Tag: hal

You’ve written before about the unhealthy, toxic dynamic that makes up Jake, Dirk, and Hal, and how for all intents and purposes it was essentially caused by the creation of hal himself – hal was miserable and isolated, so he acted controlling and toxic towards the Alpha kids, which caused them to treat him worse, etc. etc. This may not be your type of thing, and if so feel free to tell me, but what do you think the Alpha kids (and the dynamics thereof) would be like if hal was never created?

probably healthier overall (but still not healthy–all the Alphas had roles to play in hurting each other, as much as they cared), right up until they were all suddenly dead, since Hal is the only reason they made it through [S] Unite Synchronize.

I do find it kind of hard to get into these kinds of questions though. They’re not bad or uninteresting or anything, it’s just that the only answer my brain can really come up with is that they wouldn’t exist. Hal is a necessary component of the time loop that creates LE, and so the trolls and betas and alphas and everyone.

That’s the fundamental nature of LE’s evil and the core conflict that informs everything about Homestuck’s narrative, so I find it really hard to think around it, personally.

turing-tested:

@revolutionaryduelist i am literally printing this out and nailing it to my wall as we speak

well that’s definitely some of the highest praise i’ve received thus far. 

the alphas are a quintet of extremely mutual fuck ups and I do love them all, I just read him the way most of the fandom reads Dirk basically. 

i rly hope davepeta saves arquis though i dont know if they will but it would own because imo nobody in Homestuck really deserves oblivion but Gamzee and Caliborn 

turing-tested:

i feel like a lot of times my opinion of autoresponder is…the opposite of what the biggest view on him is? he is absolutely manipulative, and a lot of people could say this is dirk at his worst, (2nd worst) but the way i think about it more is actually.

autoresponder is dirk in his worst environment. autoresponder is a dirk who woke up one day, unfortunate enough to have been the splinter that was trapped in a computer until the foreseeable future. autoresponder is a dirk that woke up one day, and the only connection he’d ever had to other humans had been functionally severed.  

the very people that kept dirk from being bro are the very people autoresponder LOST, and it was to another version of himself, coupled with all of those people he’d cared about not so subtly establishing that he was just a fake dirk.(just like another unfortunate orange strider, though davesprite had the benefit of other people insisting that he WASN’T the fake dave, and he was his own seperate person. autoresponder barely even got that, with constant reassurance from his crush that he was, in fact, Not Real.)

i won’t deny autoresponder was manipulative! not at all! but i just feel. bad for him. he’s an unfortunate dirk, that at 13, lost all meaningful human interaction he’d ever had, his bodily autonomy, and his future. and the worst part, is he was subject to another version of himself.

 i can’t blame him for being like that, i really can’t. 

I figure it’s past overdue that I said some things about how I think about Hal, especially if I’ve flown the coop as far as talking about Vriska, so here hope you don’t mind but you said this was ok to reblog

If anything I see Hal as a heroic/tragic character, Tragic in the sense of being ultimately Heroic but having a classic Greek flaw (in his case, his inability to grow up because he got stuck in a computer.), which is fitting since Greek stuff/Greek philosophy is both Dirk and Hal’s primary interest.

He strives to live up Dave’s image in his own way and succeeds as a Prince of Heart in a completely different (and sadder) way than what Dirk does.

I know I keep referencing the Epilogue lately but part of me hopes Davepeta will find a way to swipe Arquius out of LE, too, because unlike Gamzee and Caliborn who chose to be evil and horrendous Arquius made a legitimate heroic sacrifice that I think deserves to be remembered fondly and if possible narratively rewarded. I just don’t have a clue how likely that is.

Yeah Dirk and Hal are the same person on a level, and they tell us interesting things about each other and their relationships to themselves. I just don’t think their actions and choices should be conflated, because their actions and choices are different every step of the way.

I just really don’t get why one would want to reduce both characters’ complexities and relationships to one another in favor of a reductive “all splinter iterations are the same exact person” argument. It shortchanges both of them and how far they have to climb and the different struggles they’re presented with, imo?

There’s only one truly, completely evil Dirk splinter out there, and that’s Bro. I just don’t think AR’s bitter rhetorical banter–banter Dirk never reproduces and that he actively, intensely resents–should be the fanon basis for Dirk’s character.

I also think casting either as ruthless masterminds is mischaracterizing Dirk by a considerable margin and Hal by a not insignificant one. Both versions of the dude are better than fandom thinks, and while Hal did some incredibly terrible shit to Jake AND Dirk that Dirk very much did not do, there were still severe extenuating circumstances to Hal worth considering. 

Dirk grows into a far worse person when he’s cut off from other people, yeah, but that’s not due to some Intrinsic Evil on Dirk’s part–or on Hal’s. It’s a running theme through the entirety of Homestuck. It’s not just Dirk that finds salvation in friends–it’s everyone. And everyone is more of an asshole, crueler and more possessive, meaner and more short-sighted, for the lack of having people they care about. 

Hal’s “abusiveness” or “cruelty” as I see it is mitigated somewhat by the fact that his existential situation is so deeply, truly, PROFOUNDLY shitty, and that there’s not even a fair target for it (not even Dirk because Hal wasn’t even given the satisfaction of being planned, his sentience was an accident), but it’s also kind of cruelly OUTSIZED because at the end of the day Hal is really just…a 13 year old with way too much knowledge, which turns into way too much power.

Hal is as cruelly warped as Grimbark Jade or Crockertier Jane, basically–shortchanged of any relationships or honest, equal expression to others, all he has is the depths in himself. He grows completely in touch with his abilities, awareness of the universe, and his Aspect but ends up totally isolated as a result as well.

“Empty, like Space, I guess.”

Or like a broken heart. 

Hey! I’d love to see an analysis of the AR from you if you have the time – I’ve seen a few times that you attribute a lot of Dirk/Jake’s relationship problems to it (which is fair) but it would be good to hear your thoughts on AR and his relationship with Dirk, Jake, and the girls. For my part I do think AR was a jerk at several points in the story, but that Dirk and Jake in particular were needlessly dismissive of him. I imagine waking up in a computer is not a pleasant experience either.

Yeah, I sympathize with AR a lot, I don’t want to give off the impression that I don’t–it’s just Dirk and Jake are the ones most hurt by the current fandom standing. If I’m able to change that for the better someday I would definitely want to flesh out the nuances of the AR (i am feeling kind of hopeless about the possibility right now, i’m not gonna lie) but for right now I think there’s more than enough of people making the AR better than he is to go with making Dirk worse.

For instance, I don’t think Dirk and Jake were needlessly dismissive at all. AR earned his treatment through his treatment of Jake–which, by the way, is a large part of the reason Dirk was so frustrated and bothered by him. 

That said, the AR–I decided to start calling him Hal–Hal’s situation is kind of innately tragic, too. There’s a lot of pathos to read into his lot in life, and I think he earns his own sort of redemptive narrative victory though it’s a harsher one than Dirk, which makes sense because…Dirk tries really hard to be a better person and succeeds at it. I’ll definitely want to write about that someday. 

memelord69:

revolutionaryduelist:

oceanboydirk:

re: dirk in canon vs. fanon 

have we ever, like. is dirk ever mean to anyone in canon? other than the breakup with jake, he never yells at anyone, ever. he’s wildly nice to roxy even when he’s pretty clearly in an uncomfortable situation or frustrated. 

yeah, he’s pretty sarcastic, but i’m pretty solid that he doesn’t ever make fun of someone meanly, only ever as teasing or a joke (dirk, not the AR or bgd). 

i mean, hell, he’s even vaguely friendly to caliborn, who would be pretty easy to hate. 

im not going to go digging through canon for evidence, but. yeah. thoughts. 

i did dig through the canon for evidence and yeah you’re right the absolute closest dirk ever comes to a mean word is saying Jake should believe in stuff more critically (which is true and Jake’s willful ignorance hurts Dirk PERSONALLY) and that Jane should be less skeptical (and we see how badly Jane’s skepticism hurts roxy) other than the time he breaks up with Jake

Dirk is literally, canonically probably the sweetest kid in the comic lmao 

You raise a point, this is hilarious. He DOES yell at and insult the AR, but he also uses the AR as an avatar for his own self-loathing. The implications of that are pretty telling.

Dirk is just so… Dirk that it’s funny he’d be a strong contender for the most verbally considerate and sweet, at least to everyone but himself.

he also literally watches Hal mentally abuse and gaslight Jake which he notes he’s bitter about in their big pesterlog. And, you know, Hal does successfully use Dirk’s emotional insecurities against him like with the Roxy thing.

So the emotional violence there is not only self-directed but also kinda warranted imo. (i understand where Hal is coming from too even though Hal is a legit abuser to both Dirk and Jake.)