This is why when people go “oh hey wanna look at my art? I MEAN IT’S SO BAD I DID SUCH A TERRIBLE JOB” my first instinct is to just tell them “nah, I’m good”
I really hate self-deprecation. It does you no good. It does me no good. Stop it.
I find it really interesting and a bit relieving that people are identifiying with the boy in this image set and not making the typical niceguy comments.
You’ll be happy to know that there’s more to this than what’s been shown here; behold!
TwT beautiful… Just as a note, I tend to do that same thing the boy does. I don’t know the rest of the people, but I learned to do that because, as a child, I often found not-to-good criticism when I showed my work (drawings, mostly), so I started apologyzing in advance to prevent people from mocking me or adding criticims to what I did.
oh my god, i’m floored and kinda delighted. its been a while since we met a character that frustrating and awful. that said im a bit weirded out that people are making him out to be irredeemable, as usual.
guys. homestuck and hiveswapdont really deal in irredeemable characters, or at least definitely not irredeemable teens (except maybe Caliborn).
zebruh’s shit, absolutely, but he isn’t meaningfully more shit than vriska, equius or eridan at the start of their narratives, and they all received varying levels of redemption in the eyes of homestuck’s narrative.
he’s also showing the same signs of corruption of identity as every other highblood thus far–his Blood Caste’s Aspect getting in the way of or messing with his true Aspect’s insight:
he sees the suffering of lowbloods on some level and obviously cares about it in some way, because he has genuinely convinced himself he wants to help (Doom), but his perception of the actual problem is obfuscated andconfused (Void).
when it comes to how his physical actions contribute to the problem, his mind simply Voids it out. If he got past his Void influence and saw the suffering and doom for what it actually is, it stands to reason it would change his perspective. But Alternia is designed to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Zebruh is awful, but he’s also a subject of a system designed to make him that way. The same is true of Ardata. And Amisia. And Trizza. The sins of any one of these characters aren’t really as relevant as their capacity for change and redemption, because the actual enemy is the system that produced them all, and those responsible for putting it into place–LE and Doc Scratch.
I think it’s pretty likely all of these characters will be redeemed in Hiveswap–hell, it may be that one of the core puzzle mechanics involves using our insight into their thoughts to figure out how to get through to them and have them join the rebel camp, in a lot of cases.
thatsnot a hard prediction or anything, it just seems plausible. certainly moreso than thinking that the narrative that gave us Vriska is suddenly interested in providing a lot of one dimensional, irredeemable antagonists.
One thing I have a hard time forgiving is that Zebruh forces his way to others while not doing any concrete action. He is a coward who acts as if he is a rebel and a savior.
I mean, he’ve done WAAAY less horrible things than Trizza (who’s taking down a suburb for a selfie), but he claims to be a great lord when he’ll cowardly not helping any of the trolls he claims to care about while taking advantage of them for his own pride (most of it consisting of getting laid basically). That is what I can’t go over for his character.
He doesn’t even have the guts to fight his battle, or even going to the battlefront. He is a coward who haven’t even recognized it (unless Amisia or Ardata).
He is an insult to the bluebloods, a predator who thinks he is a shepherd.
The only thing I can offers him is that he doesn’t publicly mock and humiliate his lowbloods unlike most highbloods seems to do. That’s a VERY LOW bar.
Zebruh’s behavior is inexcusable and unforgivable. I’m not arguing against that. I just don’t think it’s beyond redemption, provided Zebruh repents.
I disagree that he’s an insult to the bluebloods. In the context of Alternia he is not that far off from exactly what the Bluebloods are supposed to be. Really, he’s an exemplary member of his caste, even if he’d be furious to be told so. And that’s exactly what makes the hemospectrum’s systemic violence so insidious.
Zebruh only exists on a world deliberately designed to make him as awful as he is, by adults who knowingly wanted this and worse for trollkind.
Is Zebruh as responsible as Doc Scratch/LE?
Does Zebruh deserve the chance to exist somewhere other than Alternia, and could he be a better person in an environment that didn’t literally require malice of him?
Could he be a better person if confronted by the right stimuli (like say, Joey’s commitment to the truth), and then moved to fight for a truly better future as a result?
These are the questions I think we should be keeping an eye out for even with shitlords, because they were core to our understanding of the characters in Homestuck. Nobody in the comic was entirely beyond redemption except Caliborn and maybe Gamzee, jury’s still out there.
We just met Zebruh, so i just think thats worth keeping in mind.
this is hilarious because…Bayonetta is a fictional character who therefore cannot consent to anything you geeks…she “owns” her sexuality because she’s written that way??…like…yall are really so comical.
I crack up every time folk try to use Bayonetta as a counter-argument against critiques of hyper-sexualized female characters in video games. Like stop, fam.
Bayonetta is literally just the power fantasy OC of the female character designer. The director wrote the original script for a “traditional” witch, elderly, crook nose, pointy hat, shapeless robes, etc. Then Mari Shimaazaki, this lady:
stepped up and basically said ‘okay but what if instead of that dumb thing we used this awesome bitch I just drew’. Bayonetta was not designed by a man. She was directly contrary to the intentions of the men in charge. But once they saw how awesome she was, being a sexy badass totally on her own terms whilst not giving a shit what they thought, they submitted.
Today it’s generally agreed throughout the company and much of the industry that it couldn’t have happened any other way, that only a woman could have made a female action hero as successful as Bayonetta. If she’d been designed to appeal to the audience, that would have been fundamentally contrary to who she is and probably nowhere near as successful. But since she originated as a personal power fantasy, as this woman’s idealized self, that feeling of existing for her own goals and her own pleasure and not giving a flying fuck about how anybody else saw her shone through and Bayonetta became more popular than she ever could have been if she was just trying to please others.
Additional fun fact: all the frankly ridiculous dance moves she uses? Those are the result of giving the mocap actress an open stage and telling her to do whatever she felt like.
the earliest drafts were even shot down for being too overtly sexual for the director’s tastes
the MALE director, Hideki Kamiya
Also remember Japan has different ideas for femininity than the West. In Japan, the ideal woman is meant to be a submissive prude who never shows her body or wants male attention.
In Asian countries, a woman being sexy is EMPOWERING.
Always fun to see more people missing my point because of tweets that were taken out of context, what a blast.
I’m literally saying that Bayonetta sends a good message about being comfortable in your body because she was written to be so comfortable as opposed to a character that is made to be embarrassed and clearly uncomfortable when put it a sexual situation. Not that the latter character would be a bad character necessarily but that it’s bad representation. Stop writing good characters and then put them in shitty embarrassing situations for comedic effect because it makes real girls uncomfortable.
Look at it from the eyes of a young girl, not a dude and see what message it sends.
oh my god, i’m floored and kinda delighted. its been a while since we met a character that frustrating and awful. that said im a bit weirded out that people are making him out to be irredeemable, as usual.
guys. homestuck and hiveswapdont really deal in irredeemable characters, or at least definitely not irredeemable teens (except maybe Caliborn).
zebruh’s shit, absolutely, but he isn’t meaningfully more shit than vriska, equius or eridan at the start of their narratives, and they all received varying levels of redemption in the eyes of homestuck’s narrative.
he’s also showing the same signs of corruption of identity as every other highblood thus far–his Blood Caste’s Aspect getting in the way of or messing with his true Aspect’s insight:
he sees the suffering of lowbloods on some level and obviously cares about it in some way, because he has genuinely convinced himself he wants to help (Doom), but his perception of the actual problem is obfuscated andconfused (Void).
when it comes to how his physical actions contribute to the problem, his mind simply Voids it out. If he got past his Void influence and saw the suffering and doom for what it actually is, it stands to reason it would change his perspective. But Alternia is designed to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Zebruh is awful, but he’s also a subject of a system designed to make him that way. The same is true of Ardata. And Amisia. And Trizza. The sins of any one of these characters aren’t really as relevant as their capacity for change and redemption, because the actual enemy is the system that produced them all, and those responsible for putting it into place–LE and Doc Scratch.
I think it’s pretty likely all of these characters will be redeemed in Hiveswap–hell, it may be that one of the core puzzle mechanics involves using our insight into their thoughts to figure out how to get through to them and have them join the rebel camp, in a lot of cases.
thatsnot a hard prediction or anything, it just seems plausible. certainly moreso than thinking that the narrative that gave us Vriska is suddenly interested in providing a lot of one dimensional, irredeemable antagonists.
Various Homestuck animation commissions, and some I did just for fun. I used @nightcigale ‘s little God tiers as a reference for several of them, so please check out her work too. You won’t be disappointed.
-Rogue of Breath @joyfulldreams -Knight of Heart @thedoublepp -Heir of Hope @revolutionaryduelist -Lanque Bombyx (Hiveswap) -Tegiri Kalbur (Hiveswap) -Sylph of Space @vermogab, my own avatar, Velvet Room revolutionaryDuelist.
Want a custom God Tier animation, or a fantroll, or hey, anything non-Homestuck too? Prices can vary depending on all sorts of things, but for animations like these: Still sprite: €10-15 depending on BG and its complexity Basic Idle (like the first gif or Lanque): €25-35 More complex stuff: (like the second and third gifs) €30-40
For anything else and to see any more stuff I can offer, you can check my “commissions and FAQ” page.
aw man these are so cute, guys i have the best friends omg!
I’m so excited you asked me this because I’ve been itching to analyze Tagora and the shit we learned in his friendsim route.
So I’m with you, I’m leaning towards seeing him as a Knight but I think I can still make a case for a Thief still, too, so I kind of caught between the two. But Knight seems most likely.
The thing that stands out the most in tagora’s route is his desperate need for control made most obvious when we step into his pristine hivehold. He also insists on guiding the conversation at every point (telling the reader what to do, where to sign, when to shut up), if we still run with the assumption Tagora has some type of anxiety then him needing to be in absolute control of his space and surroundings makes total sense. It all assists in keeping up his act that he has his shit together which I think is more for his sake than it is his reputation’s. We can tell he isn’t as in control as much as he leads us to think he is – evident when the blueblood barges in, an unexpected event that seizes Tagora up and totally throws him off, giving the reader their first opportunity to take the lead in the conversation. Briefly also when he goes to give the Reader his card and notices we’re an alien, he’s the only friend so far to have that sort of a panicked,hesitated reaction requiring him to recollect himself.
Long point short, he’s definitely coming across as putting up a guard. I don’t think anything about his confidence is entirely fake, I DO think he’s more fragile than he lets on.
Space is about creation primarily and in all meanings of the word, so there’s no reason creating an identity wouldn’t fall in the realm of this ESPECIALLY for a Mind-influenced Spacebound, if you subscribe to the idea the true signs’ aspects of each caste have a bleed effect over all their extended cousins. He surrounds himself with the idea of perfection and he hides in it, when something knocks away that facade he can’t handle it and almost neurotically breaks down (like in bad end).
Another thing about space is it’s relation with the Setting, which Tagora is using too for a lot of the same reasons outlined: keeping his hive obsessively clean, his desire to enhance his reputation, I think also Tagora’s route is the first to take us to so many different locations? The general meeting spot of all the sims at least twice, his hive, his bathroom, another part of town, and he’s still the one in command of the Reader finding themselves in these places (this one might be a stretch though). It’s not being lead like a Seer or Mage would, nor is it being controlled and created in the way a Witch or a Maid might do so, despite all my references to him manipulating Space. He’s controlling the environment in relation to him specifically to positively effect himself in two ways I can see strongest: protect himself and benefit himself.
To stand for the possibility of Knight first, Tagora DEFINITELY uses Space to improve and equip himself, as well as protect others (in a loose sense of the word) with it. I already discussed how he’s improving/equipping himself with space, and he does go about “protecting” the Reader with creativity (a Space thing) in offering his legislative services to “get the MC the justice he so craves (for a nominal fee of course)”, and in the good ending where he rolls with the rainbow drinker schtick then decides partnering with us is beneficial to both parties.
For the Thief spin, Tagora shows signs of taking creativity and the setting for himself. Literally he takes space from us in that he’s keeping us at a distance: he deters you – not in narrative but by reaction as a game player whether you had this reaction or not when playing – from wanting to talk with him because he’s charging per word & he doesn’t want you to touch him under any circumstance. He’s not willing to talk about himself unless you want to pay him for it, and he’s not going to tell you things like what his mantra is or how Alternian legal proceedings play out. Figuratively, he runs away with all of the Reader’s ideas, like in the good end like going along with the lie we fashion up about being a rainbow drinker (a clever response), the way he comes back to himself and puts himself into the bit alongside you is almost like he’s taking credit from that point for our ruse, and it all directly comes back towards him in a positive manner. He also wants All The Money, a common link between our two Thief examples in Homestuck.
Ultimately I think Tagora is most likely a Knight of Space but it’s hard for me to commit to it until I get more of his personality. The friendsim gave me huge Thief personality vibes, but the glimpse we get of Tagora potentially being heavily veiled under a persona he’s crafted makes me think Knight, too. Both of these classes have something to do with long roads of feeling comfortable with and accepting yourself for what you are (Meenah declaring that she’s just evil, Vriska as (Vriska) having personal revelations that change her at first until she confronts us with the idea that you don’t need to change in order to do the right thing or potentially even be seen as “good”, Dave and Latula both letting go of their cool guy guards and facing the trauma they experienced as just themselves with no armor ((well, Dave moreso in this regard than Latula))) more than any other class.
I’m not sure what to expect from Hiveswap, Act 2 or future friendsims and mini content, but if we’re gonna see any personal development for the individual characters I’d wager Tagora’s thing being about letting go of his guard and us seeing behind the sly little business boy act he’s got going on to whatever is genuinely underneath, be that just him accepting he’s really as clever as he makes us think he is and he just needs to let go of the act, or admitting that he’s actually much more anxious and overwhelmed and needs to feel like he’s in control of Space to make it through another day hinged.
this is fantastic analysis work that i think captures the two major sides of Tagora’s class behavior. Personally, I see him as an innate Thief, put into the position of roleplaying a Knight.
Legislacerators, as civil servants, seem to carry some inherently Knight-like connotation-much as Butlers do. Both are agents who “serve” others through intense labor and specific behaviors/skillsets.
Terezi, a Knight roleplayer, has her entire conflict revolve around her desire to understand her own Mind and its conflict with her perceived moral obligation to Serve Justice.
Interestingly, Tagora doesn’t seem as suffocated by his socially prescribed role as say, Xefros or Dammek (who also parses as a Thief forced into roleplaying a Knight to me). Rather, he seems to operate within the letter of the Knight’s confines, while pretty clearly espousing a Thief’s motivations.
Interesting stuff. There’s more to say, certainly, this is just a bit of a ramble on where I’m at right now.
usagi literally watches all her friends die over and over again in
sailor moon so the whole ‘magical girls BUT DARK’ thing is so dumb
also I’ve heard pretear is a good magical girl show for people who don’t like sailor moon, and in addition, there’s of course always princess tutu
EXACTLY its so frustrating. Also yeah I never watched much Pretear but what I have seen looks pretty good, so add it to the list of reccomendations I’m putting below which already included, for….
that’s super interesting bc I loved Madoka! You mention that there’s better magical girl genres that are better written and I actually watched Utena bc of you and actually really enjoyed it so I have a lot of faith in your recommendations :‘0 so other than Sailor Moon (which I couldn’t really get into, unfortunately) can you tell me those other magical girl shows like Madoka?
I love Madoka Magica too, don’t get me wrong-I still cry every time I listen to Sagitta Luminis, it’s a very well-crafted show in a lot of respects. And to be fair Sailor Moon is a really long show with some real peaks and valleys-I’d probably recommend season 3 of that above everything else, since it’s where the series is strongest.
Off the top of my head some recommendations are:
1. PRINCESS TUTU –
Super dark, super weird, deals with a lot of the same themes as Utena and Homestuck, there’s a duck named duck. what’s not to love?
2. Mawaru Penguindrum – Only barely a magical girl show, but it’s by Kunihiko Ikuhara, the director of Utena, so I’m blood-bound to talk about it until I die. its exactly as fucked up and surreal as the Utena link implies. Substantially moreso on both counts, actually.
Lots of abuse and incest themes just like with Utena, but just as with Utena I feel its treated pretty appropriately. It features enough lgbt stuff that i’m pretty happy with it on that front, too. It’s even more dense and hard to understand than Utena in some ways, so I’m planning to rewatch this one myself and probably do some videos on it eventually.
Unfortunately its also a lot more overtly fanservicey/sexual than other stuff I’d recommend–Ikuhara seems to have gotten unfortunately trashier with time. I still think its good, the recommendation just comes with even heavier caveats than Utena.
3. Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha – More episodic and combat oriented so its a pretty simple story, but it deals with a lot of abuse themes and following the series means watching the two main girls literally fall in love and adopt a child together. It’s maybe tongue in cheek, but they literally live together and sleep in the same bed. its canon.
Rating: Moms
I could think of more for sure–the Precure series (wanna chime in on standout seasons, @nelfes ?), Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor Sakura, theres all sorts of different weird stuff in the genre so it kinda depends on what you’re looking for. These are just a couple shows that hold a special place in my heart for one reason or another.
i always get rly sad because the original ending of rebellion was
supposed to be homura and madoka going to magical girl heaven together,
but some people behind the movie were like nah. the creator was pretty
upset about the change and same. it’s still there in the manga
adaptation.
Oh. That actually makes me feel even more justified in erasing that ending from canon in my head, and makes me feel better about Gen Urobuchi for whenever I throw myself into the Fate/Stay Night franchise, not to mention making me more positive on the actual artistic vision behind Madoka overall.
Thanks a lot for the tip! Do you have a source, by any chance?
All I can really say in terms of assurance is that the POC who’s “content to be servile” is one of the most complex and nuanced characters in fiction imo, and most of those other characters don’t slack far behind.
My friend recommends ep. 4 as the beat that got him hooked. I’d say give it til 7 because that’s where my favorite character arc comes into focus for the first time.
That said, I know I talk Utena up a lot here and I am completely genuine about it but I also feel a certain obligation to make something clear.
I can’t promise you’re gonna like Utena, because Utena’s not a show for everyone. It happens to speak to my sense of aesthetic visually, so it’s got one up on me that might not work for you at all. But thematically and content-wise it just really, really is not for everyone.
Because Utena deals almost exclusively with themes of abuse–social abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. It’s a show about fucked up people hurting each other in fucked up ways. It explores the complexities of incest and incestual abuse quite a lot.
As an incest survivor that’s always been interested in archetypes, apocalyptic imagery and stories about abuse’s effects on human psychology-largely due to personal reasons-all of that naturally proves pretty resonant to me. It might be absolutely horrific to some other folks, and just kinda boring for others.
I think the way its handled puts it on about the same level as Homestuck, in some ways. But Homestuck focuses on more systemic and physical/fantastical violence, in a lot of ways. It’s rarer that it gets into more explicitly sexual territory.
Utena, on the other hand, is visually a lot cleaner-it’s pure shoujo, no blood or gore to be had, most of its conflict rendered symbolically and through character performance.
But the subject matter it deals in is just closer to social, grounded reality, and the kinds of violence it deals in are I think more likely to be…personally triggering? So I really can’t be sure everyone will enjoy the experience. I just know I’m a big fan, processing stuff through it did me a lot of good, and the story gets better the more it adds to the layers of interpersonal drama and symbolic meaning.
this is fantastic now children in Puerto Rico wont be able to receive the education they deserve thanks to their messed up government
Its even worse than that. I’m living through it. Not only are schools closing, hospitals are collapsing. Only around 9% of the island has electricity and it comes and goes at times.
People are dying in hospitals because of lack of diesel for the generators, a lot of the water is now infected, there are disease outbreaks and scareceness of food. I am safe, but many are not.
Some have water, others don’t. We need help. Sending money would be helpful but what would help even more would be sending water filters, filtering water bottles, food, medicine, if somehow possible diesel.
All of you reblogging this news helps, but what we need is physical help. If you can’t, then spread the word, but God if you can send supplies… Please… PLEASE do. We are dying. Help us, help us save ourselves. Help us save our people. Help us save out ISLAND.
If you’re not in a position to ship or transport useful items to the island (which is sure as heck the case for me in New Zealand) then the best thing you can do is give money to a reputable relief organisation operating in the area.
i mentioned this way back when the storm hit since i’m a native myself, and things seem to be a little better from what i’ve heard over time, but please still help if you’re capable at all.
The island is still overall struggling and was struggling with economic debt a ton way before the storm ever caused damage. Plus, every bit of support goes that much further to helping the island prepare for next hurricane season, and from now until forever all Puerto Ricans–everyone in the Carribean, really–are going to be worried about storms this bad and worse thanks to climate change.
Flying through Storytelling 