Idk how people actually get out of warrior cats hell because let me tell you I went 3 years without touching or looking at a warriors book or any sort of warriors related content and STILL managed to think about how pissed off I am about Hollyleaf’s death every single fucking day
I’m actually surprised that some people are still in it. Like, you are aware that this fandom started the whole cringy/edgy AMV trend right? (Of course not everyone in the fandom is bad. But I still hate the whole edge trend going on.)
This fandom produced some of the best amateur animated content online in the late 2000s. This fandom encouraged and enabled (and still does) artists and animators. This fandom doesn’t actually give a fuck about the “cringe” because we all started somewhere because of silly fighting cats.
If you think I’m not aware of the “edge” and “cringe”, I am. I started reading the books in 2004—I’ve seen it all.
The books are still being written and people actually like the extremely unique and creative concept and world. It’s a very imaginative and inspiring environment that allows for artists and animators to grow.
There is AMAZING fan content out there. The Noodlers, Nightrizer, and Nifty Senpai, just to name a few people who have some spectacular animation on YouTube.
Despite what people may think of the art, SSS Warrior Cats paved the way for fan animation everywhere, and it’s GOOD animation, especially for the time it started being produced.
Screw your “edge” and “cringe”. Let people do what they want and actually encourage them to learn and grow, for god’s sake.
Thanks for your negative comment, but I didn’t ask.
I babysit for a ten year old girl and her little brother. The girl is perhaps the most creative child I’ve ever met. She’s fascinated by animation, and very recently she created her very first animation. (an adventure time animation on some free mspaint-like software) She was so incredibly proud of it and showed it to me with utter joy at what she had created.
I helped her put it on youtube and she couldn’t wait for the comments. Day by day, views ticked up one by one, but not a comment yet.
Then just last week, she got her very first YouTube comment. She actually squealed as she hurried to see what they had said.
Now I watched, I watched as weeks of pent up excitement drained from her face and her whole body just drooped. She asked me what she had done wrong with the animation just because some conceited grown adult had felt the need to comment how “cringey” and “cancerous” her animation was. She is ten goddamn years old.
She took the video down and no matter how hard I try to convince her she will not put it back up.
Watch what you say online. These kids are the creative future and one comment can shut them down for good.
[3. Earthbound – The two Yaldabaoths, Dramatic Tension & The Diegetic Reader (That’s You!)]
[Spoilers for Earthbound:Beginnings, Earthbound, & Mother 3]
Most know by now that Earthbound is referenced every time we say the word “Homestuck”. It’s built into the name: To be Stuck at Home. To be Bound to Earth.
And fittingly for a reference which such pervasive impact on our understanding of the comic, Homestuck styles itself as a spiritual successor to Earthbound in a number of ways.
Both Earthbound and Homestuck begin with a set of four kids who go on an adventure together. Both feature kids with psychic powers, friendship, and the meaning of growing up.
But there are three particular similarities to Homestuck that I want to present you with here. In these three areas, Homestuck and Earthbound/Mother are notably alike:
The Characters:
1) Both feature a unique execution of dramatic tension and narrative stakes for the characters.
The Player:
2) Engage in heavily metatextual, diegetic relationships between the World/Story and The Player/Reader.
The Antagonists:
3) Are God-Like, Authoritarian powers that cannot engage with ideas. In other words, they operate as Yaldabaoths.
These antagonists are who I want to talk about first. We will proceed from number 3 up to number 1, talking about the context of the games and tying it into the comic further as we go.
I’ll ask you to be patient with me if you don’t see much about Homestuck at first–there’s a lot of setup work to do.
Without further ado, let’s begin.
3) The Antagonists.
Side A) Earthbound – The War on Giygas.
Earthbound is the story of a boy named Ness, and his neighbor, Pokey Minch. One day, a meteor lands in their town, a time-traveler called Buzz Buzz appears from within. Buzz Buzz tells Ness he has come from a bad future, where an alien overlord named Giygas has cast the world into eternal darkness. Only Ness and his prophecized friends can stop Giygas.
From then on Earthbound is mostly a fun, sweet adventure romp for our Protagonists. Pokey goes on an adventure of his own, acting like a cruel child whilst striking deals with agents of Giygas and steadily gaining more and more power, both in business and through the dark forces Giygas employs.
Then we skip ahead to the very end of Earthbound. Where we get one of the most horrific and memorable boss sequences in gaming.
Giygas is explicitly unfathomable, indescribable: Giygas is Eldritch in the true “Man was never meant to see this” sort of way. Giygas isn’t explicitly A God, but rather an alien. But he certainly acts like a God. His influence makes inanimate objects animate, makes animals aggressive, lures people into cults and evil deeds.
He’s tapped into the centers of power and wealth in society. Giygas is nowhere, and yet everywhere. He is, in short, the God of the material world Earthbound’s kids wander through. Their Yaldabaoth.
And interestingly, as with Yaldabaoth, Pokey describes Giygas as being “an all-mighty Idiot”–unaware of himself or what’s happening around him.
Giygas shares similarities with Bastian and Caliborn, too–in Earthbound: Beginnings, he’s driven insane by a song that reminds him of his mother. Like Bastian, Giygas has connotations of warped, eternal childhood. But unlike Bastian, Giygas does not escape his damnation until he dies.
And there are fates even worse than death. Such as the fate reserved for Pokey Minch, who against all odds, is the more interesting of the two–and the more relevant for Homestuck.
Let’s talk about Mother 3.
Side B) Mother 3 – No crying until the end.
Mother 3 is not as happy a game as Earthbound. Where Earthbound concentrated it’s gloom and despair into intense climaxes while being generally upbeat, Mother 3 is bittersweet and tragic throughout–though still plenty beautiful and joyful when it wants to be.
Like Homestuck, it has an unusual structure of Acts–8 instead of 7, but also of variable lengths, including a chapter that takes up almost half the game. Playable characters vary with each section, but the bulk of the game features Lucas, his dog Boney, and their friends Duster and Kumatora. So again: Four protagonists.
Set in the post-apocalyptic Nowhere Islands, Mother 3 tells the story of the fascist, totalitarian Pig Mask Army’s encroachment onto the idyllic, peaceful lives of the Nowhere Island natives.
As it turns out, the Pig Mask Army is led by the megalomaniacal dictator Pokey (Japanese name “Porky”) Minch, who discovers the ability to travel spacetime and escapes the final battle against Giygas.
Since then, he’s traveled countless worlds and lived through millennia, conquering and exploiting all unfortunate enough to be caught in his way.
Now, one interesting parallel about Pokey is what he does to the world he rules over. Just Lord English does to the Troll’s universe–and more indirectly, to both Human universes–Pokey manipulates and exploits The Nowhere Islands through a number of tools.
I note these similarities mostly because through Pokey we get a direct linking between the idea of a God-Like Yaldabaoth figure and the idea of a tyrannical, authoritarian dictator.
This is an area of Lord English’s insidious evil mostly delivered to the audience through implication and background information, so I think it’s worth the time to draw it into focus.
And the similarities between their atrocities might give us some context between the similarities at the end of their stories. Because, again like Lord English…
Master Pokey can’t die.
But he is defeated, as his machine runs out of power. And so, lacking other options, Pokey plays his trump card.
One that proves to be the end of his influence in the story.
“Oh, my! As evil as old Porky here is, I feel bad for him now. It’s true that the "Absolutely Safe Capsule” that the Mr. Saturns and I developed together can protect one from every manner of danger. It IS an absolutely safe capsule, but once you enter it, you can never exit it… Even what’s outside of the Absolutely Safe Capsule is absolutely safe. I did tell Porky in a hushed voice that he shouldn’t use it yet… But all he can do now is live for eternity inside the capsule, in absolute safety. Who knows, in a way, he may’ve gotten exactly what he wanted. What do you think? Is it wrong of me to think this way?“ — Dr. Andonuts
Once Pokey seals his life into the capsule, there’s no longer an out for him. Not ever again. In a way, Pokey’s fate may indeed be one worse than death. And it’s one that seems to be echoed by Lord English, since after all…
Lord English cannot die, but he is defeated.
Specifically, Act 7′s visual language suggests he’s pocketed in the Black Hole that Alt!Calliope created. As a Black Hole is a gravitational singularity, once there, Lord English would be trapped–no amount of Time powers would let him come out, and First Guardian powers would no longer work either, since they rely on the Green Sun’s power.
An immortal, tyrannical kid–denied his playground for eternity. Pretty fitting, I think.
But Lord English is only one part of the story, and I think the relationship between the protagonists and the Player/Reader is the more interesting area of Earthbound to explore. Because…didn’t I mention?
In the Mother series, there is another God.
It’s you.
2) The Player
Both Earthbound and Mother 3 explicitly address your existence in the context of their worlds. Both games, in fact, pause entirely just to ask you your name. In Earthbound, this role is taken by Tony, Jeff’s canonically gay friend. He calls Jeff, and in the process brings up a prompt for the Player to input their name. This can seem like a bit of cheeky fourth-wall breaking, but consider:
You are the unseen hand behind the characters’ every action. You lead them through their world just as Giygas does for Pokey. You’re never viewed, but always present, witness and privy to all things.
And in the final boss battle (you did watch that, didn’t you?), when all else fails, Paula’s prayers reach the people of Earthbound who care about the four chosen children…including you. Your name is the final name given, praying for the protection of Ness and his friend. Your prayers are the power that end Giygas.
Mother 3 makes it even more explicit. In this game, you’re asked your name by an unseen voice, while Flint prays at an altar in the only Church in the game. Depicted on the front of it are the Light and Dark Dragons of Nowhere Island, the latter of which is the subject of an apocalyptic prophecy we’ll talk about soon.
A good question to ask at this point is: Why does this matter? And the answer is that because we’re given the God’s-eye view of these games, the context of our engagement with them is diegetic: explained by the narrative itself.
Like Bastian reading The Neverending Story, we’re not just observers consuming the content of these games. At least as far as the stories within are concerned, we are active participants. We are part of the story.
And this is true of Homestuck, too. Doc Scratch is a smarmy asshole, but he directly acknowledges the reader. He even credits us with more of an impact on the story than our protagonists. And on some level, this is true.
We HAVE had a direct impact on the story, through command prompts and fandom memes and all sorts of other engagements that ended up shaping the way Homestuck has been told. We’ve always been part of the narrative.
And this has important implications for how we, the readers, might best engage with Homestuck.
Because the fact that our window into its world is diegetic means that it is presented through us through an explicit frame, a frame that is narratively constructed.
And frames have limits.
1) The Characters
Whenever I hear people say Homestuck is a tragedy, or that it’s headed for a sadstuck ending with the Beta kids stuck in the Juju in the Masterpiece, I honestly can’t help but laugh. You don’t need alternate timelines and sacrificial lamb versions of our protagonists to secure a happy ending in Homestuck.
Homestuck itself is practically a loop of impossible-seemingly, absolute-dooming circumstances…
met by perseverance and good cheer.
And when all’s said and done, the story pretty much always breaks in favor of the latter. Remember that one of the fundamental rules of Homestuck’s universe is the “Do As You Will” principle–everyone always gets what they want.
Caliborn gets to be LE, as does Gamzee. Arquis gets to fulfill the out-of-nowhere heroic destiny he wanted, and finally proves himself to the Alphas in an act of atonement. Lord English gets his eternity of destruction, and Vriska gets to be the great Hero she always wanted to be.
But our protagonists? The Alphas and Betas? They just want to live in peace. Their desires are compatible with the wills of all the other characters.
Lord English’s will is not, and he’s trampled the agency of every other character a million times over to get where he is. That’s what makes him a tyrant, and that’s what dooms him to his Absolutely Safe Capsule. Karma is an established force in Homestuck, and LE will pay his due.
And in this extremely-dire-until-the-very-last-second approach, too, Homestuck seems to be standing on the shoulders of giants.
Because this big buildup to a Big Dramatic Tragedy of an ending is pretty much exactly Earthbound’s M.O.
Earthbound’s final boss isn’t just one of the most horrifically well-executed eldritch monsters in gaming history. It’s also set-up as what amounts to a suicide mission.
Even more interesting to me, however, are the parallels we find to Mother 3′s ending.
I’m going to take a time out from Homestuck for a second and talk about Mother 3 for a second, because this moment is too important to me to waste frivolously, or subject to my overwrought explanatory dialogue with without giving you the option to watch a scene that’s Undertale-level good.
Unless I’ve already succeeded in getting you to stop reading, drop everything, and go find a translated version of Mother 3 now (you can’t play it in english without emulating, since it was never released in the US), I would really appreciate it if you took the time and sucked up the spoilers and watched this ending cutscene.
It’s a work of art. A heartrending, heartfelt symphony to the pain of loss and the fear of something changing forever. Mother 3 is a game about the Apocalypse. A game about CAUSING the apocalypse, to be precise.
Your final moments with the game are spent watching Lucas pull the final needle that binds a dragon bigger than the world, and the only hope is that Lucas’ good heart will pass on to the Dragon and make a good new world to come. Nothing else is certain.
And the shots we see aren’t encouraging: Immediately after pulling the needle, the world begins to fall apart. Earthquakes rise and wreak havoc. Twisters of water dominate the sky and ocean. Meteors fall from the sky, and as if rising from an enormous egg, a vast, black back archs out from under the world we came to love.
And then we cut to black, and the End screen pops up. We never see these characters again. Only…
Only we do get to talk to them. Once this question mark pops up, you can move around in this black screen-with ‘You’ represented by the END? depicted- and occasionally, you’ll bump into…words. Words that say things like:
And
You get glimpses of things you can’t talk to, like…
And best of all, this is where the game brings out its ace.
Because this is where the name you gave in the church comes into play. At the end of it all, all of the characters in the cast not only tell you they’re ok, but recognize you. Thank you. Love you. Treat you like a friend, say goodbye, invite you back over, and wish you well in life.
In Mother 3, you play as the God of the old world, the world bound by the rules the cast had to play by. By playing through to the end, you set them free.
And by treating you as a real part of its world, Mother 3 invites you to consider its characters a real part of yours. Invites you to think of them not as characters, but as friends. As people. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Undertale built a whole damn game out of the concept.
But the same approach has always been in Homestuck’s DNA. These characters were always people first and characters second, and we were always privy to a limited frame.
That frame is Homestuck, which until The Masterpiece and Lord English’s defeat, has belonged to Caliborn. This has always been the story of his circle–the Alpha Timeline–and the context it crafts out is his childish empire.
Next time, we’ll talk more about Homestuck’s Gnostic themes, and just what it is *exactly* that our protagonists are escaping from.
For now, I’ll leave you with this song.
If this piece interested you in Mother 3, I suggest checking out Tom Ato’s legendary fan translation for the game. Mother 3 is a masterpiece, and I owe both it and Tom Ato my life in some ways. It’d make me really happy to know even one more person has been touched by their work because of me.
it’s sort of a mix of stuff. I pretty much think the biggest contributing factor to AR’s descent is the absence of his connections to the other Alphas, and I think that’s true of Bro as well.
I mean that’s pretty much explicit. All four of the Beta guardians are unsatisfied, unhappy, or a wreck in some way, and the unifying thread between them is the lack of the others. This is particularly pronounced for Bro, who is not just barely-functional like Mom and Grandpa are, but profoundly destructive to others and himself when lacking their companionship.
This isn’t JUST about Jake, I could say things as relevant about the ways Dirk needs Roxy and Jane, but I wanna keep this short and you all know what I’m about so let’s use Jake as an example.
Dirk explicitly fears his own potential for darkness and hates himself for it and the reason he falls for Jake in the first place is because of Jake’s *faith* in him, in his kindness and caring and potential to do good.
Dirk is drawn to Jake because Jake sees the value in him and sees the good in him and Jake being able to do that makes it easier for Dirk to see it in himself, too. So without that influence in his life at *ALL*, even less than what AR got?
It’s easy for me to see how Bro would fall apart to the degree he does. For the most part, that’s all there is to say on the matter.
.
.
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but. let me complicate the narrative for you a little.
I used to be firmly of the opinion that Bro’s actions had nothing to do with Lil Cal and were all on Bro, and the latter’s still true. However, @jadedresearcher kinda turned my world around when they pointed out a simple fact:
There are explicit, demonstrable influences that Lil Cal exerts on Bro, in terms of his personality growth at least. Namely, Bro and Dirk have a divergent interest.
Namely, the SAW-inspired snuff film/”I want to play a Game” stuff. Bro expresses an interest in it, but Dirk really never so much as mentions it. The Jigsaw aesthetic is Caliborn’s thing exclusively, and the only real narrative explanation it has in the story is Lil Cal acting as a transmitter for the interest.
So having this in mind I think there is an extent to which Cal’s influence can be implicated in Bro’s descent. Not that it excuses any of his assholery.
Lastly, here’s a bit of rarely indulged speculation:
We do already know Grandpa raised Mom, suggesting Grandpa may have raised Bro as well. Hell, Hiveswap even has a blurry as hell picture that may be of Bro facepalming that i can’t for the life of me find right now so i guess ill just post it later who cares, the point is
if it’s true Grandpa remembers the Alphas in some way, or if it’s true *Bro* does– given that he’s a Heart player, that seems plausible too–those could also be factors that isolated Bro and made him vulnerable to Cal’s influence?
That is, of course, purely speculative. It’s just one of many potential questions I’m excited to see if Hiveswap will explore.
Hey hey hey – @revolutionaryduelist, I am normally 100% behind your point of view but I take serious umbrage at the implication that the WORLD RENOWNED EXPLORER-NATURALIST-TREASURE HUNTER-ARCHEOLOGIST-SCIENTIST-ADVENTURER-BIG GAME HUNTER-BILLIONAIRE EXTRAORDINAIRE lived anything less than a radical and amazing life.
“This is particularly pronounced for Bro, who is not just barely-functional like Mom and Grandpa are,”
Dude – it’s a stretch to begin with to call Mom barely-functional, given that despite being afflicted by one of society’s most misunderstood and poorly considered diseases, she was still able to succeed as a scientist and a mother (and I’d argue she was a lot better at being a guardian than Bro was – most of Rose’s tribulations about her mother were entirely projections on Rose’s part), but it’s outright absurd to call Grandpa Harley barely functional. Given what we know about him, he seems to have functioned better than 99% of all humans in ecorded history.
And, hyperbole aside, I think you’re hard pressed to speak with any kind of textual authority about what kind of interior life Grandpa may or may not have had – we see far too little of him. Other than expressing grief at DreamJAde’s death, we don’t know anything about him other than his known actions (unconditional love and support for Jade, including building her a magnificent dreambot) and what was filtered from Jade’s earliest memories. We’ve got no reason to think Grandpa wasn’t riddled with depression and deep-seated anxiety, but then we have no reason to think that he was, either. Either-way, calling the man who plundered every tomb and beauty parlour on the planet, invented a dozen wonders, and slew monsters like it weren’t no thang “barely functional” is just… incorrect.
To clarify: I meant emotionally. Mom and Grandpa are definitely successful, don’t get me wrong? I guess I just default to including the ability to enjoy life and engage with it in a like, balanced way…in my definition of functional?
As for Grandpa’s inner life, I don’t feel that’s correct. Grandpa’s inner life is laid out for us about as richly as Mom’s, I think. It’s just told almost entirely through environmental storytelling and context clues.
For starters, the man is a chronic hoarder. We see his hoarding all throughout Jade’s house, and it litters his manor in Hiveswap, too. Hoarding is commonly understood as a symptom of anxiety and depression.
Mom and Bro hoard to some regards too, but with Grandpa I feel it’s particularly notable just through sheer volume of stuff. And he doesn’t just hoard, he arranges his hoards in a way that’s deeply symbolically meaningful to him.
He sets up the Distinguished Houseguests in his living room and remembers enough to, somehow, sort them by Moon. He places himself by the fire in the center of all their attentions. He sets up entire rooms like shrines to each of the Alphas. He remembers Dirk not as a Prince, but as a Knight.
And, in my view, more tellingly, this is a guy who seemingly just…up and leaves his house and his two kids to raise Jade on an island? And while he’s doing that, he lets Jade play with flintlock pistols she almost shoots herself with a pistol:
Though I don’t doubt Grandpa loves Jade a lot (and I don’t particularly buy the more damning accusations going on about him right now) the dude is still guilty of serious neglect. Which, you know, kind of coincides with Jade’s Aspect pretty strongly.
And when you look at what Grandpa is doing while, you know, not taking care of his Granddaughter who is playing with guns, things become telling.
The dude is literally playing pretend. We established through Hussie that the blue dolls represent Jane in his head, which means he’s literally making believe he’s with his friends on some level.
This is Jake “Aggressively ignoring his problems” English at his worst. Just like you can see glimmers of Bro in AR at his worst, so too can you see a version of what Jake COULD become with no hope and no support network in Grandpa.
Which honestly I can’t blame him for too hard since the entire rest of his life at this point is “wait for the fucking Apocalypse and to die.”
And also, he’s alone. Jake relies on his sense of camaraderie to get by, and without his friends’ (perceived) approval his sense of place and self falls apart completely. This is a Jake who never had a chance to grow into a healthier attitude to his self worth, because he never had those friends to depend on.
Even if he did know Mom and even Bro, he would have been in a position of power and responsibility over them. It would not be the same dynamic at all, now matter how much he cares about either.
I think Grandpa is an excellently crafted tragic figure, basically. The fact that Hiveswap not only kept this consistent, but also successfully built upon it through enviromental storytelling alone is maybe the biggest reason I’m excited for it.
Sorry, not feeling it. I have a hard time conflating his collections with hoarders – the hoarders I’ve known (a few, not many, mind) were compulsive in their hoarding, almost indiscriminate. Grandpa. by contrast, is meticulous – he’s a collector, a connoisseur. Someone who collects art and builds a gallery to house their art collection isn’t a hoarder, they’re an enthusiast – in a series full of kids who stuff their rooms to bursting full of the junk that most delights them, Grandpa is simply the only person lucky enough to have the resources to build a space large enough to house them all. You say “he arranges his hoards in a way that’s deeply symbolically meaningful to him” as if we should take that as a bad thing – come to my house and see my My Little Pony collection; I assure you it’s not symbolic of my personal misery.
I don’t see Granda’s dolls as sad or evidence of loneliness – the man spent his entire life having glorious adventures and now, as an old man, he’s content to withdraw into relative seclusion. Sure his hermitage is a bit grandeur than most of those outside Saint Petersburg, but that doesn’t make it less of one.
“the entire rest of his life at this point is “wait for the fucking Apocalypse and to die.”
At the time of his death Grandpa Harley was pushing ninety of not over it – his meteor landed in 1910, he was definitely dead after 1995 and before 2009, making his time of death anywhere upwards of 85+. If you’ve ever spent a lot of time with the very elderly, you’ll know that that they don’t consider ‘waiting to die’ a bad thing. Sure, not everyone wants to go gently into that good night, but for many they start to slow down, do less, and spend a lot of time in their own heads, getting ready for whatever the next step of their life may be. To borrow a phrase from Stranger than Fiction, Grandpa lived his life– and now, at the end of it, he’s happy to be a kooky old coot. He looted all the tombs, toppled all the urns, stole all the mummies in a dreadful display of imperialist presumption – and now he’s retired, enjoying his hobbies, and knowing that one day he’s going to die – just like everybody else who ever lived.
In order to see Grandpa at the en of his life as a tragic figure you have to believe that eighty years of adventure were unfulfilling, and there’s zero reason to do so. I hesitate to go even half as far as you in considering anything in Grandpa’s house as a ‘shrine’ to the Alpha Kids – it’s far more likely that Hussie went back to Grandpa’s house when finding themes for the Alphas than the house being an anticipation of the alphas (though your line “We established through Hussie that the blue dolls represent Jane in his head” intrigues me – care to elaborate or source?). You say “This is a Jake who never had a chance to grow into a healthier attitude to his self worth, because he never had those friends to depend on” but we have no reason to believe that just because he didn’t have Dirk or Roxy he was incapable of finding friendship just as meaningful – there’s a good seven decades of this man’s life that are an unknown country about which we know next to nothing and from which any firm inference is impossible. To be an elderly eccentric is not to b unhappy, lonely, or unfulfilled – Grandpa lived the life Jake only ever dreamed of having, and I think you do him a grave disservice in presupposing his life was unhappy just because the Derse guardian’s live were unhappy. Take Nanna, for example, the only guardian whom we ever get to see say anything meaningful about her own life: it had a rough start with an evil woman, but over-all it was happy: she met a good man, had a son she lived, lived the quiet life she largely wanted. Not perfect, but not a tragedy. I think it’s far too big a leap to say call an elderly man enjoying his weird hobbies in secluded retirement an “excellently crafted tragic figure,” because even if he did miss his alt-universe friends, that’s at best sad; hardly tragic.
(As to anything about Hiveswap it’s my policy that, since it’s a WIP, nothing about it I canonically ‘true’ until the game is out and in our hands and no-longer subject to revisions.)
Fair enough re: the hoarding, but my biggest reason for noting his unhappiness was his negligence towards Jade and aggressive self-delusion anyway. It’s behavior that we see with Jake when he’s stressed or dealing with things he doesn’t like.
I don’t really think it’s much of a stretch to link the two this way, either. Mom is pretty blatantly unhappy, which feeds into her drinking, which feeds into her co-dependence with Rose. Bro is Bro, and has downright suicidal undertones in his pursuit of the Scratch.
Nanna lived a relatively happy life, but repeatedly said that she felt unfulfilled and didn’t push her limits, and mourned the infinite possibility of life that she lost due to the batterwitch–which is the exact problem Jane has to work against indulging in her interactions with her friends, too. Nannasprite explicitly sees Jane as a way to move past her regrets in that regard.
I don’t think you’re obligated to think the way I do on this, though. Ultimately, this is me reading into the symbols and implications we’ve seen in the canon so far, and part of the fun of Hiveswap will be seeing whether my readings hold up, and if not, what changes.
it’s sort of a mix of stuff. I pretty much think the biggest contributing factor to AR’s descent is the absence of his connections to the other Alphas, and I think that’s true of Bro as well.
I mean that’s pretty much explicit. All four of the Beta guardians are unsatisfied, unhappy, or a wreck in some way, and the unifying thread between them is the lack of the others. This is particularly pronounced for Bro, who is not just barely-functional like Mom and Grandpa are, but profoundly destructive to others and himself when lacking their companionship.
This isn’t JUST about Jake, I could say things as relevant about the ways Dirk needs Roxy and Jane, but I wanna keep this short and you all know what I’m about so let’s use Jake as an example.
Dirk explicitly fears his own potential for darkness and hates himself for it and the reason he falls for Jake in the first place is because of Jake’s *faith* in him, in his kindness and caring and potential to do good.
Dirk is drawn to Jake because Jake sees the value in him and sees the good in him and Jake being able to do that makes it easier for Dirk to see it in himself, too. So without that influence in his life at *ALL*, even less than what AR got?
It’s easy for me to see how Bro would fall apart to the degree he does. For the most part, that’s all there is to say on the matter.
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.
.
but. let me complicate the narrative for you a little.
I used to be firmly of the opinion that Bro’s actions had nothing to do with Lil Cal and were all on Bro, and the latter’s still true. However, @jadedresearcher kinda turned my world around when they pointed out a simple fact:
There are explicit, demonstrable influences that Lil Cal exerts on Bro, in terms of his personality growth at least. Namely, Bro and Dirk have a divergent interest.
Namely, the SAW-inspired snuff film/”I want to play a Game” stuff. Bro expresses an interest in it, but Dirk really never so much as mentions it. The Jigsaw aesthetic is Caliborn’s thing exclusively, and the only real narrative explanation it has in the story is Lil Cal acting as a transmitter for the interest.
So having this in mind I think there is an extent to which Cal’s influence can be implicated in Bro’s descent. Not that it excuses any of his assholery.
Lastly, here’s a bit of rarely indulged speculation:
We do already know Grandpa raised Mom, suggesting Grandpa may have raised Bro as well. Hell, Hiveswap even has a blurry as hell picture that may be of Bro facepalming that i can’t for the life of me find right now so i guess ill just post it later who cares, the point is
if it’s true Grandpa remembers the Alphas in some way, or if it’s true *Bro* does– given that he’s a Heart player, that seems plausible too–those could also be factors that isolated Bro and made him vulnerable to Cal’s influence?
That is, of course, purely speculative. It’s just one of many potential questions I’m excited to see if Hiveswap will explore.
Hey hey hey – @revolutionaryduelist, I am normally 100% behind your point of view but I take serious umbrage at the implication that the WORLD RENOWNED EXPLORER-NATURALIST-TREASURE HUNTER-ARCHEOLOGIST-SCIENTIST-ADVENTURER-BIG GAME HUNTER-BILLIONAIRE EXTRAORDINAIRE lived anything less than a radical and amazing life.
“This is particularly pronounced for Bro, who is not just barely-functional like Mom and Grandpa are,”
Dude – it’s a stretch to begin with to call Mom barely-functional, given that despite being afflicted by one of society’s most misunderstood and poorly considered diseases, she was still able to succeed as a scientist and a mother (and I’d argue she was a lot better at being a guardian than Bro was – most of Rose’s tribulations about her mother were entirely projections on Rose’s part), but it’s outright absurd to call Grandpa Harley barely functional. Given what we know about him, he seems to have functioned better than 99% of all humans in ecorded history.
And, hyperbole aside, I think you’re hard pressed to speak with any kind of textual authority about what kind of interior life Grandpa may or may not have had – we see far too little of him. Other than expressing grief at DreamJAde’s death, we don’t know anything about him other than his known actions (unconditional love and support for Jade, including building her a magnificent dreambot) and what was filtered from Jade’s earliest memories. We’ve got no reason to think Grandpa wasn’t riddled with depression and deep-seated anxiety, but then we have no reason to think that he was, either. Either-way, calling the man who plundered every tomb and beauty parlour on the planet, invented a dozen wonders, and slew monsters like it weren’t no thang “barely functional” is just… incorrect.
To clarify: I meant emotionally. Mom and Grandpa are definitely successful, don’t get me wrong? I guess I just default to including the ability to enjoy life and engage with it in a like, balanced way…in my definition of functional?
As for Grandpa’s inner life, I don’t feel that’s correct. Grandpa’s inner life is laid out for us about as richly as Mom’s, I think. It’s just told almost entirely through environmental storytelling and context clues.
For starters, the man is a chronic hoarder. We see his hoarding all throughout Jade’s house, and it litters his manor in Hiveswap, too. Hoarding is commonly understood as a symptom of anxiety and depression.
Mom and Bro hoard to some regards too, but with Grandpa I feel it’s particularly notable just through sheer volume of stuff. And he doesn’t just hoard, he arranges his hoards in a way that’s deeply symbolically meaningful to him.
He sets up the Distinguished Houseguests in his living room and remembers enough to, somehow, sort them by Moon. He places himself by the fire in the center of all their attentions. He sets up entire rooms like shrines to each of the Alphas. He remembers Dirk not as a Prince, but as a Knight.
And, in my view, more tellingly, this is a guy who seemingly just…up and leaves his house and his two kids to raise Jade on an island? And while he’s doing that, he lets Jade play with flintlock pistols she almost shoots herself with a pistol:
Though I don’t doubt Grandpa loves Jade a lot (and I don’t particularly buy the more damning accusations going on about him right now) the dude is still guilty of serious neglect. Which, you know, kind of coincides with Jade’s Aspect pretty strongly.
And when you look at what Grandpa is doing while, you know, not taking care of his Granddaughter who is playing with guns, things become telling.
The dude is literally playing pretend. We established through Hussie that the blue dolls represent Jane in his head, which means he’s literally making believe he’s with his friends on some level.
This is Jake “Aggressively ignoring his problems” English at his worst. Just like you can see glimmers of Bro in AR at his worst, so too can you see a version of what Jake COULD become with no hope and no support network in Grandpa.
Which honestly I can’t blame him for too hard since the entire rest of his life at this point is “wait for the fucking Apocalypse and to die.”
And also, he’s alone. Jake relies on his sense of camaraderie to get by, and without his friends’ (perceived) approval his sense of place and self falls apart completely. This is a Jake who never had a chance to grow into a healthier attitude to his self worth, because he never had those friends to depend on.
Even if he did know Mom and even Bro, he would have been in a position of power and responsibility over them. It would not be the same dynamic at all, now matter how much he cares about either.
I think Grandpa is an excellently crafted tragic figure, basically. The fact that Hiveswap not only kept this consistent, but also successfully built upon it through enviromental storytelling alone is maybe the biggest reason I’m excited for it.
it’s sort of a mix of stuff. I pretty much think the biggest contributing factor to AR’s descent is the absence of his connections to the other Alphas, and I think that’s true of Bro as well.
I mean that’s pretty much explicit. All four of the Beta guardians are unsatisfied, unhappy, or a wreck in some way, and the unifying thread between them is the lack of the others. This is particularly pronounced for Bro, who is not just barely-functional like Mom and Grandpa are, but profoundly destructive to others and himself when lacking their companionship.
This isn’t JUST about Jake, I could say things as relevant about the ways Dirk needs Roxy and Jane, but I wanna keep this short and you all know what I’m about so let’s use Jake as an example.
Dirk explicitly fears his own potential for darkness and hates himself for it and the reason he falls for Jake in the first place is because of Jake’s *faith* in him, in his kindness and caring and potential to do good.
Dirk is drawn to Jake because Jake sees the value in him and sees the good in him and Jake being able to do that makes it easier for Dirk to see it in himself, too. So without that influence in his life at *ALL*, even less than what AR got?
It’s easy for me to see how Bro would fall apart to the degree he does. For the most part, that’s all there is to say on the matter.
.
.
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but. let me complicate the narrative for you a little.
I used to be firmly of the opinion that Bro’s actions had nothing to do with Lil Cal and were all on Bro, and the latter’s still true. However, @jadedresearcher kinda turned my world around when they pointed out a simple fact:
There are explicit, demonstrable influences that Lil Cal exerts on Bro, in terms of his personality growth at least. Namely, Bro and Dirk have a divergent interest.
Namely, the SAW-inspired snuff film/”I want to play a Game” stuff. Bro expresses an interest in it, but Dirk really never so much as mentions it. The Jigsaw aesthetic is Caliborn’s thing exclusively, and the only real narrative explanation it has in the story is Lil Cal acting as a transmitter for the interest.
So having this in mind I think there is an extent to which Cal’s influence can be implicated in Bro’s descent. Not that it excuses any of his assholery.
Lastly, here’s a bit of rarely indulged speculation:
We do already know Grandpa raised Mom, suggesting Grandpa may have raised Bro as well. Hell, Hiveswap even has a blurry as hell picture that may be of Bro facepalming that i can’t for the life of me find right now so i guess ill just post it later who cares, the point is
if it’s true Grandpa remembers the Alphas in some way, or if it’s true *Bro* does– given that he’s a Heart player, that seems plausible too–those could also be factors that isolated Bro and made him vulnerable to Cal’s influence?
That is, of course, purely speculative. It’s just one of many potential questions I’m excited to see if Hiveswap will explore.
this comment was in reference to fucking Ruka Tsuchiya aka this fucking dude:
and im losing my MIND have i ever see a completely unrelated profile so perfectly predict the contents of a post??? i dont think so. im in nirvana
@some-triangles@mmmmalo@kajy im tagging literally everyone i know far enough into both homestuck and utena to understand this.
so literally my favorite homestuck fanart is theyoungdoyley’s rosemary utena crossovers but in this, the year of our lord 2017, i have to ask my people the homestuck fandom:
roxy/callie has been canon for how long and there STILL isn’t a revolutionary girl utena au for them??? Roxy is Utena!!! Callie is Anthy!! it works so well it hurts me ,, this has to happen ….pleas.e….
I don’t know about hiding inside the bunny, but it is quite possible Arquis is still connected to the bunny. The bunny also rusts and turns red so yeah i think the visual parallels are there, and I can imagine a mix Heir of Void/Prince of Heart being able to use the bunny as a passageway that way.
It’s kind of also entirely possible for a Void player to just Void-power their way there, though, so it’s kind of hard to say. I will say I think Lil Seb being involved in Arquis’ sudden appearance is the likeliest possibility. Potentially finding out more about that is one of many things I’m excited for about the ending.
That said, I can’t help but be a little sassy and mention I’m mostly not moved by what most of the fandom decides about Homestuck. That’s not relevant to this point and I’m glad you brought it up, I just want it on record 😛
Flying through Storytelling 