“allegory – a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning.”
Like all good games, Homestuck tries very hard to teach the reader how to engage with it. Homestuck cues the reader into how to read some of its narrative vagueness through the use of literary allusion. This includes allusions to anime, games, books, movies and entire cultural and philosophical movements.
In this series, we’ll go over some of the biggest examples of Homestuck using references to clue the reader into what it’s doing. Hopefully, you’ll come away from these essays with a new insight into Homestuck’s logic–especially later on, where Homestuck outright finishes character arcs and thematic climaxes through this approach.
I’m numbering these posts from simplest to most complex, and roughly from least to most plot impact, too.
[4. The Gnostic Creation Myth – Literally fucking everything. A Non-Exhaustive review.]
[All of these essays are finished, and accessible to Patrons. They will be released once a week, every Monday from now on!]
This post exists for introduction purposes and as an easy link once all of them are uploaded, but please reblog the individual essays instead, as old reblogs of this post will be outdated and lack the correct hyperlinks!]
[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.
Here’s the next essay in this series on Homestuck’s use of thematic reference. This time, we go over the latter two MOTHER games, Earthbound and Mother 3, to see what they can tell us about the themes Homestuck builds up.
These games are near and dear to my heart, so I hope you enjoy this essay!
Basically, the Condesce tried to institute Lusii in the human world, and Jake’s island is presumably where she was keeping/breeding them or w.e. They’re there because of her.
This is dedicated to Gemi, who early this month promised she’d stop me from getting back into Homestuck, and is now up until 2 AM discussing it in detail with me. She tried her best, and I accept full responsibility.
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.)
Flying through Storytelling 