So on my patron server we were talking about a lack of Serket ghosts. There are pretty much 0 alternates, with only 1 Aranea and 2 Vriskas (both are plot relevant)
I chalked Vriska up to Meta Thief of Light. Like how she took up waaay too much time in canon and everyone sweeps it under the rug as Thief of Light. That’s a meta use of them, how they effect a story and narrative.
It’s like how Gamzee destroyed falshoods, pretense, lies, and harsh realities. He was able to do the impossible. It was literally impossible for him to have the hammer of zillywho It was literally impossible for him to get to Jane’s planet Etc etc His nature as a Bard of Rage is a force in the Meta, in the plot
Jujus are LITERALLY plot devices
So with all of that we (us being me and @dheavenlymango ) figured out that there are no alternates of Aranea for this same reason
Ghost alternates exist because they are irrelevant. They don’t matter. They are the epitome of Stopped Actually Mattering Aranea has been in the dreambubbles waaaaay longer than everyone else We think she got rid of her alternates. In a Meta attempt to matter, she tried healing her other selves, but they went from being ghosts to straight up not existing. She became the only one, thereby repairing her importance
But, with that came a cost. This One True Aranea was her long shot. By trying to become relevant and absorbing her alternates, she learned the only way to truly matter was to be alive. She scrapped together all her other selves (thereby having a memory so vast that she felt like she has been there forever) and puts all her eggs into one Importance Basket. With only one Aranea, all her alternates are taken away and thus, she gains the power of Singular Importance
But, even with all of this, importance only means anything if you are living. Ghosts are supposed to be inherently worthless
That’s why she wanted the Ring of Life so bad and went so far with her schemes
It wasn’t just One Aranea acting out It was the entire concept of Aranea has a meta force on plot to actually, truly mater and leave an impact
She bet everything on black All her cards we down Every single version of her was leading up to this Alpha Aranea to matter enough and be important enough to save the day
This is an interesting concept, but I’m sorry to say it’s undercut by canon. There are other Araneas in the bubbles.
Your explanation for Aranea is actually pretty close to how I’d describe Gamzee’s quantum existence, though. Seems to me he manages to live to the end of almost every timeline and then go to sleep, so he can merge with Alpha Gamzee’s dreamself, the same way Dream Rose does.
That would explain how he never dies in any timeline, and why he has no ghosts.
I think Aranea does something similar, but only through virtue of being “lucky” and “kind of boring”, meaning she’s probably likely to live to the end of her timeline by virtue of not getting involved in many fights. So she has fewer ghosts, and her alpha self had quite a lot of collected knowledge, but that’s about it.
Vriska’s an open question for me right now, but I like your description for her.
DIRK: Oh, hey. Sorry I’ve been quiet for a bit.
JAKE: Perish the thought!
JAKE: I know how you get when youre dick deep in robots.
DIRK: By Jake alone could such words be guilelessly said.
DIRK: Uh, but yeah, something that’s been in the back of my head.
DIRK: What was that weirdly charming thing you said we were like?
JAKE: Ah! Youll recall it was, “Peas and carrots”!
DIRK: Peas and carrots, that’s right.
DIRK: I liked that, but I forgot what it’s from.
JAKE: Forrest gump!
DIRK: Oh fuck me sideways.
JAKE: !?
DIRK: Now I feel like a tremendous chump.
JAKE: Why the hey? Forrest’s a stupendous gump from a peerless drama!
JAKE: That Forrest had gusto to spare. Not to mention a fearless mama!
JAKE: By gum, her spunky selfless antics just filled me with elation!
JAKE: Remember how she boned the principal for Forrests education?
DIRK: I do. Wish I didn’t.
JAKE: And how elvis jacked forrests swagger instead of black artists?
JAKE: And how forrest’s friend jenny got hit by aids hardest?
DIRK: Yeah, uh. The big man might want to call a time-out on that claim.
DIRK: Dude, don’t you think there are people who that portrayal defames?
JAKE: Defame schemame. Now makes its debut: striderian snootiness!
JAKE: Disdain for whats plain as punch yet is inherently beauteous!
DIRK: It’s not exactly snooty that manipulative schmaltz makes me ill at ease.
DIRK: That weird Vietnam revisionism. Forrest with the war criminal Lyndon B.
DIRK: Ugh. That vaguely racist Forrest-aura that kept the protagonist from harm.
DIRK: A plot which intoduces… the new friend, Bubba, who was born to die in Forrest’s arms.
DIRK: Stuff like that is why I’m on the negative side of our particular Gump-opinion-schism.
DIRK: Cause it’s schlock fabricated to insulate a long-past generation from self-criticism.
JAKE: Aha! Funny you should mention the lifetime performance of donny glover.
JAKE: Cause theres a tidbit of reason youve yet to reckon with, lover.
JAKE: Theres a lesson in donny glovers story, and a reason he took home oscar glory.
JAKE: His small role puffed up with joie de vivre! His life fully lived before death most gory!
JAKE: Qualitys got a savoir-faire, a quintessence, and no man can mistake it.
JAKE: Be the writing ever so dog shit, its the oomph of passion that makes it.
JAKE: Cant you just feel it oozing? The gumpean passion that leaks out of tom hanks!
DIRK: If you’re asking me to consider Tom’s ooze or his leakages, the answer’s definitely “no thanks.”
DIRK: Dribbling pus or passion aside, it’s with the takeaway that I’ve got compunctions.
JAKE: But isnt it the person viewing, that molds their own takeaway and imbues it with gumption?
DIRK: Toxic garbage is as toxic garbage does. No matter if the audience puts their voice in.
DIRK: I’ll never like that shitty movie, and I feel like all mentions of it are poisoned.
JAKE: Well. We may be at an impasse. But instead of feeling like a first-class horses ass,
JAKE: Id instead like to beg my pal and paramour to not throw a pet name out like nasty trash.
JAKE: Whatever you got from that movie, even by irony, why all of that is all yours!
JAKE: Whether you wept like me big gobs of tears or hit the ground laughing on all fours.
DIRK: You’ve got a point, though it’s no fair baiting me with talk of an all-fours position.
JAKE: (Gulp…!)
DIRK: Despite all havoc wrought by such a propaganda mess, there’s, yeah, value in my ironic derision.
DIRK: And there’s some value in that dorky pet name too.
DIRK: Let not my snobbery be as disdain miscontrued.
JAKE: So its decided! “Peas and carrots” is our pet name, our badge of honor and love!
JAKE: Theres no more boffo sign of bonding, at least none that my brain can think of!
JAKE: Let he who thinks theres a more spot-on symbol be proclaimed a brainless bumpkin!
DIRK: (Feels like we’re missing something obvious… but I don’t know what somethin’?)
DIRK: But yeah.
DIRK: Lyrical and philosophical waxing aside.
DIRK: It’s you and me.
DIRK: Peas and carrots, buddy.
JAKE: Oh Dirk. Im just over the moon that you see things my way.
JAKE: It really is just like they say… “Life is like a box of chocolates!”
DIRK: “You need to watch out because like a good 40% of it tastes like utter shit and if you’re not careful sometimes it can horribly kill you.”
“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!]
so i think the setting of Earth C is MASSIVELY underrated, ok? like. jane and jake run corporations they presumably do genuine business through. i don’t think Earth C has a simply capitalist society. It’s more likely to have elements of capitalism but with universal basic income and a robust social safety net.
As such there’d be no need for work and all of Skaianet and Crockercorp’s staff would be volunteers, and why wouldn’t they volunteer? They’re companies run by the literal gods that created them and both of the heads have demonstrable market savvy in other lives or while being cyborgs.
Also they have literal magic superpowers they can use to create ideas out of nothing. It would be stupidly easy to make a killing by just selling stuff in that context. Both companies would probably have giveaways and all sorts of marketing campaigns.
Ultimately what I’m saying is, in Earth C, these companies would act something like Disney or Marvel in our U.S. society–as cultural powerhouses. They’d also be means to introduce any kind of product or memetic idea into the world’s culture a particular writer found valuable.
And the culture of Earth C’s world is somewhat malleable, as the Snapchats showed us. If bigotry still exists to some extent, then the kids potentially become sort of…Super-Liberals, with kindhearted values that will be listened to by all the adults around them.
That create art that will be paid mind through, and appreciated by the mainstream through like professional companies under their own name. And these are kids just starting to get a handle on superpowers with near limitless utility, meaning they’ll only get craftier and more capable over time.
It’s just such an irresistibly rich setting.
What I’m trying to get at, in the end, is that someday in just the couple-years gap between Act 7, Credits, and..whatever happens in the epilogue, it’s totally plausible that, like
Dirk like…accidentally distributed too good a memetic marketing scheme through the media arm of skaianet, and ended up creating a thriving smuppet porn industry that dominated the entertainment sector of…
the consorts.
You could even write compelling character drama around it.
Dave coming to grips with the stunning revelation that Dirk had delivered on the promise of raising a small flock of bots of hardcore soft plush aficionados, but his bots were…literally living and breathing and ADORABLE fucking amphibian idiots. All like, buying dicknose masks and smuppet ass strap-ons and shit.
And Dirk just now realizing this could be potentially uncomfortable for Dave and freaking out internally about it, already crafting plans to make Consorts think smuppets were gross as hell actually, already trying to figure out how to apologize–
Only for Dave to bust a gut laughing and think its the funniest thing ever. Because Dirk isn’t Bro, and this isn’t creepy or mean-spirited or malicious its just having fun with how objectively hilarious the premise is.
Oh also Jake gets them into wrestling. The consorts I mean. So the consorts are into wrestling with smuppet paraphernaliaon, specifically. In fact Jake used Skaianet to distribute Hope-produced magic sexy stamina-restoring jack off bro crystals to the consorts considerably surfer dudebro subdemographic. That’s a whole thing, too.
“You sold a magic crystal that restores amphibian sex vitality perpetually, with magic literally powered by two salamander bros engaged in the intense spiritual practice of gay smuppet wrestlewanking?” Karkat says, horrified at the sheer power Skaianet’s marketing arm wields. Jake is a powerful man.
Also shameless as hell. Dave has a freudian slip and suggests a human-troll version and everybody dies but Jake, who is grinning and being very loud about what a good idea that is in this diner.
Hey, guys! My good friend Rune asked me to provide a good post they could reblog boosting the work I’ve been doing here for a while, and upon attempting to do so I realized:
Holy crap! It’s already been six months! Half a year has flown by as I have striven to delve deeper into Homestuck’s symbol language and referential philosophy, attempting to help bring new readings and positive sentiments to the fandom.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m optimisticDuelist. My goals are simple: I love Homestuck. I think there’s a lot that Homestuck tries to say that is not immediately apparent or easily accessible, and it is my goal to make as much of that information as I can uncover accessible to old and new fans alike.
Emphasis on the new, in fact! This is why my main project is…
This youtube series is an in-depth and allegedly entertaining look at Homestuck, designed to make the comic not just understandable but interesting to anyone who watches them!Currently numbering at six videos and counting, each has been a labor of love. I hope you find them as enjoyable to watch as they’ve been enjoyable to put together!
Since the next video on my roster finally has us enter the Medium, you’re just in time to catch up and have the series Welcome you to a new extreme ;).
Besides videos, I’ve also put out plenty of readily accessible writing on Homestuck, on all manner of different subjects–mostly focused on poorly understood or often underlooked parts of the comic. Here’s a short list of what I consider my best work:
There’s also essays on Jane Crocker, Davekat, and how Homestuck deliberately references other works to clue the reader in on what it’s trying to say in the works! Among yet other things. Is there any end to my hopes for this project? It is difficult to say.
Needless to say, I’m pretty busy. I’ve only been able to do as much as I have due to the incredible support of my Patrons–thanks to all of you for signing on to this journey so far. I also owe a lot to all my friends across both the Homestuck community and my online and offline life.
Besides my Patreon projects, I also help run the r/Hiveswap reddit and Discord, where you can find me regardless of what you think of all this stuff. Thanks for taking the time to read this! If you enjoy any of the stuff I’ve put out, let me know, because it always makes my day to hear it :).
That’s all for now! Thanks again, to all of you, so, so much.
(2/3)We know that the Seer class experiences visions of the future through the vector of their aspect(or perhaps guided by their aspect), and this is clearly demonstrated by Terezi seeing the future as the myriads of choices the players can make while Rose seems to be capable of seeing the “true” path or the most fortunate path. So how could the Blood aspect, or rather bonds, be used to see the future?
(3/3)I thought about what a bond really was, and realized that a bond is simply the accumulation of shared memories and experiences between individuals, in other words a shared past. Then I remembered Signless, the visions that prompted him to start the revolution were of Beforus, of the past. I think that rather than being a pre-cog like other Seers, a Seer of Blood is actually a post-cog who uses their visions to empathize with their players and unite them.
1) Thank you so much! I’m really glad you liked them, and I hope we go on to learn a lot more about the system together 😀 I’m sure I’m wrong about some stuff and I’m sure there’s more to learn–it’s part of why I’m so excited for Hiveswap!
2) Yeah, I’d say I more or less agree! The only point I’d differ on is that I don’t think Terezi and Rose are specifically Pre-Cogs, and I don’t think a Seer of Blood is necessarily a Post-Cog, though the Sufferer certainly experiences his powers that way. I’d say all types of Seers could likely develop both properties.
I say this because time simply isn’t linear in Homestuck at all. Hypothetically, if none of the seers had any limits on their power, then for the Sufferer remembering past bonds would inevitably lead him from Beforus to LE, and from LE to the Alpha kids, from the Alpha kids to the Betas, and back around–though obviously, as his focus is Blood, he seems to cap out with the Beforans.
But even that’s more complicated, because the Sufferer isn’t technically remembering the past, but rather an alternate timeline/universe entirely, isn’t he? We saw it with the kids: The beta kid and alpha kid timelines are actually mostly concurrent to one another, despite the fact that the Betas created the Alpha’s timeline. Jake and Jade grow up loosely in tandem.
So whether they’re inclined to remember moments related to the future or to the past, what it seems to me all Seers are mostly able to do is see sideways–into other universes, other timelines. That makes the concept of pre- or post- cognition tricky, because different universes’ temporal envelopes are wholly irrelevant to one another’s.
Terezi distributes some pretty remarkable recollection of her own timeline and the results of changing it at various points, which seems technically post-cog? Though again we fall into that timeline ambiguity. And while it’s not in canon exactly, it seems easy for me to imagine pre-cog showing up for a Seer of Blood–seeing someone and instantly knowing you’ll be friends or lovers, for example? That kind of thing.
anyway none of this is to say you’re wrong at all. It’s definitely correct that the Sufferer has a heavy disposition towards elements of reality that, through various vague and complex mechanics, read as “Past” events from his perspective. I just find the Time mechanics in Homestuck irresistible to think about because they’re so fucking weird x3.
I also just don’t want to imply that anything about my view of the Classpects implies any Class ever has to “just” be X or Y, you know? I don’t even think the archetypes I claim the story puts forth for the class pairs work that way, which is something I’ve been thinking about and needing to clarify for a long time because I’m worried I haven’t been clear enough about it. So let’s get into this tangent for a minute, if you’ll indulge me.
Maid/Sylphs as Fairies, for example. I do think it’s definitely true those classes are coded that way in the story of Homestuck, and that they flesh out our understanding of what their key verb means, and so what they can do/how they think and process reality.
Now, does that mean all True Maid/Sylph OCs, in my view, should parse themselves in terms of fairies? No, I don’t think so. I think Homestuck uses the symbol logic of fairies to clue the reader in, but there are myriad ways you could use mythology–or simply narrative– to get to the concept of a Player creating their Aspect or being made of it or both.
It would be just as evocative and powerful, in my view, to base a “Maker” informed by the mythological idea of Creator Goddesses, or even a specific creator goddess. You could go with Summon Spirits from JRPGs, who embody many of the same tropes of elementals while being a bit distanced from the idea of fairy-dom.
You could get more specific. It would be pretty easy to imagine a Fairy class Hope player who literally becomes or already is an Angel–they’re Made of Faith, after all.
The classpects are hyperflexible, and I like the Unifying Myth concept because it gives us handy ways to interpret any individual member of a given classpect to specificity. Or, of course, you can use no unifying myth or broad historical archetype at all, or make up your own consistent worldbuilding for whatever you’re thinking of making.
To personalize and flesh out the character by drawing on archetypes and mythology outside of the base Classpect system in order to give resonance and meaning to the classpect that is relevant to that specific character, the way furries work for Jade or Trolls for Callie or Rainbow Drinkers for Kanaya or so on.
So I definitely think The Sufferer reads strongly as a Post-Cog. I’m way more hesitant to allow myself to say a phrase like “Seer of Blood is post-cog”, though, because I’m unnervingly aware people might be starting to give a shit what I have to say? And I absolutely never, ever want to be limiting.
A Seer of Blood can and will be anything. The only limit is what kind of story you want to tell with one, and how much thought and nuance to want to put into the telling of it. Homestuck gives you a lot of tools to build the same kind of compelling nuance it does itself in your own storytelling, that’s all.
Sorry if I’m rambling! I wasn’t expecting to come out with this right now, and I’m sure there are more elegant and coherent ways of saying it, but I really felt like I needed to get this out there. Thanks for giving me the chance and sorry for the wall of text!
i’m probably sullying the names of neil gaiman and sir terry pratchett and their comedic masterpiece Good Omens by associating them with homestuck in any way shape or form BUT. you know adam’s dad? his real dad, not satan? mr young? he serves the exact same narrative purpose as john’s dad (and jane’s dad) in homestuck. they have no personality beyond Suburban Dad. they look at all these outlandish, surreal events happening and they’re like *wags finger* i hope you’re staying out of trouble son. their role is fascinating because they work as a stabilizer, a paragon of normalcy against which the events of the story are highlighted and enhanced. they are, in fact, so ridiculously normal that they become a kind of supertextual force on par with fate, serendipity, or destiny. the Dads embody suburban dadness so well that they would be terrifyingly powerful in their power over the main character and the narrative if they weren’t too dadly to misuse it
@revolutionaryduelist i’ve always thought that the later discworld books (esp. going postal, night watch, thud!, and monstrous regiment) represent the greater literary achievement, but i admit that i am more easily wrapped up in homestuck. just look at how much more fanfic i’ve produced for hs.
also, there are SO many parallels between pratchett’s works and hussie’s. the ways that hussie and sir terry play with tropes, narrative
structure, and the fourth wall are different, but in the same spirit. i could go on and on and on about pratchett’s personification of narrative forces and how it serves as a precedent for homestuck’s use of mechanics like the heroic/just clock and… yeah, maybe that’s a good post for another time.
but. BUT. have you read Only You Can Save Mankind? it’s very short, and one of pratchett’s non-discworld books, but it’s severely underrated and i believe it’s one of his best. it’s also… uh… well, the premise is that the main character, johnny, receives a pirated beta testing version of a new video game (a basic shooter where ya kill the aliens), only to find that the aliens are surrendering. they’re not supposed to surrender. a few important points:
blends reality and video game more creepily than any other “video game is reeeaaal” plotline i’ve ever seen
the alien species has a ““female empowerment”“ sort-of-not-really thing going on a la alternia
johnny enters the video game through his dreams in a way disturbingly similar to dream mechanics in sburb
uses the “extra lives” mechanic of video games to explore the Hero With a Thousand Faces, etc
pokes fun at sci fi tropes w.r.t. warriorlike alien species and Matrix-esque plotlines
the best friend who gives him the video game is a hacking genius that gives me way too many sollux captor vibes
this isn’t necessarily a hs comparison but please read this line of narration about the Best Friend in question: “Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was winning.”
the friendgroup’s ridiculous conversations are extremely similar to dave arguing with the other beta kids about irony
the main character is a Highly Normal thirteen-year-old suburban boy protagonist named John(ny). i’m dying here
this was published in 1992
without spoiling anything too much, the themes in Only You Can Save Mankind have strong similarities to some of the themes in homestuck. and… okay, i’m going to succumb to my instincts and highlight a few of my favorite passages WITHOUT spoilers:
–
“We fight, and then we die. That’s how it goes.”
“Then we die gloriously!”
“There’s an important word in that sentence, and it’s not the word ‘gloriously’.”
–
“Remember what happened to the Vortiroids? And the Meggazzoids? And the Glaxoticon? Do you want to be like them?”
“Hah. They were primitive. Very low resolution.”
–
“I reckon… I reckon…”
“What?”
“Ronald McDonald is like Jesus.”
–
“Are you saying that I’ve got to go down to the shops and get takeout Jumboburgers for an entire alien spacefleet?”
“Not exactly.”
“I should think not—”
“My Chief Engineer wants a Bucket of Chicken Lumps.”
I had never read that story but I sure as hell am going to now and I absolutely see what you mean. Holy hell this is good, god….i love it
Thinkin bout how [S] Credits confirmed Roxycallie and Dirkjake to pretty much the exact same degree: Showing them living together and being the primary establishers of their respective kingdoms and giving us a show of close physical contact
this aint like deep or anything it just makes me happy
heres some other snapchats i think are severely underappreciated
Rose enacting some lewd as fuck pornographies. Caliborn would burn. Kanaya looks like she already had wayyy too much cake
I literally didn’t even notice this until just now but this is Dirk complimenting Jake’s craftsmanship!! What’s nice is Jake’s sick new robot that Jake made!! Or is it….jake himself???
its both and its cute. i love dirk thanks
john left the clown pictures up all this time…give the boy his dad back 😦
i dont have anything to say about this one either i just like it. cans will obey
I think my favorite bad anti-dirkjake argument is when people go “Oh Brain Ghost Dirk/The Masterpiece happened in Another Timeline” because they genuinely seem to think it diminishes the weight it carries in the canon when actually
all they’re arguing is that Jake not only loves Dirk but loves him consistently, across multiple timelines, and demonstrates it by either:
A) choosing Dirk as his protector, which not only comes with gay romantic coding but also references a movie with philosophical undertones, reflecting both of their main interests
B) choosing to act as Dirk’s protector, which has also comes with gay romantic coding and especially connotations of jealous and protective love
or C) You know, literally decides to live with the guy and hold him close for pictures to their friends & family
Wow yeah you’re right all of this stuff happens across different timelines? Shit then I guess it makes sense to assume Jake doesn’t actually feel anything fo Dirk and it was one-sided, it’s not like the comic ever implies anything about what it means for relationships to survive timeline resets–
Oh. Oh right.
Anyway Dirkjake is canon thanks
Can we get an article on why Dirkjohn is terrible because I only discovered it yesterday and it makes me angry and upset for reasons I can’t vocalize.
‘No!’ I cry. ‘No, this is a wrong thing!’ but I can’t explain why.
I’ve been getting asks about this on and off over time and I’ve heard some suggestions that people have the wrong idea about where I stand on this, so I hope you don’t mind if I take your reblog to make my position clear.
The answer to your question is no, sorry.
I’m never going to write a big takedown of Dirkjohn, or really any other fanon ship, or fandom stuff in general, for a couple reasons. Like everything I write, those reasons got long, so I’ll put them under the cut:
Even with what I already have planned, the amount of writing and general Content I have slotted to produce is pretty much inexhaustible, and I only keep finding more interesting things to say about Homestuck along the way. So I could pretty much always be writing something better. That’s #1.
#2. I don’t like Dirkjohn, and I don’t particularly make that a secret. But it’s not like I have an axe to grind with the ship. It’s pretty ooc, which makes it uninteresting to me, and that’s pretty much it.
But not everyone ships or thinks that way and that’s…fine? Dirkjohn isn’t really hurting anyone the way your Gamrezi or Tavris or Dirkroxy ships are, and even really bad fan content doesn’t personally upset me unless it’s actually having broad cultural impact.
So even in the extremely specific and rarely considered realms of Things In Homestuck Fandom I Don’t Like, some lgbt people and minors playing around with an ooc ship is far from the top of the things that bother me.
I literally don’t talk about the stuff that TRULY pisses me off in public at all, because I have no way to not make it personal, and there’s a tiny bit of that on Tumblr, but most of it is elsewhere.
Which brings me to why I decided to write this.
Buckle up, because I’m gonna get really real. Trigger warnings for political stuff if that upsets you.
#3
Mainly, I’d never seriously write about Dirkjohn because I’m just not interested in writing anything in a spirit of negativity. It’s not enjoyable to me and I don’t particularly feel it’s where I shine.
It’s draining and depressing, because I just…don’t want to be engaging contentiously or judgmentally with groups largely made up of minors and other lgbt people.
I say this every so often but: there’s Nazis, guys. Like, actual fascists bigots that want to kill anyone who ships Dirkjohn or Dirkjake or Vrisrezi or Rosemary or Davekat, etc etc etc are in the white house.
Fandom shipping divisions feel pretty petty when you keep that in mind.
Some days the negativity and fear and despair and sheer sense of hopelessness I feel when I look at the state of the world pounds on me to the point I can’t make myself get out of bed.
Soon after November I saw a tweet from someone talking about how their every running thought now included the constant underlying Mantra: We’re doomed.
That’s upsettingly relatable to me. I haven’t stopped feeling that way yet, and I lost my job and pretty much my relationship in the process of figuring out how to live with it. I’m still figuring out–I’m sort of stable now, but my mental health is hanging at “Functionally Self-Sustaining” by pretty much the barest thread I have.
And this Homestuck stuff? All my writing and video making and arguing in favor of the comic? This is my way of fighting all of that. Both as a way of relieving that awful sense of doom and pressure, and, if I’m incredibly lucky, as a way of doing the same for others.
I want Homestuck–Progressive media in general, but Homestuck specifically–to be recognized as the cultural touchstone it deserves to be. Not just for LGBT people–though primarily for us, yes– but for progressives in general.
Homestuck brings something genuinely new to the table, and it’s still growing and evolving as an IP, and I want to bring that stuff to light and nurture the excitement that all of us still, on some level, feel for it. Because I think it deserves it. And because I want to see what comes next.
And like, I’m sure that’ll sound silly to some people, but it’s all I’ve got. I don’t particularly believe in God, and I certainly don’t believe in the system that put us here. I only really believe in art, and in people.
So I have to believe that if I try hard enough and I’m kind enough, something in this twisted culture where we’ve all been conditioned to hurt and judge each other and prize, above all else, the ability to Care The Least and be the Least Affected–a culture that absolutely rears it’s head in progressive circles even as we denounce it as an approach to politcs–will give.
Maybe we’ll learn how to actually be friends with each other. How to be kind.
The story of these kids rising out of impossible limitations and escaping an inherently authoritarian system that destroys them reminds me a lot about my own life and future prospects right now, and it gives me hope.
I want to pass that hope on, as much as possible. And if I can manage it, I want this silly comic that we all love to be something that binds us and brings us together, as a community. As a people.
And if we can do that, if we can stop tearing each other apart over mistakes and miswordings in the pursuit of an impossible degree of ideological purity, maybe we can make things better. Maybe we can ascend.
That’s impossible, maybe, and it might very well make me a fool to engage with this community with that motivation. But it’s who I am and why I’m here, and I’d rather be mocked for being hopeful than praised for being cynical.
As such, tearing into some ship I don’t like is never going to do nearly as much for my desires as talking about the near-infinite things about Homestuck that I DO like. Given the choice I will always, always opt for the latter.
So my genuine advice–and I really hope this doesn’t feel condescending–is if seeing any fandom content affects you negatively to the degree you wrote about there, well: I can relate, because yeah, same.
But I just blacklist it and talk about stuff I like instead. And that has done wonders for my mental health. I heartily suggest doing the same, and then devoting your energy to boosting and praising the stuff in the fandom that you DO like.
Again, I hope that doesn’t sound condescending. I wrote all this so that I’d stand a chance at coming off as sincere when I say that I don’t think my approach makes me better than anyone. It’s just the only way I, personally, manage to survive.
But I also think it’s the path to a healthier, more vibrant fandom. Whether or not people are shipping Dirkjohn doesn’t matter to me. What matters is making sure to speak up positively and kindly and with a sense of fun so that the fandom can develop a better understanding of Dirk, Jake, and the comic itself overall.
And what double matters is creating a culture interested in celebrating and creating more than criticizing, although there is definitely value to both.
I’m not like, super convinced? But I haven’t like, revisited Act 5 in detail quite the way I have with Act 6, and considering how hard people misread…everything about Jake (and Tavros), I’m willing to think it’s possible we missed some pretty obvious stuff with Vriska and Terezi, too. I’d personally like to see more references to canon to back up that ideas, but even if it’s not LITERALLY TEXTUAL I think it’s fine for someone to read the story in that way, since again, it seems to me the FEELINGS were there–if too repressed to manifest into an actual relationship per se.
For the most part though I just find myself collecting takes on Vriska and Terezi to consider in preparation for the Epilogue. I didn’t claim the kiss canonically happened, I just don’t think it’s really that much of a stretch since the (Vrisrezi) sequence is already explicitly flushed and romantic–they literally meet on a bright red flushed quadrant.
I don’t always 100% agree with the views I reblog/boost, but I do think that new/varied opinions on the comic are valuable in an of themselves so I try to reblog a wide variety of viewpoints. This is to an extent–there are of course readings I think straight up hurt understandings of the canon, and I wouldn’t really reblog those without voicing criticisms. (The obvious place to go here is stuff like “Dirk is bi” or “Calliope’s Malice” or “Gamzee did nothing wrong” or “Pages are a Passive class”) This particular one I think is worth having a conversation about, and since it only adds a sense of romance to an already explicitly romantic relationship, I don’t really see the harm even if it isn’t drawn 100% from the text, if that makes sense?
Flying through Storytelling 