Tag: analysis asks

“I’m honestly REALLY doubtful the Caucasian joke was meant to mock his progressive fans at all, given that there are ways Trickster Mode’s presentation lines up with Homestuck’s Gnostic and philosophical themes” are you shitting me. Hussie was/is racist as fuck and he never apologizes for any shit he does. I love HS and yes, the fact that it has gay couples is super important to me, but it’s so horrendously racist to act like LGBT characters erase Hussie’s racism and make him a “good person”.

So full disclosure: I’m expanding on this point substantially cause all this convinced me it was worth writing an essay on the subject.

Fuller disclosure: I’m latino, and I kinda bought into these criticisms for a long ass time? So it’s not exactly that I think you’re unreasonable in holding this conclusion. And yeah, there’s definitely parts of Hussie’s writing that aaaren’t the best on racial terms–can’t say I’m fond of the depiction of Damara, for example. 
I can understand people taking issue with the Condesce, too, though that’s assuaged for me by the fact that Meenah is cast in a pretty dang sympathetic light. 

There have also been some references to the kids as white over the course of Homestuck that undercut the claim that they’re meant to be Aracial, though I think it’s notable that the only unambiguous one–Bro being referred to as white like, one time–is also the only time I can recall that Hussie deliberately chose to retcon the story in a non-diagetic, plot-driven way. So I think it’s worth simply working around the vaguer instances, since…Word of God is pretty firmly with us there.

And no, I don’t really think that was what the Caucasian joke was ever meant to be. I think Hussie was actually always quite serious about presenting the kids as Blank White and leaving them open to interpretation, and while that’s something of a cop-out in execution just given the realities of representation, I do think he was genuine about it.  I also think it was a pretty damn successful move, artistically.

The Tricksters, in contrast, employ Whiteness as a horror-movie monster aesthetic. They are also literal presentations of definite physical forms, where Homestuck ALWAYS philosophically favors symbols and possibility spaces for interpretation.  Both literally and thematically, Tricksters represent things Homestuck as a story is actively repulsed by and condemns, and the denial of our ability to imagine the kids in different skin tones is part of what renders them repulsive. 

Feel free to respond to my presentation for this idea once I present it in detail, or like, follow up with sources if you want to talk about it. I think it’s a conversation worth having, but like…I’m not white, and you’re not going to intimidate me out of talking about what I think by claiming I’m racist on anon and raising a lot of really dramatic intense claims with no sources or context, if that’s what you’re trying to do. That’s just not how I roll. 

If you actually want to engage with stuff and have a conversation, though, I’m looking forward to hearing from you. See you around.

Keep rising, btw. 

I really like the your interpretation of classpects and what they mean on a character to character basis. All of your fanfiction is also really excellent with the most consistent characterization that I’ve seen in many a year. You are like the wise elder of the Homestuck fandom in my eyes. Btw will there be an essay on the aspects themselves after you are done with the classes? Or will it be all the characters instead?

Thanks a ton, I’m happy to hear you’ve enjoyed my writing so much 🙂

I mostly think fandom has the Aspects figured out, so I’m pretty sure my writing is going to remain focused on other subjects for the moment. Tex Talks does a better job of breaking new ground than me there anyway, his videos are great pls check them out.

All I really have to add to the Aspect discussion is that they should really be understood as the obvious counterparts to the Gnostic Aeons–like the Aeons, the Aspects are Ideas. They come in bonded pairs, and are meant to create reality together. There’s definitely other analogs to Aeons in Homestuck: Rose, Dirk and Calliope all act out or relate to Sophia pretty strongly.

But Sophia herself is pretty much synonymous with the aspect of Light. And understanding the Aspects that way gives them a sense of divinity that adds weight to them, I think. It also makes it clear the Gnostic stuff suffuses every inch of Homestuck, as if that wasn’t already obvious enough. 

that vrisrezi post confuses me so much. I don’t know where the reading of them as matesprits comes from at all, and just because one of the artists for the remem8er flash drew a kiss panel doesn’t mean the kiss canonically happened, especially when it wasn’t in the flash itself. I’m not opposed to shipping it, but that person’s reading of canon just seems remarkably off

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?

how do you suppose the general idea of page having a lot of potential fits in with selfish serving? vriska says it several times, and aradia too alluded to tavros’s class (flarp) as having the most powerful abilities being available much later on. the page class seems like a special case since i think its the only one explicitly described with criteria other than the “allow/exploit/etc __” phrase, so what do you think of this? (wow that was a mess of words oops)

The way I see it, it makes a lot of sense: Pages are inherently Self-Serving, and that’s both an intense weakness and a great strength. 

Why? Because in Homestuck, reality is made not just of what you want, but of what you’re willing to make happen. Willpower and thought are tangible, powerful things in Homestuck–things that shape the communal reality that all the characters share on their adventure. 

So what if you had a natural talent to give yourself whatever you want? What if you had a natural talent to make other people WANT to give you whatever you want? Once Pages understand this potential in themselves and exploit it to it’s fullest potential, you get–well, you get Gods uniquely skilled at achieving exactly the outcome they want. So you get Jake summoning Brain Ghost Dirk, which should be impossible. You get Tavros managing to somehow organize an entire army out of extremely self-absorbed troll ghosts so he can finally show Vriska up, just by being nice and talking to them all one by one.

Ultimately, Homestuck posits that happiness/fulfillment/success, in reality, is made by knowing how to traverse the boundaries between what exists, what you want, and what the people around you want. Pages’ key verb, by design, gives them the shortest path to getting there. Other classes might use their ability to Make or Steal or Destroy to get what they want, but Pages have the luxury of simply Serving it to themselves–partly by making other people genuinely want to give it to them, or by using their Aspect to serve their own desires directly instead. 

This makes them powerful vectors for organizing wills into a single goal, ie: Powerful leaders or warriors under the right circumstances. 

The reason this is such a double-edged sword is twofold. For one thing, Pages being self-serving also makes them inclined to be cowardly and conflict avoidant, even when conflict is necessary. They’re also prone to put their own interest ahead of the group’s. For another, they can inspire people to want to help them, but those people are also their own people with their own predilections and ideas about what serving someone else means, which leads to unpredictable results. One need look no further than Vriska to see how that can go wrong. 

And it’s worth noting that being self-serving is something society by and large strongly discourages, especially if you’re going to be asking people for help in accomplishing whatever you want to get done! It’s seen as a pretty Bad thing to be. So Pages perhaps more than most classes tend to be conditioned against embracing their innate skills.

This is a true mess of words. Hope it makes any damn sense but feel free to send me another ask if it doesn’t! And thanks a ton!

Could you explain what you mean when you said Karkat “almost always exerts his impact by “Allowing” his aspect”? That seems… at odds with everything Karkat does, to be frank. (–passive pages anon)

If you haven’t read them already, I’ll say read my essays on Knight/Page as Butlers as well as the Steal/Serve essay, because I advance my arguments for Karkat there.

To “Allow” basically means to give permission or entitle X to act through you, “As if through the Will of the Aspect”. I describe it as the counterpart to “Exploit” in Class theory, which means “to make use of or harness”. 

Karkat’s Blood impact usually come without him being directly cognizant of it, as if Blood were acting through him. If you don’t have the time to read those essays and see what i mean send me another ask and I’ll answer you tomorrow, but I really think it’s kind of redundant effort all things considered. I’m happy to answer any questions or counterarguments you have for those essays, too. 

What do you think Homestuck 2.0 will be?

My actual answer is I don’t give Homestuck 2.0 that much thought. Mostly because I’m too busy thinking about Homestuck itself and uncovering the depth we’ve been missing for years, and also getting more and more excited for Hiveswap as I do so.

My thoughts on Homestuck 2.0 sorta just link into my thoughts on the Epilogue, and talking about that would make BKEW’s wilder predictions seem downright sane compared to me. Hence why I keep any speculation far, far out of the public eye–it’s just not something I’m interested in talking about, and if I did and managed to somehow convince people I’d probably just make things worse for WP. So I have idle guesses, but I don’t want to share them in public.

I’m approaching everything about the future of Homestuck right now with a “Wait and see” approach. There’s enough to talk about with what we already have for now, you know? 

Sorry, but not quite yet if that’s alright. I can’t think of how reading Pages passive breaks any arcs, as far as I can tell all the examples you listed are unaffected or, in a few cases, actually make more sense to me with passive Pages and active Knights (but I’ll be the first to admit I’m not very good at arc analysis lol). Could you elaborate?

Haha yeah I was being kind of flippant and facetious in the ask I think you’re referencing. I only want to start conversations, not impose a new understanding, so I’m happy to talk things out and debate views!

My only caveat here being that I wrote most of this out already in my various essays on Knights and Pages, especially the one I just posted on serve/steal. I’m not sure if you read that yet but I’d be curious to hear particular points you disagreed with if you did

Rounding them up in relative shortform in no particular order:

Jake: I’m not going in depth on this one because I’ve written so much about Jake it’s not even funny. 

Tl;dr Jake wanted Dirk the whole time, he wants Dirk selfishly because he views Dirk has his protector and bodyguard and because Dirk helps him with whatever he wants help with, and he knowingly manipulated Jane into denying her feelings for him despite knowing otherwise for a fact because Roxy told him that she had feelings for him.

All of this is literally textual and in the comic.

Reading Jake as passive is the only reason anyone thinks DirkJake is ambiguous instead of one of the most mutual and passionate gay romances in all fiction, and it’s based on nothing but misinformation.

I’ve written so much about this it’s not funny, but feel free to read any of my various arguments on the subject and debate particular points if you want to follow up on something in particular.

Karkat: the reason there’s any people who think Karkat was turned into a joke and was never effective in the plot at all is because he almost always exerts his impact by “Allowing” his aspect, and thus ends up pretty effective all told despite not being aware of what he’s doing!

Tavros: reading Tavros as passive ignores the fact that Tavros fights and resists Vriska’s will every step of the way throughout his abuse, and is pretty capable about knowing who to get to help him in stopping her.

It ignores that the one time Tavros almost used his powers he was acting under his own agency, and that he quite expressly and dramatically is unwilling to do things the way Vriska wills them on him.

On Vriska’s end, ignoring that Pages inspire others to act for their own benefit paves over the element of her character that genuinely perceived herself as trying to help him, which is a textual element that complicates our view of her.

Obviously none of that is to say Tavros asked for it, or that any of what Vriska did is justified. But the way their wills play off each other is more complex than just “she bullies him and he’s a pushover”. 

Tavros is NOT a pushover. He’s overpowered by force, but he tries fucking hard to resist his abuse. And Vriska doesn’t exactly just hate Tavros–there’s an element of her behavior genuinely rooted in a desire to help in the context of the fucked up world she grew up in. 

But more than anything reading Pages as passive ignores Tavros’ motivation for raising the ghost army and turns it into “oh he ended up helping Vriska to her benefit in the end and that’s…his character arc?” 

Which isn’t what that scene is at all. That scene is Tavros getting what he personally wanted to have closure for himself and move on from Vriska for good. Tavros healed. He moved on. He got a pretty gentle sort of revenge because Tavros is ultimately a kindhearted and gentle boy, but he used the ghosts specifically to aid his desire to own the fuck out of Vriska and then moved the hell on. 

Reading Pages this way means that Tavros’ arc wasn’t written for the purpose of making a depthless joke of an abuse victim, which means you can understand Vriska’s character complexly without having to prioritize her over her victim.

I sure as hell wouldn’t call it, like, a perfectly handled narrative, but it does make it substantially better and make Tavros ’ ending a lot more satisfying. Also gives me more hope both Vriska and Tavros will be treated well with whatever on earth happens in the epilogue.

Homestuck was, if not good, at least only kind of shitty instead of dramatically in your face blatant abuse mockery shitty all along. Tavros is definitely treated as jokes, but he’s also given actual closure re:his abuse arc, that actually makes sense given who he is as a person. And understanding that means Vriska’s character was handled with more care, too. 

Obvi this bears further analysis but I’d suggest Grow/Repair -> Heal as a verb combo for those two classes and I think you already have this but Sylph seems to be active/selfish while Maid is passive/selfless, e.g. Kanaya healing herself versus Aradia repairing the timeline. 3/3

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I’ve used Create for the longest time, but am finding myself leaning towards Make lately simply because it’s referenced much more in the comic and I think has some interesting wordplay with Maids specifically.

My tldr response is I don’t think Heal/repair accurately describes enough of what fairies do. I think both are ways their abilities might be described, but using make or create accounts for much more of all of the fairies’ behavior.

My immediate counterpoint is Aranea, who doesn’t really heal Jake at all. That seems very much like her flattering herself. She just makes him more important and relevant, and doing so enables Jake’s will more than her own in ways she didn’t expect.

I also don’t agree Sylphs are selfish and Maids are selfless. I laid out my argument for most of this with my Destroy/Create essay, so I’d be curious to how you’d respond to my points there.

your class analyses have been wonderful and incredibly helpful!! but do you know of any good aspect analysis out there?

Absolutely and hell yes. I don’t really feel the need to write about Aspects the way I did about Classes at all, because I think the fandom mostly has them figured out. I can add some little nuances or interesting tidbits with Aspects, but nothing I say there is going to be game changing I think.

There’s a lot of pretty great thinkers on the Aspect level, so here’s three recommendations:

I’ve gotta mention @bladekindeyewear , who in some not insignificant ways got me started in my interest in reading Homestuck analytically (along with @what-the-fuck-is-homestuck ‘s character analysis). I don’t buy into inversion theory and I think BKEW’s key verb for Knights and Pages is off, and obviously I think he’s got their Active/Passive designations reversed. Those would be my personal caveats.

But in terms of Aspect theory, his writing is on point! I’m particularly fond of his posts on the Breath/Blood dichotomy and his masterpost on Aspect Dualities, in particular his identification of physical symbols for each Aspect (I am particularly fond of the symbols for Hope :P).

I’d also recommend @dahniwitchoflight , who I haven’t read as much from but greatly enjoyed what I have read. In particular I’ve pretty much adopted  her view on Denizens until further word from the canon, because I like it and it meshes with what I already see in the system. Same quibbles as I have with BKEW re: Pages and Knights, some key verbs, and inversion theory stuff. 

Finally, definitely definitely check out Tex Talk’s videos on the Aspects, because they’re the best cases laid out yet for Homestuck’s like…unifying themes, and the writing on the Aspects themselves is completely transcendent and pushing the envelope in a big way. 

Those are my reccomendations! A lot of this stuff is kind of the foundation I work off when doing my own writing, too. Feel free to let me know what you think of any of them 🙂