Tag: long post

this is possibly a question that was fandom-solved in the prime days of the HS fandom, but what are yr opinions on the ghost-realm in a sort of conceptual-sense? By that i mean, since the ghosts we see in the dream bubbles are offshoots of the alpha timeline (e.g. god-tier alts of the trolls), is there a hypothetical alternate-alternate world where the conditions that rolled the troll-verse are different? Is the ghostrealm conditional to the universe that spawned it, or is it truly infinite?

the ghost stuff has definitely not been solved, per se–a lot of the legacy fandom would probably say hussie phoned it in there for various reasons, though I would definitely not agree.

To answer your questions:

Is the ghostrealm conditional to the universe that spawned it, or is it truly infinite?

The furthest ring–the black void surrounding all Sessions and Universes–is truly infinite. The eldritch horrorterrors that inhabit it are also infinite, since they’re part of Sburb’s design.

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The dream bubbles, and the ghosts that inhabit them, however, are conditional to the universes that spawned them. The horrorterrors glub up those bubbles, but as far as we know, they don’t do so for every session.

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They glub up the afterlife for our Heroes thanks to the influence of Feferi Peixes-the Witch of Life. She was actually raised by a horrorterror as her familiar, and is able to commune with the gods to request they establish the bubbles.

You could read this as Feferi changing the nature of Life in Homestuck, granting everyone who perishes a sort of second life in a weird limbo of half-existence.

Later parts of the story suggest that the horrorterrors were manipulating Feferi and all of the ghosts of the afterlife to protect themselves from Lord English, and to serve their mysterious goals by both A) Ensuring Lord English’s destruction and B) Enabling his creation in the first place.

Which brings us to…

is there a hypothetical alternate-alternate world where the conditions that rolled the troll-verse are different?

No, definitely not. That scenario is theoretically possible for other species elsewhere in PS, but not for trolls–or humans, for that matter.

We’re not sure what the limits are on variations of existence and choice in Paradox Space, but Aranea tells us there are some, and goes into some of the philosophical problems that come with the admittedly attractive idea that there might not be any:

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But really, the problem is logistical.  Having even potentially infinite variations of a particular universe isn’t necessarily impossible in Paradox Space, but it is impossible for the worlds and characters trapped in Homestuck.
Because of Lord English.

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Aranea gives us this little spiel about how the choices and possibilities available to everyone in Paradox Space are limited by the fact that PS itself is using the characters to propagate its own existence. Only choices and scenarios that allow reality to exist and continue to propagate are allowed to flourish.

And by the very nature of his existence, Lord English traps every universe and person we see in the comic in existential stasis. He’s a notable influence in the Alpha Trolls’ session through Kurloz, Damara and Cronus, and he’s THE reason Alternia exists as it does and the Beta trolls are who they are.

He made trolls what they are, so their reality can’t actually exist unless he exists,
and if trolls existed in any other way they wouldn’t create and interact with the humans the way they do, meaning the humans wouldn’t eventually create LE, meaning trolls wouldn’t have existed in the first place.

It’s a grandfather paradox, but on a cosmic scale. Trollkind may be able to exist in varied ways from Earth C,’s Troll Kingdom onwards, which is now free of the influence of Lord English. But its origins–and those of humanity–are forever entangled with Lord English. Them’s the br8ks.

My take on Dammek is Prince of Blood, personally; he’s looking to destroy the status quo as it is, and even kill another hero of blood. However, he’s kinda bleeding (heh) over into himself; he’s destroying his own relationships with what he believes are more important commitments (IE leading the rebellion; which is important, but not to the point where he should treat his Moirail as he does) However, Theif does make a lot of sense too! He has been taking Xefros’ stuff for a while

I can totally see that, and still think its a real possibility!

What tips the scales for me is the Archetypal background I typically associate with each Class. Prince is a Royalty class, which implies some kind of high/noble birth or status, and an internalized sense of superiority over others that the Royal must overcome to take control of his ego, and so his destructive power.

The Makaras and Amporas are the highest blooded members of the hemospectrum short of the Fuschias, and both Meenah and Feferi keep themselves rather seperate from the idea of actually being better than others due to their class–both of them renounce the title of Heiress and abandon the throne, one way or another.

The AR considers himself “above” his friends because he is a post-singularity AI, and often makes statements positioning himself as “above” their corporeality. So on.

Thief is an outlaw class, which implies being removed, outcast, or alienated from society and its rules. Nepeta and Vriska both consider the hemospectrum irrelevant, for example.

All Thieves and Rogues spend some amount of time either literally living outside mainstream society (Nepeta’s cave, Rufioh’s lost weaboos tribe, Meenah living on the moon) or thinking about living outside of it (Vriska’s fascination with Piracy).

The latter sounds a lot more like Dammek to me–living on the fringes of society in his own rebel network, a network that’s apparently robust enough to provide him with a shitload of loot and goods he wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Feels a lot more like Vriska’s hoard, gathered through roleplay exploits, than it does like Eridan’s born wealth and status.

Also Dammek is referenced using the “take” verb in Act 1, and I haven’t noticed him being linked to Royal verbs like “Destroy” or “Break” just yet. That said he is a noted revolutionary, and I’ve been thinking revolution/revolutionaries could be conceptually linked to the Royal classes for a while.

So I really do think its a possibility! I think it’ll become clearer as we figure out what makes Dammek tick. i want…more hiveswap

I always wanted to ask someone who was a fan of both Homestuck and Undertale: how would each of the kids play Undertale? Who plays every path including the Geno run and who does only pacifist and then never plays again? (Also who kills Toriel on accident and then resets to save her because they feel bad?) I kinda want to ask about favorite characters of the characters, but that might be a little too esoteric.

mimsiical:

HMMM. [potential game spoilers ahead]

dirk plays pacifist and neutral, gets partway through geno and becomes too upset to continue. stresses himself out thinking he should finish it, but can’t because it makes him feel too bad about himself. he would accidentally kill toriel but not reset because he would be committed to following his choices through, i think. favorite character… i think he would lowkey really like alphys. 

jake would do neutral to pacifist, definitely not geno. i could maybe see him resetting to save toriel if he thought of it. he would do a neutral route the first time and get some LV i think. not in the ruins because the toriel telling you not to guilt is real but later on, when things get more frustrating and you keep dying. his favorite character is undyne. OBVS undyne. but he would like all of them, especially papyrus and alphys i think. flowey might be a bit close to home for both him and dirk, remind them a bit of the AR. 

roxy plays all the routes and does excellently. defeats geno sans with unfair ease. probably does one of those really irritating no-hit runs where she gets thru geno without ever taking damage. people are slightly horrified by her laughing at parts of geno but she doesn’t give a shit. her favorites are the temmies. :3 but i think she would like undyne a lot too tbh. 

janey… jane would play neutral, then pacifist, and then be done, i think. unless she was pissed when she was playing, but i don’t think she has the patience for geno. i could see her doing a high LV neutral route out of frustration and then feeling a bit guilty about it after. her favorite would be toriel and she’s definitely rooting for toriel and asgore not to get back together. 

dave plays the pacifist run where you dont have to reset fully after photoshop flowey on account of never having killed anyone, because he heard that you can do a route like that and chose to not be attacking if he didn’t have to. would figure out the dodging + saying fun things bit pretty quick and have too much fun with it. his favorites are all the most hilarious random encounter monsters, sans, and nabstablook. and he races the snails too many times.  

rose plays neutral, then geno, then pacifist, just to be contrary. betrays herself by thinking muffet’s fangs are hot. actually disliked geno a lot but played it so she can talk loftily about its implications and dirk can’t do shit if he wants to debate with her because he flunked out of it. maybe her favorite is chara for the moral ambiguity and being influenced by the player’s decisions. (i generally subscribe to chara as the narrator theory.) also flowey. she would like flowey. 

karkat plays with the temmie armor. lmao. he complains the whole way about encounters being too hard but stays pacifist. he virulently complains about all the characters, calls toriel the only sensible one, and secretly likes mettaton. 

i dont know if i have enough solid opinions on the other characters… jade would love that you can throw the stick for the dogs. she and jake both pet lesser dog until the depths of the universe are plundered. terezi might like asriel, but her favorite part would the the color tile puzzle. if john tried geno he’d fail out when you have to kill the dogs. callie probably just watches others play with mild bemusement, and her favorite is alphys. 

callmearcturus:

So like. 

“dirkjake is bad and unhealthy”

That’s sure a statement. It really bothers me deeply. The level to which its dismissive and coldhearted really just.

Dirk and Jake were two teenagers who were struggling with their emerging sexualities. They were two people who lived alone for the vast majority of their lives. Their entry into the game was their first significant interactions with people, for Jake in most of his life, for Dirk in his entire life.

And they were bad at it. Holy shit, what a novel concept. A massive, stressful part of your life happens, and you don’t handle it with calm. You’re in a game out to kill you with monsters and traps, and you don’t nail it at every turn. You fumble through your new life, overloaded with new situations you could never hope to prepare for, and it doesn’t go well.

“bad and unhealthy.”

What really… fucks with me. What gets me hard, is that I’ve been in Dirk Strider’s shoes. I have done things that I’ll never be fully forgiven for, some real and some made up by my brain, but like Dirk, I want to be better. I think at my core there is a toxicity that I might never be able to pull out from the roots, but I’m fucking trying.

And I know so many people who resonate hard with Jake’s character, who have walked his path and made his mistakes, who are honestly sometimes so fucking relieved to see themselves reflected with such fidelity.

When people take these complicated characters who made mistakes, and they just write off their futures like that, they say “these two people cannot be together because there was a time when it was bad,”

the little voice in the back of my head, the one that thinks I can’t be redeemed no matter how much I try, gets louder.

I need there to be hope for the people who make mistakes. I need there to be forgiveness in the world. I need there to be the understanding that, dude, the person you were when you were 13 is not who you are at 16 or at even fucking 18.

And maybe that forgiveness is not going to come from you in particular, but the fact you put out these broad stroke statements out to the people who will extend that hopefulness like they should be ashamed of themselves, that’s sick.

This entire culture of “this person did something I think is bad, so they get written off,” that’s damaging. Especially with characters like Dirk and Jake because, y’all, people relate to these characters. They have lived similar traumas and hurts. They have hurt people in similar ways. 

And they’re just… hopeless, right? They’re bad. They’re unhealthy, huh? And the book closes and that is the end. Nothing happens next.

That’s fucked up. And frankly, the people who do that, who the hell are you to arbitrate that? And in your life, when you fuck up in a big way, when you hurt people, do you also become damaged goods that can never be better?

What the hell does that say about us all?

You know who else is unhealthy and bad? Terezi. Karkat. Dave. Jane. Roxy. Vriska. Rose.

If you are going to say the past missteps in a relationship make it and the people involved irredeemable, then there are very few people not sullied by that broad stroke.

Please for the love of god, stop shaming people for a ship, especially to this particular hopeless, unsympathetic tune. Because man. Think about how much you’ve changed in the time between when you made a mistake and now. Think of every person who gave you that chance and who cared about you since then. Were they wrong?

I don’t think so.

You ve played the friendsim What are your thoughts about Ardata and classpect? Im trying to figure it out but I can’t think of more than that she’s Definitely Not comfortable with the light aspect what do you think?

my current guess is that shes a witch of mind–the familiar being her viewers–but that could be roleplay or, frankly, just me/my friends reading too much into it because her text feels almost designed to be hard to classpect. there’s also some aspects of her personality that vibe with Sylph for me, so that could be her true class? idek.

she mostly seems to lack the keywords and motifs that usually make characters so clear, like diemen for example. Or maybe i’m just worse at picking out those motifs for some classes. can’t really tell.

the spotlight definitely seems to weigh heavily on her, and that could def be the influence of the Light aspect via the blue sign caste. I’m not quite sure there since again, i dont super have a read on her classpect. 

but i’m guessing shes a Mind player just judging by the 3 motif and her concern with…i’ll say false appearances? Holding to a persona?

She changes the mspa reader right out the gate, forcing them to agree with her abusive philosophy to please her, and thats basically the choice at the heart of their dynamic throughout. so thats what i’m going off, insofar as i’m willing to speculate.

but to be honest, i’m not even sure these versions of the characters will necessarily line up with the versions in hiveswap. it seems incredibly likely to me that they will, which means i am inclined to consider these versions for class purposes, but ill feel a lot more confident one way or another after we get to know some more trolls this way.

Ardata feels too opaque to really say,
by design, I think.

Heyy It’s me again. So I was wondering, we know that jake has to hate the brobot right and was already abused enough by it, so why did it have to touch him? (I think you and someone else said that the brobot touched jake and I’m saying this because I don’t want you to be like “the brobot never touched jake you perv”) Does it have to do with what you said about jake feeling uncomfortable about his body? (Man I hope I don’t embarrass myself)

You’re not embarrassing yourself, this is a pretty common idea people have about Jake and the Brobot. That said, I disagree with basically everything about how this question is framed. Which imo, is good news for you, because it means the stuff you’re upset that the Brobot did is not actually a problem–if you decide to believe me, anyway.

If not, I welcome follow up questions on the matter.
Let’s break this down, starting with one statement:

Jake doesn’t hate the Brobot.

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This line. This “id rather deal with the monsters” line has caused me so many headaches, because people looove to quote Jake venting his irritation at Jane here completely out of context and take the statement at face value.

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The thing is, we know what happens when Jake has to deal with the monsters instead of Brobot. What happens is Jake basically doesn’t go outside at all. On Jake’s 13th birthday, we’re told Jake pretty much just pretends to adventure all the time without actually going out much–no surprise, since he mentions growing up afraid of the monsters.

When he’s 16, by contrast, he treats going outside like an annoying chore. And while you chalk that up to Jake getting better at adventures across three years…

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He still relies on Brobot to save him, so. He’s not that much better. It’s also made pretty clear Jake appreciates Dirk’s help and protection, and considers him a net positive in his own life.

And in fact, Dirk saving Jake through the Brobot over and over again is the only narrative justification we get for why Jake believes in Dirk’s ability to save him strongly enough to summon Brain Ghost Dirk.

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Jake also makes it pretty clear that he A) Loves to wrestle and B) Ultimately likes the Brobot. He says it’s annoying sometimes in the same block of text where he says he finds it exciting, and that it makes his life feel like more of an adventure.

And when Jake is actually deep into the sexual objectification and abuse in his narrative, when he’s actually terrified and overwhelmed and feeling sexually threatened–

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He says he wants to go back to “when all i had to worry about was being tackled by a feisty robot.” (PS: Hey he mentions wanting to go back to his pumpkin patch. Which is literally canonically the name for Dirkjake as a ship. Homestuck truly never ceases to give.)

The Brobot is being distanced from, and set as a highly preferable alternative to, all of the sexual violence being directed at Jake from Crockertier!Jane. Which strongly implies that the Brobot was not complicit in making Jake feel unsafe in this particular way.

So that’s some of the evidence in the “against” column. What is it that people base the idea that the Brobot sexually assaulted Jake on?

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This single quote where AR references the Brobot’s “robogrope”. The grope is important, because this is the ~*Verifiable explicit text*~ everyone leans on to prove the Brobot was definitely literally groping Jake.

The trouble here is that the AR is actually well-known to be overly lascivious and sexually/romantically aggressive towards Jake. The AR is also a 13 year old boy with a flair for the dramatic. I am not really inclined to take the AR’s descriptions about the Brobot as the final word, especially since the description Jake himself gives is much more innocent.

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Jake himself describes the Brobot, to the AR, in the exact same pesterlog where AR delivers his robogrope line. Jake does not describe groping, or sexual assault, or feeling objectified,uncomfortable, or manipulated–complaints he readily levies at AR himself, when AR actually behaves that way, btw.

No. Jake describes the encounter as “tender”. And that’s a pretty particular word to use. Not just because the definition of tender:

“showing gentleness and concern or sympathy.”

has literally nothing to do with sexual or predatory behavior–and in fact suggests its opposite. But because Tender has rather notable usage in Homestuck itself, as in…

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Yeah. The word “Tender”, in Homestuck, most notably relates to Caliborn’s particular brand of tepid-ass sugar porn. Which means that as far as Jake himself is concerned, the Brobot’s treatment of him has a lot more in common with this…

…than with the kind of behavior displayed by Aranea, Crockertier!Jane, or the AR. It’s nice that Jake happens to be the one main character who’s casually implied to be subconciously omniscient, so you can easily make the argument some part of him literally knows about this.

This interpretation also happens to actually make sense from Dirk’s perspective, since Dirk was explicitly eager to draw Caliborn’s *TENDER* porn with himself and Jake. So there is actually canonical basis for Jake picking up on some of Brobot’s behaviors meant to convey “Tender”ness.

It’s just that only implies the Brobot was being cutesy, romantic, and caringly chaste–the kind of shit Caliborn likes. “Brobot rubbed a rose tenderly on Jake’s face while singing ghostbusters” is literally closer to the truth than “Brobot sexually assaulted Jake”, since again–and this is important the important bit:

Jake’s relationship to the Brobot did not include feelings of being sexually assaulted. (Here’s a link to a way longer essay on this subject I already wrote ages ago, btw). That is entirely a projection of the fandom’s, based on the words of a character who is not Jake. It’s fanon.

So where are all my drawings of the Brobot’s wrestling giving way to the chastest, most caring, cutest displays imaginable, fandom? TIA. Dirkjake is canon, Homestuck is good, and I GUESS this is my 4/13 post because dirkjake remains my favorite thing about it.

Happy 4/13, everyone!!!

Do you think Caliborn “embellished” the facts in his “masterpiece”. Personally, I think yes.

Not really. Personally, I find the very idea that he did tiresome, because people only ever seem to use it to downplay the canon dirkjake built into it.

As things stand, there’s just no real reason to think so from a writing perspective. Like yeah, ok, unreliable narrators are a thing in Homestuck. But that logic doesn’t really work to just discredit whatever point a character makes that happens to be contentious.

There has to be an in-character or in-universe reason for a character’s perspective to be discredited, or it’s just bad writing. And I don’t really agree Homestuck is written badly! You might know this about me by now.

So focusing in on Caliborn.

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Caliborn is quite aware of the Alpha Timeline, and the role he plays in it. He’s also pretty much the only character who actually likes the Alpha Timeline, and revels in his coming existence as Lord English.

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He’s explicitly okay with and willing to endure whatever negative consequences are necessary to get him to that point, and he thinks he and his actions across his timeline make him the hottest shit ever to grace paradox space.

There’s no real reason to think he’d knowingly lie about events in the Alpha Timeline–especially the events that result in the creation of Lord English–because Caliborn is on record as thinking all of that is RAD AS FUCK! Including Jake beating him up, since its what leads to Lord English having his very name.

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This comes through in the Masterpiece. Caliborn is noticeably excited to share these events with the audience, and ultimately pleased with the result of the event–he’s using it as a form of self-aggrandizement.

So if someone tells me they think Caliborn is lying about the Masterpiece, my immediate question is how–and why? And most importantly, what is there in the story to contradict or replace the Masterpiece, if we can’t accept it as part of the story?

As of right now, there isn’t anything. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if the Epilogue happens to cover the Masterpiece or part of the Masterpiece, and follows the Beta kid’s release from the Juju and/or the Alpha kids being picked up by John after the end.

We were viewing the Masterpiece from Caliborn’s perspective, so there could definitely be more to see after his particular role in the story is finished. I just don’t think that means Caliborn was lying, per se.

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This is kinda unrelated but I’ve been thinking about it so here we go. This is basically the same as people dismissing Calliope’s exposition on the Classes–in that a critical source of exposition on a certain area of the comic, with no equivalent anywhere else in the text, goes disregarded because of some hazy claim of “unreliability.”

Remember how I said there has to be a textual reason for such a source to be disregarded on a particular point? Homestuck actually does do this with gendered classes, so it’s a good example of what I’m talking about.

Yeah, Calliope says classes are gendered–but Calliope is explicitly as susceptible to biological essentialism as anyone else in the cast, believing she’s incapable of red romance just as John believed he was incapable of black.

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Think what you will of the message, but by the endgame Homestuck is loudly stating that both views are inaccurate. Calliope’s ignorance is contextualized in the text.

That she’d make certain assumptions about gender makes sense–especially if she’s working her understanding of the classes off the sample sizes in Homestuck itself–which she explicitly is, and which explicitly do have gender biases.

But that doesn’t inherently discredit every other statement she makes, especially since without the exposition she provides it becomes ridiculously harder to prove anything about Classes as a system. Almost as if the author included that text as a source of important exposition or something.

Masterlist of Homestuck projects still relevant in 2018

remma-demma:

Hi! I keep finding myself interested in brand new (to me) homestuck projects that i was never aware of, even though i’ve been in the fandom since 2013. So here I am, making a list of Homestuck related things still going on in the year of our lorde 2018. Most of these things have discords that are pretty cool and informative. You can most likely find them through the links given, but for some reason i don’t feel comfortable linking them here. May change that in the future. 

Now, In no particular order…

Homestuck explained:
Making Homestuck’s confusing nature accessible to a casual audience. Very high video quality and makes you think about how you never realized things…

 (Youtube) (Creator)


Farragofiction:
Overarching website that is home to great projects like Sburbsim (Sburb story generator), Wigglersim (Raise your own grubs in the brooding cavern!), Dollsim (Create homestuck sprites using like,,, a lot of parts. V. cool., and many other smaller projects!

(Website) (Creator)


MSPFA:
Yep, it’s still a thing. Cool fanventures are still happening, and instead of linking them individualy, I’ll just put them all under the website. Explore, read, create your own fanventure, go nuts.

(Website)


Overseer v2/Rebuild:

Playable text based version of sburb! pick your classpect, make sessions with friends, alchemise stuff, loot in dungeons, etc, etc, etc. 
Devs are currently overhauling the whole game, which is why the v2 website hasn’t updated much, but rest assured, it’s still A Thing ™. Plus v2, for what it is, is still extremely cool. (Playable with friends in a chain)

(Website) 


The Genesis project: 
Playable homestuck, basically. Create a character, explore your house, have a guardian, enter the game, fight monsters, alchemize cool weapons. Very close to the actual visual sprite style of homestuck but like,,,, you can run around and do things. (Playable with friends in a chain)

(Tumblr)


Sburbmon:
A homestuck reskin of Pokemon fire red. Name your favorite characters dumbass names and go around as Andrew Hussie, making them strife. Almost every conceivable homestuck character is a playable mon you can add to your party. 

(Tumblr)

Minestuck:
A minecraft mod that adds Sburb to the game! Start out in a regular world, create a home base, and travel to the medium and explore your planet. In minecraft, ya’ll. (Playable with friends in a chain)

(Tumblr)

Fantroll Charity:
A personal favorite, fantrolls are featured and people draw them/ make something for them, and you get to enter a raffel to have your fantroll be the next spotlight! Best case-senario there’s a new troll every week, but within the past couple of years it’s slowed down to once every few months because entries tend to be a bit slow. Hopefully this will help change that. 

(Tumblr)

Please feel free to add to this post, as these are only things i myself am aware of. And I tend to be pretty out of the loop sometimes. 

wow jesus christ, this post has thousands of notes? how on earth did i miss this?_? Thank you, gosh! 😀