dirk strider never has to be alone ever again, he finally lives in the same physical place and time as all the people he cares about most, and all his friends and family love him very much and will take care of him and help him become the best version of himself, just as he will help all of them with the same, probably without even realizing it
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here! The Signless remains by my side, guiding me as we learn together. There have been no new posts partially because of my busy schedule- but mostly because I didn’t feel like I had much new information to add to the sermons. I felt like it would be repetitive of old sermons.
I thought again, though. Maybe some repetition is good? We need repetition to remember and learn. Especially in times like now, when there is so much repetition in bad news…. we will need as many reminders of the kindness that still remains to inspire us to move forward as we can. As I pondered this idea, the Signless gave me this message.
“Share your gifts.”
Merely three words, but the meaning I can see within them is vast.
Lately, we have seen so much despair. Horrible news, disastrous predictions, and a squelching of hope, of energy, of agency. These are trying times, and we must not let this evilness rob of us our our ability to give to others.
Every one of us, we are a unique. We have a unique situation, unique privileges, and unique abilities. What you have, nobody else does….and never will, unless you share. No matter how powerful the forces of cruelty may be, they will never be able to take away our ability to care for others, to give to others. We must always recognize that, and use that ability. This is the ability that the cruel fear, for they can never destroy it, and it can combat their power.
If you have resources- money, time, energy, space, reach- share them. I know, though, that so many of us don’t have these kind of resources. Still, we are not helpless. We have gifts- talents, skills, ideas, voices- and we have the responsibility to share those as well. Use your gifts to spread a message of happiness and of hope. Never belittle happiness and hope, no matter how temporary. All things are temporary, and every last bit of happiness and hope that you can share is needed and never wasted. These are the things that give others energy, that give others drive, to spread their gifts. Give to others, so they might give to others still.
Even if you can only help one other person…that’s a person who contains a whole world in their individual life, and one person who might not be helped otherwise. Share your gifts with them. Spread cheer. Spread hope. Spread the message that we will never be helpless, that we will refuse to squander what is permanently ours- our kindness.
My connection to the Signless is a great gift, a great blessing, to me. I started this blog because I knew this was not a blessing I should ever hoard to myself, and I apologize for my quietness. I care about all of you, and so I will share this blessing. I will share the gift of my words, of my hope, of my time to listen and energy to help soothe others. I implore you all to do the same. Whatever you may have, remember that nobody else has the same, and share it.
HELL YEAH, this is awesome to hear because making it easier to get and stay into Homestuck is my biggest motivation. Thanks so much for the message! ^^
John: warily eyes the pastry booths bc he still has a deep mistrust for baked goods thanks to the Betty Crocker incident aka literally the apocalypse. Plays a (rigged) wack-a-mole game and gets frustrated when he keeps losing. Terezi makes fun of him so he whips out the hammer of zillyhoo and ah, crushes the game, so to speak. His prize is a giant bunny. He puts it back in the box.
Jade: sees one of those rodeo electronic bull things and goes oh that looks fun! Everyone is like uhhh Jade that can get pretty wild are u sure?? Karkat bets Jade that she won’t last 5 mins, oh really Karkat? 5 minutes? She sits on that bucking bronco for an entire hour making uncomfortable and spite fueled eye contact with Karkat the entire time. She only gets off because there’s a line.
Dave: wants to go on all the big rides and drags Karkat along despite Karkat complaining very loudly the entire time. Sorry Karkles, you scared of heights? You a scaredy Kat? A scaredy Karkat? Fuck you Dave, I’m fine! Dave drags him on the biggest rollercoaster in the entire park, they get off and Karkat says wow that was actually pretty fun! Dave’s hair is a mess, he looks inches from perma-death, that was horrible oh god. Not a word, Rose, he says. She and Kanaya are definitely not snickering behind their hands.
Rose: makes a goddamn beeline with Kanaya in tow to the haunted house ride because fuck yes she wants to see some creepy ass shit. If y’all have ever been in an amusement park haunted house, you know how vastly disappointed she was by the lame jump-scares and cheap monsters. Kanaya made it up to her by taking her to the Tunnel O’ Love™ and Rose was significantly cheered up.
Kanaya: isn’t a huge fan of non-blood food but v intrigued by all the fried stuff. Why Is It Fried? Does It Add Flavor? Not really, Rose tells her, it’s mostly just another way humanity likes to push itself closer and closer to its own imminent demise. Only now they’ve roped the trolls and carapacians into it. Oh, Kanaya says. She tries a fried Twinkie and sucks the filling out w her sick rainbow drinker/ vampire skills. Delicious. A single tear trails down Rose’s cheek. I have never been more in love w you.
Terezi: that scene with Toph and the scam artists in ATLA? Basically picture that. It’s one of those rubber duck games where they’re all floating in the pool and at the bottom of them is a different color and that’s how big a prize you get, thing is, Terezi can smell what’s on the bottom. She wins Vriska all the prizes and the dude running the booth is sweating and has to write her an IOU that John won’t let Terezi cash in on because that’s cheating and that’s wrong!
Jane: goes around with Jade and Roxy and Callie critiquing the food booths on their baking skills. She absolutely loathes that everything is fried bc it’s a cheap tactic to make weak bakers stronger! She tries a funnel cake and immediately changes her mind. CrockerCorp releases its own line of fried food that fall. Roxy calls her a sellout but eats it all anyways bc it’s just That Good.
Jake: finds one of those carnival shooter games and one of the big stuffed animal prizes is a gigantic rainbow dash my little pony and,,,he sees Dirk eyeing it. He doesn’t say anything, but Jake Knows. He tells Dirk he has to run off to the “little lads” room for a second, but he goes back to the shooting game, crushes the fuck out of those targets with the wimpy water gun, and presents Dirk with this oversized goddamn pony. It is touching and romantic for everyone involved.
Dirk: tries to show off to Jake by doing that strength test where u slam the hammer down and try to ring the bell at the top, he makes it about half the way up and he’s like fuck yeah that’s pretty fuckin’ good. Jake goes wow golly that’s impressive! Mind if I give it the old college try? Dirk is like pffft go for it, still flexin his muscles trynna show off and shit. Jake casually slams it down and rings the goddamn bell so hard it almost flies off the top. Dirk just stands there with his eyes v wide behind his shades while Jake is like gosh! Must have been buggered, huh?
Roxy: goes on every single ride she is living for today y’all, Callie is too short for most of the rides but Roxy promises to dab at the top of every coaster so Callie can spot her from where she’s watching down below. They share an ice cream sundae and Roxy gives Callie the cherry on top bc it’s “a cherry for a cherub!”
Sollux: idk about amusement parks near y’all but I live right by cedar point and there’s a coaster called Gemini so uhhh he and Aradia just do that. All day. Sollux rides this rollercoaster 53 times, turns to Aradia, says “what if bees had yaoi hands would that be fucked up or what” then passes out for a week.
Happy Pride Month Eleanor Roosevelt was queer, the Little Mermaid is a gay love story, James Dean liked men, Emily Dickinson was a lesbian, Nikola Tesla was asexual, Freddie Mercury was bisexual & British Indian, and black trans women pioneered the gay rights movement.
Florence Nightingale was a lesbian, Leonardo da Vinci was gay, Michelangelo too, Jane Austen liked women, Hatshepsut was not cisgender, and Alexander the Great was a power bottom
Freddie Mercury is well known for his attraction to men but was also linked to several women, including Barbara Valentin whom he lived with shortly before he died. Friends have talked about being invited into their bed and walking in on them having sex (documentary Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender)
Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are two of the best-known activists who fought in the Stonewall riots
I keep noticing how some artists have been silently leaving the fandom. Like, the kind of artist that’ll make casual posts and usually have an open and welcoming attitude about fellow fans and homestuck by itself.
While I’m sure they leave for their own reasons, I cant help but be aware that these artists may come and go sometimes because of either the stressful environment of the fandom, or get targeted/bullied enough for no real reason to the point that they wanna leave, and their traction on people’s dashes get replaced by other artists (or even just louder blogs in general) who instead make fun of others people’s art and like to passive aggressively critique the artistic expression of other’s in the fandom (from ships, to fave characters, to headcanons, to other things one would dub as cringe culture).
Like, unless some other’s want to shape up and stop being assholes, there’s nothing that can really be done, but I’m just a little sad that we’re left with less positive content creators to look up to around here and more that like putting others on blast and sneering at art habits that other homestuck artists have, all while wrapping themselves in this thin veil of woke purity.
Hey, positive Homestuck blogs, reblog this! I’m still here and I know I follow plenty of you that are still supportive, creative and welcoming. Spread this around for other people to find and follow, don’t let the loud assholes drown us out.
See, maybe it’s the big sister in me, because I’ve never understood this particular complaint. The fact is, Dipper loves Mabel so much that her happiness is his own; his actions of sacrifice on her behalf are freely chosen. That’s why Bill’s behavior in “Sock Opera” is so insidious; he builds on Dipper’s momentary frustration with Mabel (why won’t she help me?!?!) by bringing up the various ways he’s helped her in the past, implying that she hasn’t done much to return the favor. He seeks to engender resentment where there was none, where Dipper was previously unwilling to give him so much as a stitch of Mabel’s puppet show; hey, she worked hard on those.
The key assertion I have to address here is that “Dipper sacrifices a lot for Mabel, while she only seems to sacrifice her sock-puppet show for him.” I imagine that viewers come to the conclusion that Dipper has the losing end because, when they compare Dipper’s problems to Mabel’s, they see Dipper’s as more serious. Dipper has a crush he can’t shake (relatable), Mabel is gaga over a pig she just saw at the fair (less relatable); Dipper is pursuing the latest lead in his search for the Author (important), Mabel is rigging up an elaborate puppet show to impress the Boy of the Week (unimportant). Yet the show is always keenly aware that Mabel’s problems, as trivial as they may seem to us, are as important to her as Dipper’s are to him. Bill highlights this when he says, “Who would sacrifice everything they’d worked for just for their dumb sibling?”, causing Mabel to respond, “Dipper would.” Dipper’s “everything” is his investigation of Gravity Falls and Mabel’s “everything” is her puppet show, but each of their projects is everything. Coming from Mabel, the sacrifice of the sock puppet show–and, by extension, of a shot at the “epic summer romance” she’s been seeking as ardently as Dipper has been seeking the answers to his questions–is a very real loss, one she’s willing to accept because Dipper would do and has done as much for her.
Nor is Mabel’s puppet show the only casualty of her greater love for her brother; the loss of her dream world is no mean thing. Mabeland might not be to everyone’s taste (I would personally have thinned out the crowd and lowered the 80s club music a notch), but it’s Mabel’s ideal universe; it’s a world where everything is as she wants it, where she’s never bored or lonely, where every boy loves her, where the high court judge is a kitten. With the threat of change weighing on her and the most important relationship of her life under siege, the prison bubble presents Mabel with an irresistible retreat. Bill, who has banked on human greed in the past to great success, believes that the trap is inescapable, that no one handed all their heart’s desires on a plate will be capable of leaving (just as Mabel is taken in by her desperation to stop time, Dipper wavers when presented with the possibility of growing up on the spot). But without Dipper, all of it is hollow; she prefers in the end to leave her safe place and to follow him into an uncertain world.
For much of the show, Dipper is the more responsible one within the context of their relationship. Regardless of actual birth order, Mabel is the baby; sometimes the baby gets in a habit of relying on charm to carry her through, taking it for granted that her older siblings will always step up to the plate on her behalf, because she’s just that cute (looking at you, youngest sibling in my own family). But if Mabel’s occasional thoughtlessness with regard to Dipper is a character flaw, it’s worth measuring against the depth of her concern for the world at large, a quality that Dipper himself, who tends to value his select group, could stand to learn from. Dipper’s only real issue with the destruction of Northwest Manor and all of its visitors is that Mabel happens to be among them; Mabel is the first to see the potential for redemption in Pacifica, even though Dipper is the one who becomes close to her.
But Mabel loves Dipper more than anyone, and she is grateful to him for everything he does for her and shows it. She apologizes to him at the end of “Sock Opera” for letting a transient enthusiasm skew her priorities: “I spent all week obsessing over a dumb guy. But the dumb guy I should have cared about was you.” After escaping the prison bubble, she makes it clear to him that he can stay with Ford if he wants to–her noblest moment in the series, because Dipper is her entire world, infinitely more to her than crushes and pet pigs and magical trees that grow stuffed animals. He stays with her, not out of guilty obligation, but because he wants to be with her–because she’s his best friend, because growing up without her would be unthinkable. He’s a fair-minded guy, not one to take the fall without good reason–when he operates against her in “The Time-Traveler’s Pig,” he does so on the assumption that her pig is an enthusiasm of the moment and that his love for Wendy is permanent. When he realizes that losing Waddles will truly hurt her, he doesn’t hesitate. “I could never break your heart, Mabel.”
But look at how she thanks him. She knows this wasn’t easy for him and she’s ready to show him how much it means to her. She tackles him in sheer strength of feeling. She lifts him right off his feet.
Treated unfairly? Dipper gets back everything he gives away with interest. Dipper’s happiness is his sister’s happiness and he always gets it because he is her happiness. Dipper is a lucky kid.
I think the most important part of this is “Mabel’s problems…are as important to her as Dipper’s are to him”. People arguing that Dipper somehow got the short end of the stick are saying, whether they intend to or not, that Mabel’s sacrifices don’t ‘count’; that unless she’s always giving up what she wants in order for Dipper to have what he wants, their relationship is out of balance. But that’s not how any relationship works, and the show seems to know that. Part of the reason that Dipper and Mabel’s sibling relationship feels so real is because the things that are important to each of them often clash, but the reason it’s so positive is that they manage to communicate with each other, to help make the other understand how important something is to them, and they’re both happy to give some things up if it means their twin can also be happy. It’s worth saying that this is the exact same dilemma Stan and Ford struggled with – they both had different priorities, different ideas of what was important – but they never learned to reconcile those (at least, not until the fate of both the entire universe and the kids rested on it).
Besides, the major things Dipper and Mabel give up for each other are actually exactly balanced. Dipper gives up a chance at a summer romance that he worked long and hard to make happen so Mabel could have her pig; Mabel gives up a chance at a summer romance that she worked long and hard to make happen so that Dipper could have his journal. Dipper gave up his chance at a dream future that seemed perfectly tailored for him so that he could be with Mabel; Mabel gave up her chance at a dream frozen-moment-in-time that was perfectly tailored for her so that she could be with Dipper. People who follow the show exclusively for the mystery arc might assume that this is out of balance because the things Dipper’s invested in are more important to them, but that’s exactly the point. Those things are important to them in the same way they are to Dipper, in the same way Mabel’s pig and her relationship with her family and her future and her perfect summer are to her. To her, those things are the things that are objectively, obviously important, that are real and that won’t vanish as soon as she moves on to something new.
Because the show values Mabel, because it treats what she wants and what she cares about as important, it treats the loss or sacrifice of those things as just as weighty as the loss or sacrifice of any of Dipper’s secrets and mysteries. And it’s right to do so, just as much as it’s right to balance Stan’s love for and protectiveness of his family against Ford’s desire to protect the universe. It’s a matter of priorities. And Dipper and Mabel have got theirs straight: their first priorities are each other.
Y’all I finished gravity falls the other day and it’s basically utena tier, do want to do videos on it, oh my gosh
Flying through Storytelling 