things davepeta said about their existence. they still declared themselves a new person, with new pronouns, consciously decided not to act on nepetas former feelings for karkat, and decided to just live their new life as a new person, instead acting on former feelings for jade. (presumably because shes not in a relationship like karkat already is, and the former relationship was requited and just…more thematically tied with jade) while talking about how everyone is connected to a greater self, at the same time they still went ahead and distinguished themselves as a new entity separate from that. you could say it should have been executed better, but its still a balancing act between the two aspects.
anyway this was way longer than it should have been but in conclusion davepeta rules
thank you! I was lucky enough to get it as a gift from two cool friends: @aldrensertan did my Planet, The Land of Depth and Twinkles–his planets are great btw check them commissions out.
It’s often been joked that the standard JRPG boss fights as “God”, “your evil Dad”, and “God who is also your evil Dad”. The Persona series has certainly been no slouch in this respect; the most recent entry’s storyline bosses include no less than three of your party members’ fathers (one’s an unofficial adoptive father, but it counts).
One may note that none of the recent Persona games have gone so far as to include your evil Dad as the final boss. This is not because the series is bucking the trend. This is because it’s already taken the concept to its logical-yet-absurd conclusion. In Persona 2: Innocent Sin (which is largely unfamiliar to Western audiences due to its late and little-publicised localisation), the final boss takes the form of all of your party members’ fathers fused together:
Yes, this is in fact an unholy abomination made of everybody’s evil Dads – in latex bondage outfits, no less.
There’s not really anywhere to go from there, is there?
I know next to nothing about the Persona series and very little about fathers in general, and I usually have no active interest in either of these fairly popular subjects, but that right there is an official illustration of a repulsive, obscene, baffling monstrosity of a final boss made out of five fathers in shiny rubber sex outfits stuck together in a vaguely humanoid formation by one big shiny rubber sex outfit with suckers, wings on the chest purely for aesthetics and a faceted tentacle chest-phallus, and presumably posed in a way that implies that the five individual amalgamated evil fathers are glaring menacingly at their children while mostly hanging upside-down in a bewildering and disconcerting configuration presumably designed to bypass body horror altogether and combine Freudian themes with BDSM design elements within one big, bold, horrifying mutant freak. ‘Unsubtle’ wouldn’t even begin to describe what I’m seeing right now with my own two eyeballs. This is official art of five evil dads ‘sexy’-shrink-wrapped together by their legs into an evil dad starfish.
This new information simultaneously lowers my previously fairly neutral opinion on the Persona series and my previously already quite low opinion on fathers while sharply piquing my interest in the video game Persona 2: Innocent Sin.
To be fair, this arguably isn’t even the most Freudian thing you can fight in that particular game, much less the Persona series as a whole.
(Other demons you can throw down with include a bearded, naked man sitting on a toilet, and a giant, fang-mawed penis with chariot wheels.)
Some mistakes are so fucking big that they divert the path of your life entirely, sending you somewhere you were never meant to go. Some mistakes are so seismic and so obvious that when you look back on your life all you can see is the beacon where you made them. Some mistakes leave you so far off course you don’t even recognize who you are or why you’re still here.
You don’t usually get a chance to make amends.
3/5
HI here is chapter 3!! things are happening and we’re going. the guys admit some shit about their lives and confront some real existential disagreements about life and death. did I mention happy ending? cause, happy ending.
Thanks @revolutionaryduelist for writing some REALLY FANTASTIC meta–it was super useful. I’m pretty sure I’m one of the latecomers to this particular party, but if anyone else is looking for some meta to help them figure out their classpect (or, it looks like, any of a variety of things related to Homestuck), I can recommend them wholeheartedly. 🙂
oh jeez thanks! aaa todays been real nice to me :)) much appreciated
joey doesn’t know what furries are but i just wanted to let y’all know what when i get questions like this and don’t answer them it’s often because i take it as a personal challenge to take organically answer the question in the next act
or the question is stone cold terrible
this one wasn’t though! this was a good question
well jot this down as another thing im excited to find out about in the next acts, potentially
my entire online presence is basically a bunch of writing on Homestuck, a ton of it on Jake. As it happens this particular essay is by far the wost thing I’ve ever written so i am happy to point you elsewhere
Handy places to find my works in a more collected way are:
I’d probably recommend the Patreon page since i actually like its ui and tagging systems, but just searching my mspa tag for whatever you’re interested in should work fine.
Flying through Storytelling 