I’ll get to classpect meta later but honestly this is so important
Daraya’s path put Jadebloods into much sharper focus as a caste subject to incredibly strict control and norms of behavior. Specifically, norms concerning romantic and intimate interest in other trolls, where young, fleeting relationships might be allowed but consummated, long-lasting adult relationships are explicitly illegal.
This puts Kanaya’s early struggles with romance into some really compelling context. Of course she’s more interested in those “More Daring” than her. Of course she’s compelled by people willing to break rules and flaunt convention and risk everything for what they want, like Vriska.
Who else could she dare to hope would be with her? As romantic and extremely into girls as she is, under ordinary circumstances, romance and love were an impossible dream for Kanaya. But by god…
Kanaya said “fuck that” and fucking got it anyway.
She ollied out of her entire universe and hooked up with the girl who wrote her favorite Gamefaqs entry. And then that girl led her through space and time and places where spacetime doesn’t EXIST to a blank slate planet. And then that girls’ Mom handed her the key to ensuring Kanaya’s entire SPECIES could live and love there freely, forever and ever and FUCKING ever after that, A MEN.
Kanaya loves girls so hard that it obliterated the cruel karmic punishment shoved onto her ENTIRE caste, and she’s FREE NOW, AND KISSING ROSE RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT.
biggest most gay power moment in homestuck. the second at which homestuck threw its first brick at stonewall was when kanaya was head over heels for vriska who was painfully hetcrushing on a sad loser boy so when she got the sudden opportunity to saw off his legs she took it and said this
Kanaya was never “head over heels” for Vriska. Her feelings were always complex (she tried to protect others from her, being her moirail), and by this point she had been spurned enough times by her that, if you talk to Kanaya as Vriska in this flash, Kanaya literally doesn’t want to talk to her after a bit because of how uncaring Vriska is:
It was pretty self-evident by this point that Vriska was fucking around with Tavros, and didn’t actually care for him, which is something Kanaya and Vriska literally talk about in this flash, too.
She sawed off Tavros’ legs to give him mechanical ones, which also happened weeks after this incident. Even the “impromputations” joke happens in a conversation with Karkat about not having any more “Impromptu Amputations”, since he fainted from seeing Kanaya amputate Tavros and only woke up hours later. They’re no evidence that she did it out of spite.
Hell, the idea that Kanaya did it to spite Tavros is a jab Vriska uses to get underneath Kanaya’s skin.
VRISKA: That was some pretty sweet chainsaw work earlier. Pretty 8rutal, really! Didn’t think you had it in you. VRISKA: Hey, you weren’t settling a score with him there 8y any chance? KANAYA: What VRISKA: I’ve got a pretty keen nose for revenge. Could it 8e that you had a thing for him and were upset when he went for me instead? Hmmmmmmmm? KANAYA: Did He Really Go For You KANAYA: Thats Not How I Remember It VRISKA: Yes, I think I must 8e on to something here! Anyway if that’s the case, sorry a8out the 8ad 8r8k! KANAYA: Could You Leave Me Alone
This part is about Vriska spiting Kanaya and Kanaya hating Vriska over hurting her friends and jilting her, not about Kanaya doing anything she can to be with Vriska.
Just to make my position clear, I’d say I disagree that Vriska was intentionally spiting Kanaya, and I think there’s a confused and misguided degree to which she cared about Tavros. I think Vriska’s likely TRYING to genuinely reach out here, she’s just terrible at it because she can’t really escape her own self-absorption.
But otherwise, I totally agree. Kanaya is canonically friendly towards Tavros, and selling that dynamic short lessens the complexity of every character involved. Tavros is an abuse victim, but he’s not really a passive one. He resists Vriska’s pressure and abuse at every turn, early on, and pretty much his most effective skill at doing so is in getting his other friends to want to help him.
Like, remember when Kanaya threatened to dump toilet water on Vriska to get her to stop bullying Tavros, because Tavros asked her to? Fucking with Tavros comes with severe backlash for Vriska pretty often, because most of his friends genuinely care about him.
Well, it’s @rosemarymonth and I’ve wanted to talk about Rosemary and why I think the canon gets WAY too little credit with regards to their execution for ages so I may as well do it now.
Keep in mind, of course, that I am a dude and in no way want any wlw to feel I’m shutting down critiques of Homestuck’s flaws in this regard. I think that’s perfectly valid, this is just my reading. I’ll be interested in seeing what people have to say.
I don’t get to talk about Rosemary enough anyway, so I’ll also take you up on it and go over why I love Rosemary and why I think readings that they were “meant to be moirails” and “go ooc” is straight up just misreading the text, because the comic is actually pretty clear in broadcasting its intent.
The thing to keep in mind is that Homestuck’s entire plot follows one consistent rule: The message of AURYN from The Neverending Story, “Do what you will.”
The events in Homestuck that actually happen are by design the sum product of the wills of the entire cast, and how well characters express their wills on reality directly correlates to how “powerful” they are.
Caliborn is the villain because Lord English violates EVERYONE’s agency by confining them all to the plot of Homestuck/his Alpha Timeline. Within the confines of those prescribed paths, however, reality always defaults to fulfilling the wishes of all characters involved, or resolving the tension between them.
What this means PRACTICALLY is that almost every event that happens in the story, no matter how ridiculous….
is, on some level, foreshadowed by the desires of the characters, just as Arquius’ heroic sacrifice and absorption into LE is foreshadowed by the desires of both him and Caliborn:
Oh, and speaking about Caliborn wanting to be bros with Dirk and allowing him to die as if going to sleep:
All this in mind, let’s focus on Rose and Kanaya. No, I don’t get the impression they were ever going to be moirails. I’m not sure when Hussie decided on Rosemary, but I get the impression it was early, at least by the time Kanaya was introduced.
Why? Let’s take stock of both girls’ desires and conflicts throughout Act 5.
Kanaya’s early characterization revolved around A) A tendency to gravitate and pacify take-charge, forward individuals,
and B) A profound dissatisfaction with that role.
That’s what burned her out so hard when she was interested in Vriska. So I’m not sure why one would assume that actually, Kanaya’s True Destiny was to fall into… the exact same arrangement with Rose once again, despite expressly avoiding it. That doesn’t seem like good storytelling to me.
Especially since Rose is, from the very beginning, posited as an idealistic escape from that solitude for Kanaya. Kanaya is the receiver of Rose’s prophetic text—one of her earliest big contributions as a Seer of Light– and it makes a tremendous impact on her.
That impact is partly manifested as an out and out romantic fantasy about Rose, who Kanaya idealizes as the legendary leader of her session.
Kanaya’s fantasies about Rose in this regard play heavily into her attempted courtship through the Flighty Broads and their Snarky Horseshitometer sequence—and it is romantic courtship.
Kanaya makes that clear in the mission-critical text document where she positions herself as an antagonistic suitor to John, and that document is first referenced in… oh, mid-Act 4.
So Kanaya’s romantic interest suffuses the narrative from pretty early on. What about Rose?
Let’s talk about romance aesthetics. Pretty much every endgame ship in Homestuck is couched in a distinctive brand of romantic connotation. For example, Dave and Karkat are linked to anime romance cliches, with Dave as shonen hero and Karkat as heroine.
Jade and Davepeta are linked by a mutual indulgence in furry identity. Vriska and Terezi get the “Home Sweet Home” connotation of The Wizard of Oz, and Dirk and Jake have the undying devotion and mutual passion implied by their link to The Princess Bride.
Rose is once described as a reserved girl “enamored by what dwelt in shadow”. This is a facet of her characterization that’s present from moment 1, what with her interest in the Horrorterrors. Another obvious place to go is Mom, and by association Roxy–both of whom certainly “dwell in shadow” as Void players.
And then, of course, we have Kanaya:
Vampires are traditionally associated with hiding in darkness, away from the Light. And Kanaya describes her rainbow drinker fantasy in exactly those terms. So this aesthetic link between them is established pretty damn early, too.
Of course, Kanaya is not a traditional vampire. I’m far from the first to point out that Rainbow Drinkers most strongly resemble the hyper-romanticized, shine-in-the-light vampires of Twilight, one of the most popular romance series for teen girls of the 2000′s.
Taking that incredibly popular aesthetic and using it as a wrapper for the love story of two girls is instantly compelling. What’s genius is that this is a cocktail of imagery that has natural appeal for Roseas a person, because while it’s true that she’s interested in the darkness that surrounds her, it’s clear that Rose spends her narrative seeking the truth and the meaningful.
In other words, even when she’s enmeshed in darkness, what Rose wants is…
The Light. She may not have taken an interest in Meyer’s prose or Edward’s surly patriarchal authority, but all else being equal? Rose was all but made for a story with imagery like Twilight’s. That in and of itself would be evocative and romantic enough, but it goes deeper.
Because Rose’s relationship with Kanaya is deeply interwoven with her relationship to the reality of Homestuck, a conflict that Kanaya directly helps her solve. Perhaps fittingly, given that Kanaya is a Sylph implied to be “Made of Space”, and so innately linked to the Setting of the story through her Aspect.
This conflict between Rose and the Setting of Homestuck is, in my view, nothing less than the main thrust of Rose’s character arc, so it’ll take a little bit to unpack. Let’s dig in.
But even before she learns about him in name, she spends pretty much her entire arc resisting and fighting against his machinations, subtly perceiving something deeply wrong in the story from its very beginning.
In this, Rose strikes a compelling counterpoint to her partner TT, Dirk Strider. Because If Dirk’s character arc revolves around his belief that he himself is inherently evil, then it’s fair to say Rose’s main conflict is a belief that the world itself is inherently evil.
Or at the very least, incomprehensible and meaningless. Random and empty of logic or reason. And borderline antagonistic to her and her friends, as though reality itself is an unfortunate occurence.
In other words, Rose’s experience of reality is deeply colored byVoid, the aspect of the unimportant, meaningless, irrelevant, and most importantly: incomprehensible.
Just as Dave’s sense of self is broken by his abusive upbringing from a Prince of Heart, so too Rose’s sense of reality is shaped by her codependent relationship with her Mom, a guardian whose actions she can neither understand nor predict.
As a Seer of Light, Rose is drawn towards trying to understand the truth, and in particular the inner truths and meanings behind the minds of others. At the core of her being, Rose is a person who desperately desires to know and understand.
Consider how frustrating this must make Mom’s erratic and dysfunctional behavior to her–there’s no rhyme or reason behind her mother’s actions, influenced as they are by her depression, loneliness, and alcoholism. There’s just apparent randomness from the person who defines her entire life– in essence, the God of her household.
Add in Roxy’s tendency toward passive-aggressive behavior–which Rose definitely perceives from her Mom, whether it was intentionally directed at her or not–and it’s unsurprising that Rose quickly begins to view reality as not just nonsensical and arbitrary, but outright antagonistic.
Rose’s inherently defiant worldview is only intensified by Sburb. Not only does Mom continue being aloof and indecipherable, but Rose discovers that fate has apparently already decreed that she and her friends are doomed to failure and death. To Rose this is more than unacceptable: It’s infuriating.
Throughout Act 5, characters often comment on how Rose’s obsession with subverting Sburb leads her to becoming withdrawn, self-serious, and distant from her relationships. She also attempts to assume responsibility for herself and everyone around her, culminating in the suicide mission she tries to take on alone.
All of this is accompanied by her tearing her Land apart, as she foregoes its “childish” path in favor of something she perceives as more mature and adult. Most blatantly of all, Rose flirts with emulating her Mom in her most obviously adult activity: indulging alcohol. Rose is, in essence, trying to be an adult. Forcing herself to grow up too fast.
By the way? Withdrawing emotions, carefully managing the feelings of others, attempting to assume outsize responsibility for their households and attempting to take care of their guardians are all behavioral hallmarks of kids who grow up in codependent households.
Fast-forward to the aftermath of Cascade, when Rose achieves God Tier and comes face to face with Kanaya for the first time. It’s notable that achieving God Tier is the first moment that Rose is given any indication whatsoever that the plight she shared with her friends was not just random, pointless doom.
It is instead a lucky break. Or a suggestion of greater meaning. In essence, it’s the first time Rose is given really any reason to see reality as anything but the chaotic, nonsensical burden she’s experienced it as so far.
The revelation is accompanied by Kanaya’s sudden phosphorescence, which Rose describes as “inexplicable”–a word usually associated with frustration for her. Here, however, it comes as a happy surprise. Here, Rose is seeing through the incomprehensible Void of her reality to perceive Light for the first time.
Especially since the trend continues. As Rose grows more confident reality not necessarily ALWAYS being a hellish, meaningless landscape of random and pointless suffering, she also grows more playful and willing to be sincere. She grows to trust the Light she was once so suspicious of, asks Kanaya out on dates, and comments on things she enjoys about her without insincerity.
But she remains traumatized and conflicted about her relationship to both her Mom and the world, and takes up Mom’s alcoholism as a way to try to understand the former and ignore the latter.
This comes between her and Kanaya, since Kanaya relies on Rose to help her figure out HER role in the world, and to figure out how to achieve the revival of her species.
It’s worth mentioning that alcohol abuse, for both Rose and Roxy, is extremely Void-coded. It leads Rose to prioritize the pointless, ridiculous, unimportant and non-existent.
Here, Kanaya ends up valuing the desires of her physical form as a Rainbow Drinker over the more idealistic goal of the revival of her species, or even her relationship with Rose. As such, the two girls’ problems are marked as the same problem, even as they drive them further apart from one another.
And we see where their disunity and lack of direction takes them Pre-Retcon: It renders both of them less effective, and thus less important to the plot. It also leads them to misfortune. Rose’s inability to connect with and help, or even be helped by Kanaya, leads directly to tragedy in her relationship to the world.
Good thing there’s a flip side.
In the retcon timeline, Rose and Kanaya work stuff out. Rose gets past her alcohol addiction and directly credits Kanaya’s aid for it. Kanaya resists the pull of literal blood as she takes Karkat to Echidna and engages in an intellectual discussion about his relationship to his Aspect and the future of Troll-kind.
Rose reconciles with her Mom completely through Roxy, finding meaning where she could only speculate before. And with her increased ability to sort truth from lie, important from unimportant, and meaningful from irrelevant…
She resolves the tension between herself and the “demands” of Sburb, openly voicing her ambivalence to the very concept of her Personal Quest. In so doing, she illuminates an important truth to both the cast and the audience: that Sburb’s prescribed path to self-actualization is not particularly important, and certainly not strictly necessary.
Inner truth, understanding, good fortune, foresight, and happiness–Rose never needed to comply with some videogame’s 12-step program for self-satisfaction to get any of that, and neither do we. Light can arise anywhere, as long as you have the patience to look for it and people who love you at your side.
Hope this helps you see what I see, anon. Rose and Kanaya’s story is one worth cherishing, and I haven’t even come close to saying all I think there is to say about it, if you can believe that! But its a start.
Happy rosemary month, happy Halloween, and as always
hey @ og homestucks if you’re giving hiveswap fans advice about sealing body paint maybe don’t be aggressive about? i’ve seen a lot of posts where people are swearing at people about sealing body paint and yeah that’s important but you don’t need to be an asshole to get your point across.
on that note, sealing body paint is important, for people who don’t know the ins and outs of paint, because the worst thing that can happen is getting grey on people’s hard worked on costumes! you’ll probably feel guilty if it happens and it’s the kind of thing that is enough to dampen your experience of a convention – worse still, they’ll be stuck walking around with grey paint on that careful armor they spent fifteen hours sculpting and painting or the shirt that they had to find in the right colour, etc etc. seal your paint with lots of baby powder or translucent powder! ben nye is a good brand of paint (for my skin tone which is like, white as heck, i mix one of their white and grey together) if you can afford it because it’s waterproof and long lasting. you’ll need alcohol based remover to get it off – otherwise, snazaroo is cheap, although it’s not waterproof and will probably come off way faster. there is also kryolan which i’ve never tried but heard good things about! it pays to look around at tutorials and the like, there are a load on youtube about how to do it as safely as possible so as to avoid dampening someones con experience! some people make arm socks, but i cant sew at all so i paint my hands. i’d recommend covering them extra well, and if you think you’ve covered them enough…well, cover them a few times, juuuuuust to be sure! i also never paint the palm of my hands or underside of my fingers because i like to grab stuff to look at in cons and it’s just overall safer for me not to!
tldr; homestucks be nice, and there;s some actual help instead of a !!!Sea L Yo ur B o D y P AI nt !! rant in the big blurb. have fun i guess and i hope i get to take photos with people cosplaying hiveswap at my next con!
truly tho. I saw the post that this post here is refering to. and honestly why all the swearing? this just serves the cliché of tumblr being full of unnecessary negativity. you were a beginner once, too. nobody started out knowing all the tricks.
here ya go, instead of going like ‘seal your fucking paint’ try ‘sealing your paint is important, here’s a helpful post with brands of powders you could use/ my advice as an experienced cosplayer’ next time.
is this forreal? Look, I know Homestuck has historically been a free-for-all fandom that tends to express itself really abrasively as jokes because. we read homestuck.
but. I think as a fandom we need to reckon with the fact that Hiveswap is not that kind of experience necessarily, and a lot of its audience is not going to feel super comfortable engaging with that. there’s going to be lots of kids watching, playing, and talking about hiveswap. given the e10+ rating, lots of LITTLE kids. As a fandom comprised primarily of older teens and young adults, it is on us to be like. careful? caring? approachable i guess?
I’m not saying that swearing is like Off Limits in fandom now but like. guys. theres a time and a place. and the place to be inscrutable and dramatically aggressive is probably not when you’re trying to be helpful to newbies.
Just something to keep in mind.
Yeah, the harsher tones of longstanding fans and old school HS humor will more than likely discourage newer fans from engaging with the fandom if it’s the first thing they encounter. And given Hiveswap’s nature and audience compared to Homestuck’s it’s probably time to hang up the old “seal your damn paint” rhetoric that had been so fundamental back in 2013 when the cosplay world was suddenly swamped by grey painted aliens… We have a chance to be the supportive mentor figures sharing our experiences and preventing a new wave of chaos and drama rather than being the people angrily yelling at children who had no other way of knowing. Really, there is too much negativity and hate within fandom these days, we don’t need to contribute to it. Please, let us be a supportive and welcoming fandom for the new comers and make this resurgence something we can ALL enjoy.
I made this STICKERED AND AUTOGRAPHED JOEY CLAIRE MEME just to declare how important and valuable this message is. Just like Joey herself. Because she’s important and she matters to me. Like this post does. Oh also to make clear that I am so writing that Joey post,,, right now. That’s still happening.
But yeah forreal guys it is not gonna kill anyone to be careful to be nice to kids! It’ll probably require more consistent tagging for things like politics and nsfw and stuff but like, that’ll make it easier for the two main “age” distributions of the fandom to coexist in a healthier way.
Tumblr is a hellsite and we would probably all be better served in a dedicated social media hub designed to encourage this sort of coexistence. But in the meantime, we should take care to welcome the youngins playing with areas that aren’t too stressful so they can process everything Hiveswap gives them.
Like. I’ve been losing sleep the last few days because of how good Hiveswap is? I haven’t been in a public venue this weekend that I didn’t cry in. I’ve made rash, hasty, DRAMATIC decisions in fits of passion. I’m just…not like I was.
If that sounds familiar, I think it’s because what growing up reading Homestuck felt like to me. Hiveswap revived my sense of wonder and mystery and beauty, and shown me wonders I’d never seen-like Joey. I guess I just fucking like homestuck way too much?
But that’s…exactly what being a kid feels like. Important and dire as it is to talk about the state of the world and vent from our battles, teens and kids have a lots to do just handling what they’re feeling. I don’t think they should grow up like I did, reading Homestuck and learning about politcs and the state of the world at the same time.
I don’t regret it. But it was bad for me. I think it was bad for a lot of us. Still, it gave me the experience, I hope, to know it didn’t make me super healthy. The only benefit of that possible is to know not to pass it on to another wave of kids.
I don’t know how we’re going to work this out. But this is something I feel really strongly about. We need a way to make adult conversations opt-in, at the very least–so that any kid who wants to dive into them is essentially peeking through a window they shouldn’t.
Try and remember how it felt to read Homestuck and talk to people if you read it when you were young. Try really hard. We can and should do better than that experience, and What Pumpkin have proven they deserve that from us. I don’t think any little girl who connects to Joey should be made to feel that the game that moved her so much is garbage for x or y reason.
I just think…I think we should choose to be gentler than that.
So I finally read that MISSION CRITICAL TEXT DOCUMENT–where Kanaya tactically edits her first conversation with Rose (which, unbeknownst to her, is actually with John) and presents it to Rose as a ploy of passive aggressive friend-courtship
(emphasis on courtship, this shit’s gonna get good) and
holy shit,
this is definitely one of the most underrated parts of this damn comic
heres a loose, non-exhaustive breakdown for those who might have missed it like i did. seriously read it it’s so good
First off, Kanaya begins by doctoring out her own dialogue through the extensive use of [Tactical Ommission]s.
I’m not sure why but I find the wording here hysterical. I want to imagine she types it out every time instead of copy/pasting it. It helps her commit to the roleplaying scenario.
She tries to play coy as hell about whether or not she actually edited the document but she just rewrites parts of John’s lines and doesn’t change her typing quirk and just blatantly mocks Rose as if Rose were John fuck
Ooh my god, and this. Like, INSTANTLY Kanaya’s roleplaying-as-Rose devolves into a frustrated tirade on how distant and unapproachable Rose makes herself with her sarcasm stuff, and like
As i think @roxilalonde wrote about already, Rose’s emotional distance keeps being a factor in their relationship past the meteor. Rose admits to having never told Kanaya she loved her.
And honestly this beat, though early in their relationship, is a fascinating little window into what Kanaya might sound like when frustrated about this stuff while they’re dating.
more tactical ommissions. they make my day. since we know Rose is a slob i hope someday like someone comes over to visit them and kanaya just wanders around the house covering up rose’s embarassing shit or putting it away and whispering “tactical ommission” under her breath
John is right to be smug here so it’s just hysterical that Kanaya is takes umbrage and pettily mocks rose for it, like, god Kanaya is such unabashed scorn and frustration and jealousy in this log in a way that rails against her fandom ascribed Mom Friend persona and–
oh, did i mention jealousy???
Because oh my god let’s talk about the fucking jealousy. Kanaya and Rose aren’t even DATING here yet, this is Kanaya getting to know Rose and it literally escalates into full-blown explicit romantic courtship like
This is Kanaya editing words into Rose-as-John’s mouth implying that Rose is only saying she likes John only to bother Kanaya herself, and suggesting that Rose says this in the unedited log Kanaya presents specifically to improve the odds they’ll develop a “more favorable relationship”.
Here Kanaya betrays that her romantic attraction was instantaneous and suggests that it was for Rose as well through the medium of passive aggressive mistaken identity temporal trolling roleplay, as she attempts to flirt by way of implying Rose already flirted with her
This is so high-level i can’t even follow it, these gay girls are beyond my mere mortal ken. Thank god for Rosemary
I’ll close out with this last tactical ommission because i fucking love the line she blots out, because:
yeah. Yeah. Embarassing much, Kanaya? I’d be embarassed too. Tactical Ommission indeed if you’re invested in keeping the intellectual highground. What the hell kind of line is that anyway. you nerd. i love you
Flying through Storytelling 