That’s sure a statement. It really bothers me deeply. The level to which its dismissive and coldhearted really just.
Dirk and Jake were two teenagers who were struggling with their emerging sexualities. They were two people who lived alone for the vast majority of their lives. Their entry into the game was their first significant interactions with people, for Jake in most of his life, for Dirk in his entire life.
And they were bad at it. Holy shit, what a novel concept. A massive, stressful part of your life happens, and you don’t handle it with calm. You’re in a game out to kill you with monsters and traps, and you don’t nail it at every turn. You fumble through your new life, overloaded with new situations you could never hope to prepare for, and it doesn’t go well.
“bad and unhealthy.”
What really… fucks with me. What gets me hard, is that I’ve been in Dirk Strider’s shoes. I have done things that I’ll never be fully forgiven for, some real and some made up by my brain, but like Dirk, I want to be better. I think at my core there is a toxicity that I might never be able to pull out from the roots, but I’m fucking trying.
And I know so many people who resonate hard with Jake’s character, who have walked his path and made his mistakes, who are honestly sometimes so fucking relieved to see themselves reflected with such fidelity.
When people take these complicated characters who made mistakes, and they just write off their futures like that, they say “these two people cannot be together because there was a time when it was bad,”
the little voice in the back of my head, the one that thinks I can’t be redeemed no matter how much I try, gets louder.
I need there to be hope for the people who make mistakes. I need there to be forgiveness in the world. I need there to be the understanding that, dude, the person you were when you were 13 is not who you are at 16 or at even fucking 18.
And maybe that forgiveness is not going to come from you in particular, but the fact you put out these broad stroke statements out to the people who will extend that hopefulness like they should be ashamed of themselves, that’s sick.
This entire culture of “this person did something I think is bad, so they get written off,” that’s damaging. Especially with characters like Dirk and Jake because, y’all, people relate to these characters. They have lived similar traumas and hurts. They have hurt people in similar ways.
And they’re just… hopeless, right? They’re bad. They’re unhealthy, huh? And the book closes and that is the end. Nothing happens next.
That’s fucked up. And frankly, the people who do that, who the hell are you to arbitrate that? And in your life, when you fuck up in a big way, when you hurt people, do you also become damaged goods that can never be better?
What the hell does that say about us all?
You know who else is unhealthy and bad? Terezi. Karkat. Dave. Jane. Roxy. Vriska. Rose.
If you are going to say the past missteps in a relationship make it and the people involved irredeemable, then there are very few people not sullied by that broad stroke.
Please for the love of god, stop shaming people for a ship, especially to this particular hopeless, unsympathetic tune. Because man. Think about how much you’ve changed in the time between when you made a mistake and now. Think of every person who gave you that chance and who cared about you since then. Were they wrong?
i like all the canon ships in the text of homestuck itself pretty much equally? davekat, vrisrezi, roxycallie, dirkjake, rosemary, javepeta–all of them own
i have a particular fondness for dirkjake (should be obvious if you follow this blog lol), because it hits some particularly personal notes for me. but they’re all p great.
I also like to think about john or jane in some of those ships, too (johnrezi or johnvrisrezi in different ways, janeroxycallie, johnroxy, all good examples)
im kinda a laissez faire multishipper by default, so ive got all sorts of other ships i think are cute even if i find them less interesting.
2/3 So I can’t imagine that the game is for Hiveswap fans – this is about as far from lovable Joey and Xennos as one can get. Is it for the people who loved Jailbreak an only Jailbreak, because I can’t imagine they’re still around. It doesn’t have any references to please the Old Homestucks (the Never Hiveswap crowd). Content wise it seems to reject marketability, so its certainly not to please Viz execs. It’s like Hussie decided to make an hour-long piece of content
3/3 designed solely for Homestuck theorists, in the sense of ‘let’s throw them the craziest curveball imaginable.’ But even then its strangeness is one of tone more than lore or weird plot shit. WHO IS THIS GAME FOR, RD? (I’m not saying I didn’t like it, but nor am I saying I did like it. I laughed a lot, but it also disturbed me. I don’t know how to feel. Help me, RD. Help me understand the Friendsim)
I agree with you that the Friendsim doesn’t seem immediately marketable, so I find it sorta comforting. It feels like something Hussie would do, not something he was assigned to do via corporate agenda, which I wasn’t too worried about anyway but its nice to be reassured.
As for the rest, uh. I dunno, I think it’s pretty indicative of what I was expecting from Hiveswap itself, so I kinda think its just meant for hiveswap fans lol. People like getting to know trolls, and trolls have always been fucked up.
But that’s because Alternia society is fucked up, not because trolls as a race are awful. Personally, I thought Diemen was immensely lovable, and I am fairly goddamn swooned. Not really sure there’s much a Hiveswap fan will take issue with there.
Ardata’s definitely, uh, a vriska. but I’ve always liked Vriska more than not, and Ardata was a really interesting showcase of the pressures highbloods get put under. She ain’t exactly happy with her brutal responsibilities, so theres about as much room to make her sympathetic as there was with Vriska.
Nothing in the friendsim stuck out to me as particularly worse than whats in the comic, it was just delivered in a more jokey and over the top style. The people who are scandalized or shocked by the way trolls are fucked up will get over it, just like they got over how Vriska/Eridan/Gamzee were fucked up.
And hopefully that will be to all our benefits, since as people get more excited about getting to meet more trolls via friendsim, prospects for Homestuck and Hiveswap will grow brighter as well. Personally, I’m quite pleased with the game so far. The tone’s pretty jailbreak, but the characterization and soul are all homestuck.
First of all, Happy 4/13!! It’s great celebrating everything Homestuck today, but most important is that we get to celebrate it with all you lovely people. ❤
Second, Hiveswap Friendsim is now available! It’s somewhat like a visual novel or a dating simulator, but you’ll be looking for friendship instead of dating or romance. You know … a friendship simulator. Friendsim! This first volume, written by Andrew Hussie, features Ardata and Diemen.
You’ve just crash-landed on Alternia. You meet two trolls. What do you do?
If the Hiveswap Act 1 is the equivalent to Homestuck Act 1…
Good lord are we in for a ride
I mean, we all knew it was Hussie so what can you expect. But directly relating Hiveswap and Homestuck first acts? It’s only going to get more insane
Hiveswap presented itself as a cute little indie game. I’m assuming we can expect a lot of death in the acts to come.
Is he implying that Hiveswap is going to be insanely long? Who’s the huge villain going to be? What else does he have planned? We should all be terrified.
t e r r i f i e d
The huge villain is probably LE/ his associates. There’s hints to LE all over act 1, so he’s around!
i had a really specific feeling and this is the only way to communicate it
this year is the year we all pay our taxes and read homestuck because we are grown adults now and are able to critically think for ourselves now and enjoy things again
Flying through Storytelling 