Not exactly perfect, but here you go, more detailed session maps focusing on the Lands. Each session can be referred to individually or as a, like, 17-meg whole. I like big images when it comes to maps.

And in lieu of a typical “final B” map, I whipped up one using the planets as they appear in Collide. LOLAR, LOWAS, and LOPAN were the only ones without representation (the first two do appear in flashbacks, but I decided not to count those; I wanted Final B-era appearances).

So. There you go. Can’t nobody say DJay doesn’t occasionally make progress with things.

Next map I’m making is of the Furthest Ring. No, seriously.

Yo someone’s trying to tell me Hussie is a racist and hates disabled people but has absolutely no evidence. What do I do?

landofsomethingsomething:

captwaddledoo:

landofsomethingsomething:

You gotta decide for yourselves whether people in the year of our lord 2017 should be judged entirely by the words and thoughts and ideas they put out into the world years ago in different life stages. Like. This isn’t a problem that’s going to go away. Increasingly now the history of people’s entire life journey is accessible via some social media snap shot in the wayback machine or some ancient chat log sitting on someone’s hard drive out there. We don’t all start from the same place. A lot of us start from positions of privilege, from systems learned from parents or other family or institutions with power over us that influence our way of thinking when our brains are first developing the capacity for empathy and understanding.

And we grow. And we create. And we experience things. And we talk with people. We make friends. We read feedback. We listen to some and we disregard others, and years later, some (but by no means all) of what we disregarded we might think about again and realize was good feedback and helpful advice.

Our opinions change. Our understanding of our own privilege changes. Our understanding of media and propaganda and narrative and power structures and justice change. Our biases shift. Our politics change. Our worldviews are shaped by our conversations and our experiences and the things we take to heart and the things we lock outside.

Hussie used to interact heavily with the fandom. There is so much text from him out there saved in archives that has been pored over again and again and again by people with axes to grind, people with their own agendas, people who feel wronged and hurt and ignored by someone they maybe once respected and looked up to.

Anyone with that much text over that long a period of time has something fucking problematic out there waiting to hang them, I guarantee it. Back in 2012 the r-slur and the a-slur were common slang used by elementary school kids, let alone ppl frequenting the various rancid asscracks of the internet. Then awareness campaigns took root and opinions and language shifted for the better and suddenly a lot of text written without that mindfulness started looking really nasty, didn’t it?

We as a society are going to have to make some hard decisions in the very near future about how much rope we need when we’re eyeing those gallows for people we feel wronged by. How much someone’s opinion now means when their opinion five years ago might have been the exact opposite. How much good faith to extend to people who grow and change and understand their younger selves had some Bad Opinions about the world, but can’t erase the words they said, and have to live with them for the rest of their lives because people looking for ammunition can find it in ample supply. How much someone’s actions now count for weighed against their words in another fucking life.

There are quotes out there where Hussie said some stupid shit. There are a million words of Hussie quotes out there. I don’t know how old you are, but if you’re an adult, I can almost guarantee you that you can go back some number of years and remember a version of you that you’d be terrified of the internet finding today.

The dude gave us one of the most queer-positive, transformative and engaging pieces of media of all time. It wasn’t perfect and he wasn’t perfect because nothing and no one is. The queer community is always so goddamn hypercritical of its prolific creators, in part because we’re desperate for the things we want and never get and it’s so frustrating to find people who *almost* give you what you want – and god knows the mainstream media isn’t listening, so where else do we have to turn but inward? We’re a stymied, frustrated group desperate for representation on all sorts of underrepresented axes of oppression and no one story is ever going to satisfy everyone. But Homestuck was so big, so expansive and meant so much to so many – of course there’s a lot of bitter disappointment out there.

How much rope do we need to hang someone? How much history do we need to build a gallows out of plank by fucking plank to feel morally justified?

It’s up to you.

–uh sorry but Homestuck was racist, its jokes at the expense of black people was the number one reason why I stopped reading it, and I’m not saying nobody is allowed to enjoy it but please don’t ask people of color to just push that all aside and enjoy it for queer rep when heaven knows queer rep is a thing we’ve been pushed out of (or mocked in) too.

I absolutely respect yours and everyone’s ability to decide to stop reading a piece of media because it disappointed you in a way that you could not forgive. I myself nearly quit the comic at several points because I found it disappointing and tone deaf about issues near and dear to my own heart and my own struggles and my own personal axes.

My post isn’t about that. It isn’t about Homestuck-The-Story at all.

My post is about the archival nature of the internet and the capacity of people to grow and change. My post is about the way we as a society engage with people who grow up online, every word so easy to reference and cite. My post is about how difficult it is going to be to exist in a society where so much ignorance born from youth and privilege is out there waiting to be exposed and used against adults who grow and change and can’t erase that history no matter how much their personal politics progresses in the meantime.

My post is about a lot of things, but sure. You who quit Homestuck years ago and yet still managed to find my largely untagged discourse post tangentially related to it in 2017 less than an hour after I posted it to slam me with the least charitable interpretation of it possible are surely approaching me in good faith.

My POC ass is marrying this post. im printing it 1,000 times over and hanging it over every inch of every wall of my apartment. i love it. thanks for my life

Why does Dammek look like Dirk and Dave? Is this a plot point or just a thing that is? Also. I really, really don’t want him to die.

hussianphilosopher:

revolutionaryduelist:

jamesroachmusic:

there are so many worse things to do to a character than kill them

anyway i just do the music

its so fitting that the asker has a Masked Man avatar for this. also i am ready to see the deer boy suffer until he doesnt suck

@maverick-zero

ok but i think there might actually be some substance to this

Dammek has a lot in common with dirk at the beginning of his story, and he has a very clear similarity to the Striders’ aesthetic (the fandom even called him Strideer when we found out what he looked like way back when). This is a complete shot in the dark, but I honestly wonder if Dammek is not meant in some way to directly mirror the Striders’ arc and pattern of family troubles.

Every “family” – be it actual ectobiological human relations or troll “bloodlines” – in Homestuck has a pattern to their personalities and stories. Maryams are mother figures with a predilection for the aesthetic, Lalondes struggle with alcohol and are fascinated by magic, and Striders create a tough or aloof surface persona that ends up being pretty poisonous to them in the long run, because they focus too much on one element of their personality to the exclusion of all else. This persona is always based on some kind of fundamental misunderstanding of who their parental figure is and an excessive attempt to imitate them.

What strikes me in all this is this image:

This poster is on Dammek’s wall, and I’m assuming it’s his ancestor – he has Dammek’s horns, his blood color, and what looks like some sort of whack Alternian firearm of the same sort as Eridan’s, so presumably he shares Dammek’s strifekind also. This picture is so intense and striking, so attention grabbing, that I have a hard time believing that it’s not important somehow and is only here for flavor.

It could be that Dammek’s whole Cool Resistance Leader personality is based on him imitating his ancestor, leading him to hyperfocus on one element of himself that is ultimately harmful to himself, and, more importantly, his moirail. This would be a direct parallel to the Strider pattern so intensely and specifically that I actually kind of wonder if there’s something more going on here. But, I’m not going to speculate too much. Just something I thought I’d bring up.

And, as far as not wanting him to die? Read Homestuck, man. Homestuck is not a depressing story where bad things happen to people. No main cast died in the endgame. These kids are gonna be fine, the main four anyway.

oooo now this is interesting, i hadn’t noticed this potential ancestor stuff. I will most definitely be keeping track of that going forward >:)

calibornswake:

Something to help visualize the scope of Homestuck as a single work with four parts.

Top-left: Part 1 (Act 1 – Act 4), focusing on the Earth and characters of Universe B1, the “Beta Kids.” The trolls from Universe A are present in the background, but focus generally goes to their effects on our universe. (Image taken directly from the end of Act 5 Act 1)
Bottom-left: Part 2 (Act 5), focusing on Alternia and the trolls of Universe A2, the “Beta Trolls.” Their motives, and the long-reaching influence of Alternian culture, define much of the content in the comic. (Image also taken directly from the end of Act 5 Act 1)
Together, the left side of the image comprises Side 1, the maximalist/mechanical half of Homestuck which focused on the relationship between humanity and the trolls that created us. As the main characters dove into fantastical and abstract worlds to act out their conflicts, they left behind the physical planets they had overlooked, passing the buck onto their Guardians, Exiles, and late-game constructs, some of whom are manipulating a very long and dangerous game.

Top-right: Part 3 (Act 6 Act 1 – Act 6 Intermission 5), focusing on the Earth and characters of Universe B2, the “Alpha Kids.” The cherubs from Universe C are present in the background, but focus generally goes to how they’re affected by what happens in our universe. (Image taken from the start of Act 6, with the Green Sun imposed on by me.)
Bottom-right: Part 4 (Act 6 Act 6), focusing on the cherubs of Earth C that will exist and the dramatic cosmic cycles necessary to decide who will inherit the Universe. The cherubs’ games, and the eternal return of juju-fuelled “Retcon” callbacks, define much of the form of the comic. (Image taken from Act 6 Intermission 5, with the Abstract Sun imposed on by me in such a way that it also kinda looks like the Yaldabaoth platform.)
Together, the right side of the image comprises Side 2, the minimalist/artistic half of Homestuck which focused on the relationship between humanity and the cherubs we will create. As the Guardians (now kids), Exiles (now empowered), and late-game constructs (now awake and talking) engage in longer delicate systems for maintaining reality, the main characters get a chance to be overlooked and get lost in purgatories of thought, some of which are manufactured by nearly-forgotten hubristic specters.

Anything else, I leave for you to interpret. It may take me a while to get to the point, but Homestuck taught me it’s okay to take it slow if you need to.

merrywetherweather:

i think i just realized something pretty interesting about the retconned timeline and why adding vriska onto the meteor somehow “magically” solved some problems.

so, right before she was killed in the game over timeline kanaya right hooks her into realizing her latent lesbianism:

because this event happened in both timelines, people maybe forgot, but vriska essentially just developed a red crush on her old moirail. so she tries to get close with her again and tries to sneak herself into the time kanaya’s been spending with rose.

and at some point she’s gotta notice these two are becoming an item and she just accepts that her crush is crushing on someone else, but then…

rose, her crush’s crush, fucking ditches kanaya on their supposed first date. instead, vriska finds her drinking soporifics and she’s just livid. “WH8T ARE YOU DOING???????? WEREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO MEET UP WITH HER? YOU’RE THE ONE THAT M8KES HER HAPPY AND YOU CHOSE THIS SHIT INSTEAD OF BEING WITH HER?”

what im getting at here is that adding vriska didn’t just magically fix rose’s drinking problem or that vriska was just butting into other people’s affairs so they could be ready for the approaching big battle. she wouldn’t have actually thought it was a problem since there’s a cultural gap between humans and trolls when it comes to alcohol abuse. in the game over timeline karkat said the drinking made rose “more charming than usual” and didnt understand why it was a problem. i think that her motivations for getting involved with rose’s issue in particular was strictly because she didn’t like how rose was treating someone she had feelings for after she had resigned herself to not confess because she realized kanaya already had feelings for rose.

I sort of think this reading is made way stronger by the stuff I think I just uncovered which has me literally abuzz with excitement. I’m not sure if its EXACTLY like this but…it sounds resonant. Theres something real here and I think I can prove it.

OFF-THE-CUFF HOMESTUCK POSTS #6: THE TRAGEDY (AND SECRET TRIUMPH) OF JADE HARLEY, OR: THE GNOSTIC GARDENER

betweengenesisfrogs:

DISCLAIMER FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

[Note: Content warning for brief mention of sexual abuse and longer discussion of perceived suicide and associated thoughts.]

Let’s talk about Jade Harley.

A common feeling I’ve seen about the final chapters of Homestuck is that Jade Harley deserved better, that she suffered completely unfairly and arbitrarily in the final timeline.

I actually completely agree. Jade *absolutely* deserved better. Where I disagree is with the argument that Jade’s suffering somehow shows Hussie is a bad writer.

I think it’s important to recognize that good storytelling isn’t always the same thing as happy storytelling. Some stories or parts of stories are *about* suffering. They’re tragedy, a form of storytelling I’d define as an examination of a negative set of events: why they took place, why the characters involved couldn’t escape them. Done well, this can be as meaningful as any happy ending.

I mean, there’s a reason a bunch of Greeks wanted to watch a series of plays about a guy who accidentally marries his mother and then stabs his eyes out.

So when we’re talking about good storytelling in Homestuck, i.e.: whether character arcs reach meaningful catharsis, we have to bear in mind that the bad shit that happens to our characters is sometimes the very subject of the story.

In other words, yes, Jade Harley deserved better.

That’s the *entire point.*

Now, that said, I actually think Jade does have a happy ending, and a damn cathartic one. But we need to understand the unfair suffering she went through to understand why. What I find fascinating about Jade’s arc is that she confronts the tragic, suffering-causing aspects of SBURB and the domain of Lord English more directly than any other character and finds a way to become free of them. It’s not that her suffering was in any way merited or right, it’s that by rejecting that unfairness, she finds incredible self-affirmation, freedom, and escape in a way that makes her the most direct manifestation of Homestuck’s Gnostic themes.

In the causes of her suffering, and in how that suffering is overcome, Jade Harley is the key to the deeper meanings of Homestuck.

Keep reading

I love this post so goddamn much and also, I LOVE JADE HARLEY SO GODDAMN MUCH, GOD

Please read this!!! Holy hell, Ari makes connections between Grandpa and Jade’s greater experiences here I hadn’t even begun to consider and it is blowing my mind, aughhh i love jade and jake my heart hurts

xopus:

Keep reading

mercurialmalcontent:

semianonymity:

mercurialmalcontent:

I made a post Friday night-ish asking what I should talk about, and pentagon-sama asked for Rose Lalonde. I agree that every time is a good time to talk about Rose — even if it takes me a while.

So, Rose. I often feel like I like her for very different reasons much of the fandom likes her. I don’t see the elegant ice queen, the manipulative academic, the mad girl too dangerous to be trusted.

What I see is a girl who writes and talks in a very precise, academic manner, like a child who learned how to talk to and deal with people from books rather than other actual people. I see a girl who tries very hard to be mature beyond her years, because someone has to be the mature one in her house. I see a girl living in a house full of absurdities who wants to be silly, but who keeps it reigned in. I see a girl who has learned to be suspicious of everyone’s motivations and sincerity because she has grown up without a good model of what sincerity looks like.

I see the child of an alcoholic.

An alcoholic that loves her, yes, but an alcoholic nonetheless. An alcoholic who tries to buy her goodwill with gifts and inappropriate freedoms, an alcoholic whose behavior is so puzzling that Rose doubts the sincerity of everything her mother and everyone else does and says. An alcoholic whose behavior, even when read more kindly than Rose’s filter suggests, is too immature for a parent, is the behavior of someone who wanted a sister, a friend, and who was not prepared to raise a child.

I see a girl who doesn’t know how to express affection or emotions in a healthy way who nonetheless cares deeply about her friends, and her mother as well. I see a girl who is smart and brave and clever enough to know that if a game is unfair, then you try to take it apart to see how it works. I see a girl retreats into the safety of stiff, intellectual words when she’s upset.

I see a girl who took a terrible risk of trying to harness dangerous powers, and did not go mad, did not threaten her friends or even have thoughts of such, whose only aggression was at the creature that murdered her mother.

When I look at Rose I see a funny, sharp-witted girl who tries to be warm, who struggles to be kind, who is aching for sincerity, who wants to understand.

I fundamentally think you can’t write Rose Lalonde without writing about alcoholic families. Partially because I can’t help but see myself and my alcoholic mother. Let me tell you, there aren’t that many stories out there about extremely smart, loving, functional alcoholic mothers, who aren’t openly abusive but are nevertheless toxic. I know my mom did her best, and that she loves me more than anything else in the world, and that was not enough because she’s sick and she used to be a hell of a lot sicker.

So, yeah, I see myself, and I try to keep my over-identification with Rose out of my characterization. But even more than that? It’s all there. I was the too-smart kid who wasn’t socialized quite right, who managed better with adults than with my peers, and I was lonely and hurting and hiding it. Yeah, she’s the responsible one. She’s bad at open affection. Her relationship with her mom is incredibly complicated, love layered in between anger and disappointment. She mirrors my story, and the stories I’ve heard from a lot of other children of alcoholics.

A small child doesn’t want an extravagant tomb for her dead cat. It’s about the mother’s ego, at that point—extravagant displays that fail to provide what’s necessary. Rose needed comfort and support.

I think cherrybaum once described her as a survivor, and that’s the core of her personality to me. She has overcome incredible odds. And that starts with her home life. She did learn how to be the emotionally mature one, the adult in her home, in some ways—she had to be her own support because her mom was sunk deep into addiction, no matter how outwardly functional that addiction might seem to be. And I know how that can be a strength! I know. I have coping skills that serve me very, very well in awful situations. And that I have them is still a disservice to me. Rose has a deep-rooted independent strength that I see as the core of her character—someone who found friends, and opened up to them, even though they were online (and I absolutely think that’s a part of it, as another lonely teen who found fandom, which I continue to credit to my survival past age fifteen) and that means a lot. She’s got edges, but they’re not ice queen edges so much as the sorts of edges that come from the isolation and loneliness of her home. She can laugh and be goofy, but she’s not happy-go-lucky and carefree in everything, because her mom was insufficient, and that left Rose to pick up the pieces.

I think Rose’s mother loved her, and tried her best to show it. But, to quote: “Going to an alcoholic for love and affection is like going to the hardware store for bread.” Rose’s mom had no capacity to give some genuine, selfless maternal affection. And that matters—the love is important, but it’s not all that there is to parenting.

Rose is the child of an alcoholic. It’s who she is.

This is amazing commentary.

(Fistbump of solidarity. My mom also had a substance abuse problem when I was growing up.)

cityinthesea:

cityinthesea:

Strong Opinions™ on jake characterisation

I feel like an aspect that makes Jake so relatable to me is this… this way he underhandedly tries to make things go his way, even if it isn’t actually a strategy that works out for him very well.

Like. My mind always jumps back to the Jane pesterlog, where he basically corners her the second she screws up and fails to confess properly. She’s said the thing that allows him to absolve himself of the responsibility of turning her down, and he fucking runs with it.

The other thing my mind always jumps to is when his and Dirk’s relationship goes sour. Rather than talk about it he clearly would rather just not deal, because confronting it or using his words to speak his feelings of suffocation puts the onus on him.

In that sense that’s why I stand with the opinion that jake is kind of an asshole. He’s not a bad kid but also he isn’t very forward in getting what he wants, to the detriment of those around him sometimes.

I guess this post kinda stems from tiredness of seeing people who dismiss or dislike jake for being “bad”. Or by demeaning his character by making him into an uwu cinnamon roll. Jake has a lot of room to explore, he’s so caught up in his posturing and his avoidant nature. At his core I feel like he’s a character that has a lot of want. He wants things and tries to get them through underhanded means. Even tho they sometimes blow up in his face.

Also I feel like I have to hedge by saying this isn’t meta, this isn’t a “”“"hot take”“”“” im literally just explaining why I find Jake, at least the way I’ve come to interpret his character, is aggressively relatable, especially lately, but it’s also for this reason he’s slowly become like. Maybe my favourite character??

#I think jake as kind of a lowkey jerk is a really important shade of his character #it doesn’t mean he’s bad #it just means he is less saintly than fandom often treats him #I love! jake english #said the person who identifies hardcore with jake english

it’s not like the narrative like…hides it…every character including Jake himself and even Caliborn tell us he acts like kind of an asshole.
Every Alpha does kind of fucked up things. It doesn’t really make sense to hold Jake above the others in this regard, or to try to single out one party that’s “to blame” or w.e. It’s not that kind of story.

OFF-THE-CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #5: ACT 6 HOMESTUCK AS NARRATIVE REBELLION, OR: ARCS ARE DEAD, LONG LIVE ARCS

betweengenesisfrogs:

DISCLAIMER FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

[Note: This one’s a doozy! Still kind of off-the-cuff, in
that I tried not to stress out about getting everything perfect, but I did do
some revision to make my ideas more clear. That’ll probably be the norm from
here on out. Hope you’re in the mood for a long read and a wild ride!

…Seriously, this shit is like twenty pages in Word.]

In my previous posts, I’ve discussed a number of ideas
present in Act 6 and Act 7 Homestuck that I think contribute powerfully to the
ending of Homestuck, especially on a thematic level.

I’ve discussed Homestuck as a meditation on the nature of a
self divided across the many timelines of a dispassionate cosmos, and argued
that the Retcon, far from a drastic change in storytelling, is a continuation
of that long-running theme. Is victory meaningless if one’s original self isn’t
around to claim it, or can a coherent, archetypal identity can be understood as
existing beyond all of one’s disparate selves? In the system of Skaia,
Homestuck asks, how do we live?

I’ve also discussed Homestuck, especially Act 6 Homestuck,
as a Gnostic work, the story of an escape from a cosmic tyrant, a Demiurge
whose ultimate weakness is that he cannot see the limitations of the domain
he’s been given. In the same post, I discussed how this realm of the Demiurge,
Lord English’s domain, is constantly paralleled with the space embodied by
Homestuck itself, and how the kid’s departure from the story evokes their
escape from this tyrant’s space-time domain as it reaches the end set for it by
Paradox Space. From the system of Lord English, Homestuck asks, how do we
escape? And at the same time, in the system of narrative called Homestuck, how
do we find meaning within its limitations, and how do we escape them?

These themes work together. As we’ve seen, they echo and reinforce each
other, provide parallels and points of contrast. In fact, I’d argue that each
of these different themes are diverse manifestations of one larger theme, in the
same way that individual selves in Homestuck can be thought of as
manifestations of one larger Self. This overarching theme is present throughout
Homestuck, but it reaches its culmination in Act 6 and 7, in a finale that
drives it home in a different ways. To understand Homestuck is to understand
this theme.

If someone were to ask me, “What is Homestuck about?” this
would be my answer:

Homestuck is an
exploration of the tension between abstract, impersonal systems and individual,
personal experiences of those systems.

Abstract, impersonal systems are everywhere in Homestuck,
systems that don’t always align with the desires, emotions, and goals of the
main characters. The central question of Homestuck is how these characters will
choose to understand the systems that govern their lives, and how they will carve
out meaningful lives in relation to those systems. Gnosticism, metafiction,
divided identities, and Sburb itself all play into this theme. As Homestuck’s
characters decide how to live their lives within these many interconnected systems,
they suggest possibilities for our own lives, for we readers also live in a
world that also contains many systems and forces outside of our control. In
their choices, we find opportunities and implications for how we should live.

You’ll notice I said there’s a tension, rather than an opposition,
between individual experience and abstract systems. I think that gets closer to
the truth of what Homestuck is trying to say. Characters in Homestuck sometimes
reject its systems altogether, but just as often they exploit them or find
identities for themselves within the constraints/opportunities of those
systems. While Caliborn’s Gnostic-style
domain of control is presented in a negative light, as something worth opposing
and escaping, other systems, like Sburb itself, are presented in a much more
ambiguous light, challenging us to decide how we feel about those systems and
the possibilities they present within their rules.

I’ve talked about several of these systems in my previous
posts, but today I want to talk about one I haven’t yet dug into in detail.
Narrative itself.

Narrative in Homestuck, the power a story holds over its
characters, is another system which the characters of Homestuck are constantly
fighting, exploiting, and embracing.

Because another word for those abstract systems in Homestuck
is…

Arcs.

Keep reading

This is honestly like the best writing on Homestuck’s themes I’ve read since, like, basically @sam-keeper ‘s stuff?

God I’m so glad this exists. God I hope we’re able to like, as a community uncovering these themes, like…make them accessible to people more. this stuff is so cool but also it’s so…important, to me? as a person? god

i’m emotional and crying and really pensive, just, just please read this ok? Read this and also everything on Homestuck sam ever wrote cause she was here like back in 2012 and we’re all more or less catching up.