What’s your thoughts on all the Viz and Homestuckdotcom stuff

Mainly, I’m sad about the fine folks at WP who lost their jobs. I’m concerned about Hiveswap, too, but not the way most of the fandom seems to be.

Just to be clear, I don’t have any special insight or anything. Everything I’m about to say is wildly speculatory, but well, so is pretty much all of the doomsaying already out here. I don’t really think all is lost, so if I can provide any comfort, I may as well offer my perspective.

Let’s break this down, because a lot of facts are getting mixed in with people making assumptions. Here’s what happened yesterday:

1) Cohen and Shelby tweeted that they were looking for work. That’s not an official statement on anything, but combined with WP’s branding being removed from the Hiveswap website and Poinko and James leaving, things certainly look bad for WP.

2) On the same day, VIZ launched the new version of the Homestuck website, with a redesign meant to render the comic more accessible–particularly for mobile users–and start future proofing the parts of the comic made on technology that is soon being rendered obsolete and largely unusable, like Flash.

These two things don’t seem innately related. Viz hasn’t done anything except update/future proof the website, which I already expected from the partnership. They also released a news post alluding to new stuff being on the way, which sounds like an update on the epilogue Hussie said he was working on with them.

Even so, the overall look of the move has the fandom crying foul because they suspect VIZ is instigating some sort of corporate takeover. And while I think it’s good to be careful, I just don’t see the evidence for that yet.

I’m wary of corporate overlords, so I’ve sort of worried about VIZ along those lines before. And that is a risk I am continuing to look out for. But if I was worried about corporate censorship/manipulation of Homestuck, the only thing I’d immediately worry about is the LGBT stuff.

And for a corporation, Viz’s track record on LGBT stuff is fairly solid.
They’re in charge of re-dubbing the Sailor Moon anime, and have garnered positive press for NOT censoring the LGBT stuff the original dub did. They’ve published some LGBT manga. They’re not an LGBT corporation or anything, but their track record veers positive, is all I’m saying.

I can’t really think of what else they’d mess with. I’ve heard of them censoring religious imagery, and Homestuck does deal in some heavy spiritual/mythological themes, but I definitely wouldnt say anything in the comic is overtly religious.

More to the point, if they were going to mess with the actual comic, I don’t see why they wouldn’t have done so now, while they were doing the redesign. And while we’re at it, I should mention its questionable that VIZ actually has control over Homestuck’s actual IP.

The Homestuck website is copyrighted to Viz *and* Homestuck itself, which is the legal entity I’d expect holds all the actual creative rights. That probably wouldn’t matter if VIZ wanted to just strongarm Hussie with lawyers, though– billion dollar corporations are dangerous that way.

I’m just saying, I don’t know that having partial control of the site at all implies Hussie just “handed off” creative control to VIZ. That seems like a wild assumption.

Also an assumption is the idea that VIZ “fired” WP so that they could develop the game themselves, which…I don’t really buy at all right now. Its not clear to me that VIZ has the expertise, manpower, or even interest in developing Hiveswap themselves.

Again, I am not claiming to have facts here. This is just an alternate line of fandom speculation. Please, for the love of fuck, don’t treat me like an expert. But here’s how things look from my perspective.

Because VIZ is largely a soulless corporation, the only motivation I can confidently ascribe to them is the one all companies have: making money.
And Hiveswap doesn’t exactly seem like it sold gangbusters, honestly.

@sometipsygnostalgic has noted how lackluster the advertising for the game was, and its true they seemed to be relying on word of mouth and hype to get the game sold. That doesn’t seem to have happened.

I find it hard to believe VIZ would watch this commercial flop unfold, and come out of it thinking its best move is to invest MORE money in the endeavor. Corporations don’t typically respond to market failure by doubling down on their investments, just in general.

But more to the point, I don’t see that VIZ has a clear route to do so.
The company only JUST involved itself in narrative driven indie games– and it’s involved itself as a publisher, NOT a developer. It partnered with two developers that we currently know of: 1) Rose City Games, the devs of The World Next Door, and until now, 2) What Pumpkin.

Rose City Games looks a lot like WP, staff-wise–it seems to be a small indie team of about a dozen and a half people, working on their first game. They’ve done some organizational work and stuff like that, but nothing that suggests to me that they’d be prepared or willing to just…take on Hiveswap in WP’s stead.

And there IS NO IN-HOUSE GAME DEV STUDIO at Viz. It doesn’t exist. Making Hiveswap themselves would mean building one, just like WP had to, and I don’t see why they’d want to take the risk with the less than promising results of Act 1.

While it’s possible this is some kind of takeover situation, that is a big IF to me right now. VIZ would be making some legit hard business decisions in pursuing that maneuver, and it’s not clear they’re going to. I think its at least as possible that development on the game is simply canceled, or ideally, frozen until there’s enough funds to actually pay people.

That last point is what I think fans should focus on. IF it’s a matter of simple lack of funs forcing What Pumpkin to close doors because there isn’t, uh, the money to friggin pay people, then…there’s probably hope.

Like I said, VIZ did just allude to more news coming. IF whatever they’re working on with Hussie is good/interesting enough to, say, get new people reading Homestuck, then all of a sudden the comic would be drawing new interest while also advertising to incoming readers about…Hiveswap, which is now advertised for on the web-site through pop up ads.

Kind of invasive? Sure. But word of mouth didn’t get the game sold, so if some old-fashioned advertising does and Hiveswap/Homestuck collectively start collecting enough hype and profit that the staff of WP can be rehired, I won’t complain.

All in all, I’ll just say we’ll have a much better idea of what this partnership between Hussie and VIZ looks like–and what VIZ’s intent is–once we see some actual content they’ve produced together. I suggest the fandom wait it out to see what this Epilogue is, and what kind of content might be coming after.

With any luck, that wait will only last until 4/13.

warriormale:

yuuri-katsuki-on-ice:

ladyflowdi:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

blackphoenix1977:

pleatedjeans:

Three cheers for these guys [x]

This is how to be a good ally.

Using their Bro-ness for good, not evil

So a tiny story: on Black Friday a few weeks ago I went to Gamestop to buy my brother a game for Christmas, and I noticed this older man was watching me like a hawk. He was loitering around the front of the store without really buying anything, and every time I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye he was looking at me. I went to look at the PS4 games, and he was looking at something right behind me. I checked out the Nintendo games, and he was looking at them too. I was the only woman in the store, by the way.

By the time I got in line to pay he was loitering at the front of the store again, and I just had that feeling that he was going to try and take the game I just bought, or steal my purse, as soon as I left the store. OR, he was going to try and follow me home. And I know I don’t have to explain that terror to any woman reading this, but all I could think was that I’m in this Gamestop alone with at least twenty other men and something is about to happen. I’m beginning to freak out, to the point where I’ve just pulled my pepper spray out of my purse and into the pocket of my coat.

So there I am, next in line to pay, and there is this GIGANTIC dudebro right behind me, and I say gigantic as a 6 foot tall woman. He says, “Ma’am? Don’t be offended, but would it be alright if I walked you to your car?” and I was like “Are you serious?” and he was like “There are some weird guys in here right now. Have you noticed that guy watching you?” and then I showed the dudebro the pepper spray in my pocket and he was like “Right on. Would you still let me walk you to your car?” and I said yes.

So I paid, and waited while HE paid, and he walked me to my car. And just as I was getting in, the weird guy who’d been loitering came out of the store, saw me and my dudebro, and turned around and walked away in the opposite direction.

In short: men who recognize that women are unsafe in dark alleys, college campuses, grocery stores, gas stations and retail stores and do something about it are the kind of quality men that this world needs more of.

Please for the love of god yes.

The Warrior protects.

He does this through his Prowess, his Ability
to Protect.

His fight Ability, combined with his
Willingness to Protect, earns him Worth in the eyes of his fellow Men.

Train and fight!

Always protect those in need!

WarriorMale

tatterdemalionamberite:

apparentlyeverything:

si-vis-amari-amo:

soulsoaker:

datclassydame:

soulsoaker:

this might be a bit of a reach but in the wake of so-called “progressives” advocating for creating a list of mentally ill people and handing it over to the cops, on top of things like forced institutionalization and universities expelling students who they deem too crazy to function, I do not want to hear ANY of you people whining about why we don’t just see a doctor and Start Recovering.

Just either admit you have no fucking clue how dangerous it can be to live at the mercy of incompetent bureaucracies that convinced themselves they can do no harm, or that you’re just annoyed that mentally ill people write things where you can see them. Fuck off

Source, please?

One of the Parkland demands is changing healthcare privacy laws so mental healthcare providers can communicate with law enforcement which for obvious reasons totally misses the causes of gun violence (the Parkland shooter was a white supremacist) and puts the lives of patients in the hands of a doctor’s opinion. This is going to kill people, especially Black people, and discourage many more from seeking healthcare. People with mental illnesses already make up about half of all people shot and killed by police.

It’s really disturbing how people spent years trying to debunk the “mentally ill people are murderers” myth whenever right-wingers used it to attack gun control but the moment you get some cute white kids to say crazy people should be locked up everyone’s cool with it. scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds

I’ve seen this a few times, and I just want to say that if you look at the actual March for Our Lives webpage, marchforourlives.com, it says nothing about changing healthcare privacy laws. Specifically, this link lists what they want to change. Also, if you look at which students wrote the editorial, none of them are the ones that have been organizing the march, and the Guardian article is not listed on the website under their press section.

Many of the students at Parkland may have different demands, and it’s important to distinguish who you’re talking about because of that. You can’t just say Parkland as a whole.

The manifesto published in the Guardian was written by editors from the school newspaper. As mentioned above, it’s not the position of the march organizers, and it’s been widely criticized by progressives/liberals on twitter who support gun control. It’s the pro-gun lobby and its supporters who’ve been trying to frame this as a “mental health” issue instead, and they’re the ones pushing for these kind of changes as a way to derail gun control. The fact that it showed up on this one list doesn’t mean that liberals have suddenly adopted this position. The gun control movement isn’t relying on 17 year olds to write their policy positions.

I’ve heard that the student organizers in question have been trying to direct attention off of themselves and toward black student movements in interviews and that this has been HEAVILY underreported unless you watch said interviews directly.

So it’s not a big surprise to me that we’re getting some (additional kinds of) spin about them right now.

lgbt music reccs

pynchbookclub:

starting 2018 with sharing some lgbt singers/bands that i listen to. some of these are really popular and you’ve probably already heard of them. and also im always looking for some new lgbt music so add some more if you want!!

gay bands and singers

sam smith – basically really sad soul/RnB. a lot of his songs are slow heartbreaking.

brockhampton – a rap/hip hop boy band. the founding member is openly gay and a lot of the lyrics are about him being gay, but also about things like racism/sexism/homophobia.

kevin abstract – the gay member of brockhampton who was mentioned above. he also has solo albums. his album american boyfriend is basically one gay love story.

mika –– lebanesepop rock singer who speaks a bunch of languages. majority of his songs are in english but a few are in french. his songs are kinda weird and sound like you would sing them with ur gay friends around a campfire

troye sivan – u know him. cool and funny youtuber/indie pop singer. not much to say bc everyone already knows troye is amazing.

passion pit – indie electropop band, the sole member is gay

neon trees – pop rock band. u already know them from animals back in 2010. the lead is gay.

years & years – one of my faves. an electropop trio with songs with cool imagery that you can dance to whilst crying. the lead singer olly alexander is a cool lgbt activist and youll want to know him.

lesbian bands and singers

jen foster – idk many songs, but definitely some pop country vibes

the veronicas – idk a lot of their songs either, but they’re a pop punk duo and twin sisters. one of the sisters is gay and in a relationship w ruby rose!!

hayley kiyoko – ok you already know her. she’s half japanese and The Lesbian Icon. all her songs are about girls and the music videos are great

coeur de pirate – she’s an indie pop singer and her voice sounds like lying in a field of sunflowers in the spring. most of her songs are in french, but she has a lot that are in english.

mary lambert – rnb/pop singer and also lgbt rights activist. she is absolutely amazing and her songs talk a lot of about her sexuality, sexual abuse, bipolar disorder, and body image.

tegan and sara – another twin sister indie pop duo except both of them are gay this time!!

bi bands/singers

halsey – another singer who everyone knows the name of. her music just makes you feel like a very cool teenager and her lyrics and music videos have amazing imagery

kehlani – rnb and hip-hop singer. all her songs are absolute jams and make you feel like a badass woman

frank ocean – rnb singer, and you probably already know him. so chill and gives you shivers

tokio hotel – pop rock band from germany who slowly turned to electropop over time. their early songs are in german but they have english versions to all their songs and their newer music is all in english.

taylor bennett – rapper who’s very similar to kendrick lamar and pretty open about his sexuality. he’s also chance the rapper’s brother (and don’t hate me but they kind of have the exact same voice. like it’s so trippy how similar they sound)

the xx – two of the members are gay and it is so great. They’re indiepop and sound like what laying on a cloud would feel like

green day – everyone knows green day. billie joe armstrong is bi ppl!!

sia– you probably know sia too. her music is electropop and basically just gets you dancing.

st vincent – idk much of her music, but she’s kind of indie rock and incredibly sweet

keiynan lonsdale – he’s actually a half black actor from the flash. but he also has pretty dope music on the side. if u don’t listen to him, follow him on instagram bc he’s a fun time

trans/non-binary bands and singers

mykki blanco – really great hip hop vibes!!

against me – awesome punk rock band. the lead singer is a trans woman

please add more!! let’s start 20GAYTEEN off right!!

So do you think that Lord English, Doc Scratch, and Caliborn represents more traditional views of the Devil, as in a unredeemable asshole. And Vriska represents a more modern version of it, as in a jerk antihero.

dukeofriven:

revolutionaryduelist:

I don’t really know enough mythology to say. I think Vriska MIGHT draw some inspiration from Lilith, who by some accounts is maybe described as a blue butterfly, if I remember right?

If any troll is a Satan figure though it’s definitely gamzee. I don’t really see much about Vriska that resonates with the archetype.

I would say there’s nothing really Lillith-like about Vriska. My memory is admittedly hazy, but Lillith requires an Adam and an Eve, or at least just an Adam, to play against and I think pointing to any set of Homestuck characters and calling them the A/E archetypes would be a stretch. Well, Classic ‘Lillith-as-Adam’s-First-Wife,” anyways. Further back she becomes an abstraction to the point where any comparison is too reductionist to be of value. (As Joseph Campbell discovered, cherry pick enough examples and you can connect any one entity to any other and claim causation.)

This might well be the case, too! See the other post for the rest of the stuff I had in mind when I posted this. I’m still learning about christian mythology as I go along, so it could well be nothing or actually quite apt once i really dive into that particular subject. I don’t really feel ready to commit to a stance on it.

squishysquab:

why do you rebel?

stop fucking calling all lesbians dykes (ex. “an older dyke”, “many of the awesome dykes”), especially if you’re not a lesbian. “lesbian” is a label that exists and it’s rude and disrespectful to use a slur to refer to a broad group of people who you don’t personally know. that should honestly be obvious.

curlicuecal:

lunarecord:

solluxismsnowaifu:

lines-and-edges:

leproblematique:

lines-and-edges:

queeranarchism:

solitarelee:

sarahsyna:

iron-sunrise:

queeranarchism:

mautlyn:

comcastkills:

queeranarchism:

When I say ‘dykes’, I mean ‘dykes’. As in: people who identify as dykes.

In the post you’re refering to I made it quite clear that I was writing about dykes I know and when I speak of these dykes I won’t erase or sanitize their identities by using a mainstream, tame, deradicalized word that denies the words they specifically chose for themselves to emphasize their identities and their struggles as queer marganilized working class proudly-perverted revolutionary DYKES.

Keep your fucking respectability politics to yourself.

Hmmm. Interesting post!

Anyway, I’ve seen some of my followers reblog from this freak, and I think it’s worth stating that you should probably unfollow me if you agree with them.

did he really just say “proudly-perverted”

Yeah, that makes no sense at all.

(to any people unfollowing me: please block me at the same time so I never have to deal with you again. bye and good riddance)

When did @comcastkills decide to become hot garbage to THIS degree like, damn.

I forget the age range on this site runs only a little past the teens most of the time because nothing said here is in any way outside of LGBTQ history.

But, you know, thats reactionary bullshit for you. Are discoursers all younger than 21 or something? Would that explain this nonsense?

The first person who welcomes me into the community as a sort of mentor proudly ID’d as a Dyke would insist that be used over lesbian or homosexual.

Comcastkills showing the same regard for people as the average school bully, I see.

It’s wild and depressing and wildly depressing for me to see this kind of stuff, because when I was a kid, any of us babygays would have literally killed to have an older queer mentor of any kind. Shockingly, there were few around, because, you know, AIDS. But now, the next generation, finally having what we lost, an older generation to teach them about their cultural history n shit… Just. Actively hates and in some cases even tries to kill them (I’ve seen kids on this hellsite try to cost grown-ass adults, sometimes parents, their jobs, kids, and lives).

Like, I feel so old to be like “back in my day” or “when I was your age” but seriously. I always thought the younger generations would be better off for having what we lost. Instead: this.

And we gotta call it by its name:

It’s not a generation gap. It’s not just ignorance (though that plays a part). It’s not just TERF manipulation against the word queer (though that plays a part).

We’re seeing a young generation of LGBT conservatism: kids who want their civil rights but who don’t want all the mess and scandalousness of actual liberation. Kids who want to hold on to what has been won for white middle class binary identified LG kids and don’t want to thing about what’s happening on the margins on the LGBT movement. Kids who want glamorous LGBT celebrities on tv, not homeless LGBT youth in their spaces. We have kids into gay nationalism. We have lesbians longing for the time when we didn’t include bisexuals and trans women in our communities. We have LGBT youth voting for Tories.

These kids aren’t shitting on their queer elders out of just ignorance, they actively reject our struggle against all oppression.

I’ve been thinking about this lately too.

The thing I created this blog to oppose is, ultimately, a right-wing reactionary movement, and if you scratch even a little bit at the veneer of leftism, you find bootstrap logic, xenophobia, militarism, anti-intellectualism, the veneration of retributive justice, disrespect for bodily autonomy, and other characteristics of right-wing politics underneath.

Let’s start calling it what it is.

I thought for the longest while that I was off-the-mark in mentally categorizing Tumblr Anti-X (anti ace/aro, anti kink, anti gender-fluidity/gender-spectrum, anti-labels-actual-queer-people-use, anti certain-kinds-of-fiction, etc) Discoursers as the social conservatives of the future, but the above lines up incredibly well with my own observations.

Years ago, someone asked me to do a portrait of the social conservatism of decades to a century in the future and at the time I predicted highly limited and conditional acceptance of white, able-bodied, very gender-conforming, white-picket-fence, cis gay men and lesbians, who vote conservative. Maaaaaaybe also a limited acceptance of transgender people who medicalize and pathologize themselves out the wazoo, performing a constant show of ‘I’m just a good person who seeks the appropriate treatment for my medically-acknowledged condition, won’t you accept me, I promise not to rock the boat?’ and whose gender-presentation after transition is also very high in conformity to what the conservative mind thinks of as acceptable + again, support for conservative politics.

Imagine how depressed I was when a large assortment of discoursers, transmedicalists and others along these lines basically confirmed a good deal of the above, here on Tumblr, decades before I thought it would ever become a thing! I started getting alarm bells in my head when I saw the vicious responses toward the concept of gender as a spectrum (and thus toward the existence of genderqueer / nonbinary, agender, genderfluid/genderfuck people), because after years of monitoring and seeking to understand social conservative communities, I knew that they consistently felt a deep, existential sense of threat from anything that challenged their rigid, binary views of gender. And here, on Tumblr, I was seeing young, so-called ‘progressives’ reacting in the same manner, as if threatened, by the concept that gender as a binary is a small and very reductive lens through which one can see the human experience. Whoever coined the phrase ‘conservatism with a gay hat’ couldn’t have been more apt.

And the thing is, this isn’t exactly something new for the community, the only thing that’s truly different is that an entire generation is now in the thrall of reactionary politics. Seeing sneers at queer people daring to (gasp!) describe ourselves as ‘proudly perverted’, as highly sexual beings, as kinky and unapologetic, reminds me what a massive impact radfems have had in shaping the Tumblr social environment and what a net contributor they’ve been to the aforementioned reactionary politics. Whenever I look at the notes of popular radfem posts, it’s always the same exceedingly telling image: usernames along the lines of ‘empress-vulvalini’ or ‘uter-person’ routinely interspersed with ‘tradcatholicnationalist’ or ‘jesus-is-my-savior’ (looking at the latter kind of blogs reveals that they’re Fundamentalist Christians to a one and I say this as a progressive Christian, lest someone accuse me of bigotry. It’s not the Christianity that’s my issue here, it’s the fundamentalism and the deep conservatism that comes with it). In the most darkly hilarious situations, I’ve found posts made by actual religious fundies (’sexual promiscuity and behavior characterized as ‘kink’ damages the inherent dignity of the person’, for one example) with the notes filled with radfems liking, reblogging and lauding the content.

It’s been noted ad-nauseam that radfems and conservative politicians have been good allies on several fronts, starting with the 1970s, but even something as simple as a Tumblr post can show how radfems share idea-space with fundamentalists. Radfems, in this case, have been the social-vector through which LGBT teens on Tumblr have been introduced to and influenced by fundamentalist thought, giving us the incredibly baffling sight of queer youngsters reacting with knee-jerky viciousness to non-normative sexual practices that hardly warranted the batting of an eye-lash in queer-dominated spaces, ten years ago.

Good additions – and, kind of off topic, but I actually teared up a little when I saw your URL in my notes, and got a case of happycry sniffles writing this, I’m just so glad you’re back. You always post with such depth of perspective and moral clarity and insight; a heartening light in the fog.

@adigitalmagician @curlicuecal

I hope my small comment here isnt unwarranted but id like to share a thought! I am an lgbt youth, im 18 years old, and although im of course not at all involved with the radfem community or much discourse at all, i have absolutely observed all thats being described here, ive watched how things spiraled from how things were when i was just an 11 year old on the internet. So with the perspective that i have i have to keep wondering why this happened, why these oppressive forces were essentially able to take hold of our community. I dont think i can fully grasp the true context of the situation and what led things to this point but thats actually kind of my point. A lot of queer youth in this generation truly dont know a single goddamn thing about queer history. Weve heard the names marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera thrown around once or twice but i dont think a lot of youth know about much more than just the stonewall riots. We arent taught queer history in school, weve never been given resources to find out more about our history, and weve never sought it out either because we are so deep in current day politics or because we dont understand the importance and value of knowing about queer history. For me, i really didnt even know more history existed. The way it was taught in school was that at some point we had the equivalent of a gay revolution and before that queer folk were just quiet and kept their lives a secret. I didnt know there was any more to it. So i kind of feel like this failure to inform queer youth of their history and backgrounds has given space for conservatives to sneak their ideals into the community and veer it off the path that wed been creating for ourselves. If we dont know where were coming from and what our actual goals as a community were then it becomes easy to get muddled in the details and respectability politics involved in todays community. The lack of information stops us from learning from the past and creates space for bigotry.

I am a peer educator, i spend my time going out into schools and community organizations in the area to teach people ages 13-24 about the lgbt community, safe sex, self care, healthy relationships, ect. So i may be a tad biased in saying this, as i strongly value educating the youth and starting important conversations as an important step in dealing with many different societal problems, but i feel like teaching the queer youth about their roots is definitely a good first step to take if we want to begin to deal with the current situation within the community.

“the way it was taught in school”

I’m 32 (raised in Texas) and you just blew my mind because somehow it never even occurred to me that schools might be mentioning queer history now.

Like, wow.

I 100% agree that conservative-driven lack of education is at least part of the problem and that just like sex education in general we have a massive hole in our education system on this topic, but.

Man, just wow, cause, you gotta understand that as little as 10, 20 years ago nobody official was officially mentioning ‘gay stuff’ to us.

So, you know. Damn, wow, progress.

I wonder how many other people my age are kinda hilariously sideswiped by this epiphany?

Anyway, it’s my understanding that part of the reason there’s a huge hole in the queer history education of youth today is that a massive percentage of the baby boomer and gen X queer population died. Were killed, frankly, by intentional governmental neglect of the AIDS epidemic. The ramifications of this are still rippling out through our culture, but one effect has been a disconnect from our history.

wakraya:

Alright, let me put a few points of stuff I’ve seen on the tags to rest here.

1) Jades Are A Rare Caste.

They are implied to be less plentiful than other castes, yeah, I believe Seadwellers are also rare? But here’s the thing- We have six Jades. When someone says “There’s twice as many Jades as we have Rusts or Bronzes”, it sounds like, shit, yeah weren’t they supposed to be less abundant? Except. They’re still, in total, just Six. Alternia is a planet. Lore-wise, they may be a less plentiful Caste, but they’re not even… In the double digits. This is not even the population of a neighborhood, Xefros’ suburban area likely had more Trolls in total than there are Trolls in this Troll Call, and besides it’s likely all Jades are in the same place for some reason- Jadeblood School is the biggest headcanon right now, for example, so… Why wouldn’t you have a bunch of Jades there?

2) Jades Are All Female.

This is a straight-up misconception, yeah they’re mostly girls, but canon still leaves room for Jadeblood boys. So Male Jadeblood? Yeah, can happen, and there’s nothing going against the canon here.

3) Trolls Have No Concept Of Gender.

This one is honestly baffling to me because I haven’t heard about this until the discourse today. I am assuming this comes from the fact Troll Reproduction doesn’t care who provides the genetic material? Their reproduction is not tied to gender, which has made people assume Troll junk is the same for both guys and gals. Except… That’s about it. Even though it’s silly because they’re bugs and implied to be hermaphroditic, they still show sexual dimorphism. And even if they didn’t, they still have a concept of Gender, merely based on the fact there’s Troll Boys and Troll Girls? He/She divide? With Hiveswap expanding on it and showing us there are, indeed, NB Trolls that prefer They/Them. This Gender Divide is actually talked about by Porrim, who also implies that while Fuchsia-down Alternia seemed a Matriarchy, Purple-down it was actually a Patriarchy, informing us that not ONLY is there sexual dimorphism, but also, a cultural divide. By saying that Lanque can’t be Trans because Trolls have no concept of Gender, you’re either mistaking headcanons for actual canon… Or being transphobic by equating genitalia to gender. In which case, fuck off.

4) Trolls Don’t Care About Fashion.

This is something Karkat says, and I believe Kanaya also implies she cares about it more than it’s usual? But Fashion in Troll Culture, seems to be exactly like Mail. Karkat mentions there’s no Mail they do not get a Mailbox with a Flag, yet we see Xefros get mail! Except it’s not Mail. It’s parachuted delivery straight from a website. There’s no standarized Mail system on Alternia, but that doesn’t mean companies can’t deliver things themselves, directly to their Hives. Similarly, Trolls have no concept of Fashion- They don’t care about things such as trends, variety, being dressed properly. And… Hiveswap doesn’t break this. They have more colorful clothes, and some look pretty good! But. Look at Cirava. They’re an absolute fashion disaster. Diemen is just dressed like a hot dog. The Jades all seem to wear uniforms of some sort. Fozzer and Marsti, Skylla, they are more akin to work clothes. The Soleil Twins and Marvus are more flashy, because they’re likely part of a spectacle. Most of them are either a sort of uniform or outfit that’ll fit whatever they’re doing, or a basic color with their symbol somewhere. And you can go from Bright Pink Bathrobe Stelsa, to Pirate-Clad Remele, and back to Punk Denim Elwurd. Not being Fashionable can be about trends, they may simply dress however they want, because of their interests, or their jobs.

But let’s think about this another way. Let’s say that, yeah, they did retcon Troll Fashion- Would… Would you really be mad if they retconned Troll Fashion. Like… Would you be happier if every Troll shown was wearing a plain black shirt with their Symbol, and pants or a skirt, with slight variations of a jacket or a tank top. I don’t think there’s a single Hiveswap design I dislike, and they’re all visibly varied and easily recognizable, and tell a lot about the character, which is like. Character Design 101? So I honestly don’t know what the complaint here is exactly, except Canon Purity.

5) Hiveswap Ruined Fantroll Variety

How. First of all, the entire previous point. Just, expanding upon basic Troll Clothes, showing us the extent of how Trolls dress. But also like… What did they limit exactly? We’re going to learn more about Trolls and Troll Culture and Biology, of course headcanons are going to clash with canon, but so far, what have they limited? I’ve heard about Horns, but like… These horns have all been so varied, and sure there’s stuff like hooks with Ceruleans and Jades, and Four Horns with Golds but… This pattern is also broken, with Azdaja having three, for example. We’ve seen new Psionic colors, we’ve seen stuff like Horn Piercing, we’ve seen Troll Twins, we have seen horns where the orange part starts at different heights than you’d expect and even some of the parts jutting out having their own red-orange-yellow coloration separate of the main shaft of the horn. If anything, until now, there’s always been headcanons for Horns, like, “Oh this is their symbol so it’ll be like this”, or “this is their caste, so, they’ll have big horns”, but no, we have Purples with small horns, we have Bronzes with curly horns downwards, we have a cerulean with super uneven horns, we have a gold with three horns, we have a teal with flat horns, we have rounded horns, we have hotdog horns. I’ve heard people wonder about some Horn Shapes in the prior weeks, about how they didn’t match their restrictive headcanons, and NOW you tell me they’re restrictive? There’s also been complaints about caste roles and stereotypes, and I feel people really forget that Alternia is a Tyranny that forces the inhabitants in roles they are most likely not happy with, specially for the lower castes. Like… Rusts are disposable, and likely to be bound to a life of servitude. Because they’re the lowest of the low, society treats them as such, and there’s stereotypes like Indigos being strong, but that’s not any more restrictive than Psionics being a Gold-only thing, and much like we see Zebede not having Psionics or Elwurd and Mallek having normal eyes to every other cerulean’s messed-up ones… There’s exceptions to the rule everywhere. There have always been.

I’ve also seen complaints about no mutant bloods or things like Albinism and such? And like… The fact they didn’t include it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We actually got Freckles with Zebede, so it already implies skin conditions are a thing, so Albinism could happen, if anything we have more PROOF that it may be a thing! Complaining about a lack of Limebloods and Violets, too, is just nitpicking, we know there will be Violets eventually, but either we haven’t been shown right now, or they’re just. In the sea. And we’re in the land. And Limes are likely to be a plot point, I’m expecting at least ONE Lime (Fiamet), if not more to show up at some point, and if there’s NO Limebloods I’m sure there will be at least talk OF Limebloods and their whole, you know, extermination, which is a canon thing that happened.

6) The Game’s Representation Is Bad Representation

Listen… Listen. I have friends ecstatic that there’s at LEAST three non-cis characters in Hiveswap (One trans boy, two NBs), without counting the possibility of other characters being Trans (Pretty much anyone could be), or NB (Like, I think about half of the characters don’t have pronouns on their bullet points?), not to mention, further acts with new characters. Hell, even Xefros or Dammek or Joey could be Trans. We. Literally know nothing about these characters, our information is so limited, and yet there’s already people cheering about it and super happy to see representation and I’ve seen one person in the tag encouraged to come out because Lanque is Trans. There’s also at least two Jewish Trolls, plus the possibility of Kanaya being Jewish as well, either her, Rose, or both. And yet, even though they have simply said this, in good faith, respectfully, and trying to add diversity to their roster, and even though we literally know NOTHING of how it’ll be handled yet, you… Bash them for it?

Like, okay. Lanque. The big topic today. He’s not particularly masculine, but as has surely been repeated over and over and over again, not all trans men are masculine, and not all trans people suffer dysphoria. And yeah, it’s true! It would be nice if there was a more masculine trans man! It would be great if there were trans girls! It would be great if there were more diversely coded NB characters! And there may be?? There’s going to be more characters, if not in this Act, in future Acts, and of the ones we’ve seen, many of them could still be NB or Trans. Like… Again. We’ve got three bullet points from each character. Like, I’m sorry you didn’t get a trans character that you could identify better with yet? But that doesn’t mean you have to bash the one we got? When there are people genuinely happy and encouraged about it? You’re not being progressive. You’re being an elitist asshole, if you only accept 100% perfect representation suited to your tastes, and everything else is garbage, or god help me, ‘fetishization’ or ‘disgusting’ (I have heard both on the Tags), like seriously. You’re being the oppressive one. You’re the one making representation harder than it should be.

Oh and if you’re on the OPPOSITE side of the spectrum and simply being Transphobic or saying how all of this is ‘pandering’ to the audience, really I have nothing to say, if you cannot have basic empathy for a group of people finding representation in a game which source material is extremely queer, and have to resort to bashing it down, screw you.

7) WhatPumpkin Are Doing A Bad Job

This is your subjective opinion, and I’d dare to say, a wrong opinion, but let’s not go there for now. WP has suffered a lot of hate for some reason? There have been lies and slander and bashing for absolutely no reason. People hate Cohen for some reason, and have demonized him, when so far what I’ve seen about him is that he’s a pretty chill dude. The writing of Hiveswap wasn’t like, a masterpiece? But it was fun and it got a good bunch of chuckles out of me and made me care for the characters, and even got me a bit scared and sad at some points during the game! It has that Homestuck Spark, and if you say ‘it’s not like Homestuck’, you’re… I’m sorry, you’re just an elitist, or simply don’t like the style anymore? But it carries a very similar charm.

I’ve heard complaints about Hussie not being involved in the project- Which is false, he did write the entire story FIRST THING, and is overseeing the whole project with the rest of the team. There’s also been criticism towards WP ‘failing’ at representation (Before actually seeing the representation apparently, again, we know NOTHING about the game and how it’ll handle stuff so far), and also accusing WP and Cohen specifically of adding representation because of Woke Points and like… WP are Queer as Heck? I don’t know all of them, I don’t even know how many people are working at WP. But they’re not all straight 100% for sure, and I believe they’re not all cis- And even if they ARE all cis, I also doubt a group working on such a Queer game would NOT hear out from Trans friends. What I’m trying to say, is that they haven’t shown at any point disrespect of ignorance regarding the diversity they want to tackle, they’re not doing things out of bad faith, and we haven’t seen how they handle it yet. Even if they didn’t handle it ideally! Does it need to be absolutely perfect, there can be missteps on the way there, god dammit if someone’s trying to better themselves but not quite getting it right you don’t insult them and tear them down! You show them what to do better next time or where they are mistaken, by pessimistically ignoring what they’re trying to do out of spite you’re discouraging good will and being an asshole! Which leads me to my last point for now.

8) They Could Have Told Us We Were Misgendering Lanque

This one is… Really, a bit ridiculous. Okay, let me explain. If someone is Trans and you misgender them accidentally, they’ll tell you quickly and you’ll, hopefully, correct yourself. Obviously. When the Trolls leaked, everyone latched onto Lanque as ‘Butch Lesbian’, and clung to that hope, and now that they were proven wrong, there was salt, at first, and THEN came the talk about Misgendering Lanque. And let me tell you, I think this is very selfish of everyone saying it.

What WP likely thought would happen is that they’d reveal Lanque to be a Trans boy, and people would be like “Oh! Nice, Trans Rep!”. Sure they could’ve told us back then but… Why? Lanque is not. A real person. He’s a fictional character, he’s not going to be offended because you thought he was a butch woman for a few months, in fact the SILHOUETTE alone ALREADY had people clinging to him as a butch woman. If he were a real person? Of course there’d be a quick correction. But he’s. A character. He’s just a god damn character. Who is Trans, out of good faith by a very Queer company, showing us a Trans man, who is a character, and expecting that, like NORMAL PEOPLE, we would not do something like THIS.

When you criticize WP for not telling us Lanque was a Trans Man, all I’m seeing is a shift of blame, not wanting to simply admit you were wrong and jumped to conclusions, and like- Even if there was Fanart or Fanfic of Lanque calling him a woman briefly, shipping him around mistakenly, who cares? You just. Go. “Okay, I’ll change it” or “Whoops haha this was from when we didn’t know he was a Trans boy!” Why the militant hatred? Why the absolute disgust shown today? I can’t understand, I simply cannot understand why your first reaction to “Trans boy Jadeblood” is “WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS A BUTCH LESBIAN!! I WASN’T WRONG BY ASSUMING THIS, WHATPUMPKIN WERE FOR TRYING TO MAKE THEIR GAME MORE DIVERSE”. It’s like… You just. Correct it? You just correct yourself? And yeah you can want more masculine Trans boys, that’s fair! But dismissing what we got, entirely, and insulting it, and getting like THIS, and blaming the team, it just seems.

Narcissistic. It seems narcissistic and extremely self-centered, and perfectionist to the extreme of not wanting anything other than a complete and absolute ideal, that may fit you but may also not fit others.

In conclusion?

People are happy about representation. This isn’t destroying diversity or representation, this is not reducing customization of Fantrolls, this is only building MORE on the already expansive system, and giving us representation and hope for MORE representation in the future, and if you cannot be happy for a genuine, good natured, and honestly, perfectly fine attempt, if you cannot feel empathy for the people who did feel for this representation, if you can only want to find reasons to bash something down and demonize something good and point out how BAD and NOT GOOD things are and how MUCH BETTER they could be, then honestly, you’re a deeply unpleasant person.

Give things time. Give people with good intentions chances. Learn to backpedal and learn from mistakes and simply correct yourself when you’re wrong instead of going down a hateful spiral. Learn to separate fiction and reality. Just like… Think, for a moment, when you’re writing something down- Is it a jaded opinion, or an objective fact? Will it hurt and discourage people who’re genuinely happy or trying to make others happy? Why do more harm than good when there are good intentions paving the way?

I just simply cannot understand the basic lack of critical thought and empathy of some people I have seen today, and hopefully with this I can make my opinion on the whole absurd Discourse that transpired today clear.

god ok so im not a woman or trans and have 0 place in the real conversation around lanque, ok? this post is strictly and only about homestucks/hiveswaps actual canon lore.

experimentaloatmeal:

revolutionaryduelist:

i HAVE to say something because this specific thing im seeing about lanque is driving me up the wall, simply because it makes it rly clear some of you just have no fucking clue what homestuck is about actually? like at all.

and thats this idea that lanque is bad because jadebloods are associated with motherhood, and subverting or complicating that thematic association is bad.

which…just… did these people just like, forget porrim? what happened to caring about the nuances and complexities of girls’ arcs lmao.

like yeah Porrim personally finds a middle ground she’s comfortable with, but the fact that her society coerced her into a role of motherhood and caregiving is still something she struggled with and its still! fucked! up! There is a larger point being made here!

Jadebloods’ motherhood themes arent about a tribe of Happy Mom Girls who all happen to be biologically born into a role they all love because jade bloods are just Like That.

Jadebloods have motherhood themes because Alternia is a dystopian LITERALLY GOD-DAMNED HELLSCAPE that forces trolls into extremely specific + isolating jobs based on their biology, no matter what they want.

As a caste, Jadebloods DO NOT have a choice, and odds are good most of them arent super fulfilled or happy doing the whole selfless mother of the fascist empire thing.

I’ll leave it to women/afab nonbinary folks/TRANS DUDES who have actually dealt with similar pressures right here on planet Earth to talk about how glorifying that dynamic is fucked up.

I just want it to be clear to anyone confused by these hot takes that this criticism isn’t even rooted in an accurate reading of Homestuck and Hiveswap’s actual canon, let alone any semblance of reality.

It frankly boggles my mind. How the hell is this a reading! Homestuck spends literally all of its time tearing biological essentialism the fuck down, whyyy why WHY would anyone expect anything different here.

Take it as a warning about falling too far down your echo-chambery fandom-slash-sjw “activist” rabbit hole. All of this nonsense is grounded in readings so far removed from the comic they may as well be writing their own story.

anyway i usually dont bother with this stuff but i had a moment of weakness, sleep-deprived tumblr blogging is a bad idea. relatedly: dont drink the discourse kool-aid, kids. it’ll fuck you up.

I don’t want to sound negative, but I think if people don’t understand canon it’s because they aren’t here for the symbolism, the narrative themes, or how the characters interact with the world and what aspects of that world are good/bad. They’re here for the art (comics and games are very visual after all), or the characters, or the relationships between the characters, or the sheer fun of the story as it is told, or some combination of these, and the way they interact with the story is based on that paradigm.

If we don’t actively include thinking about aspects of the world like the autocratic empire and the cast system (which frankly are not all that appealing to think about) in the way we interact with the story, we don’t see how its universe – much like our own – is actually pretty screwed up. That’s not to say that it’s not worth thinking about them – in fact it can enhance your understanding of the story and the characters – but just that it’s not the way many of us interact with it.

That’s fine in general, this stuff is for fun and everyone should enjoy fandom as they find most pleasing and satisfying. But I see no reason to treat fans who don’t care about that stuff with kids gloves when they find themselves confused or dissatisfied by something,and then decide to make it canon’s fault without having all the facts.

Especially in a situation like this where people were tearing into WP for…giving a historically ignored population some actual representation. Nobody’s obligated to care about all the intricate lore and stuff, frankly Homestuck has more of it than is probably reasonable to expect fans to engage with.

But by the same token, nobody’s obligated to humor or patiently treat those peoples opinions on the text as if they’re grounded, or like these are legitimate grounds from which to criticize WP’s handling of their own story. They are not. These are well-constructed stories, and often criticisms of them I see (like this one) are simply verifiably deadass wrong.

I don’t see how those criticisms are any more worthy of respect than like, anti-vaxxers’ criticisms of vaccines, though of course the latter is more harmful.
This is a public platform, opinions aren’t above criticism simply for being opinions, and I see no reason not to call it like I see it when people are being jackasses while also being spectacularly wrong.

I hope this isn’t coming off overly confrontational to you, to be clear! It didn’t seem to me like you were implying I should be at all, and even if you were, I’m p grateful. Since I’m often banging my drums about how great canon is, I think this is an important conversation for me, at least, to have and take seriously.

I don’t want to encourage aggressive fandom puritanism in defense of canon–I don’t think that’s really any better than puritanism against it. People are free to engage with media however they like.

But like. There are actual facts to this story, and while lots of people dont care about that, lots of people (like me) do. I have no intention of walking on eggshells about that, especially when people are using their bad takes to literally tear down the story I love.

god ok so im not a woman or trans and have 0 place in the real conversation around lanque, ok? this post is strictly and only about homestucks/hiveswaps actual canon lore.

i HAVE to say something because this specific thing im seeing about lanque is driving me up the wall, simply because it makes it rly clear some of you just have no fucking clue what homestuck is about actually? like at all.

and thats this idea that lanque is bad because jadebloods are associated with motherhood, and subverting or complicating that thematic association is bad.

which…just… did these people just like, forget porrim? what happened to caring about the nuances and complexities of girls’ arcs lmao.

like yeah Porrim personally finds a middle ground she’s comfortable with, but the fact that her society coerced her into a role of motherhood and caregiving is still something she struggled with and its still! fucked! up! There is a larger point being made here!

Jadebloods’ motherhood themes arent about a tribe of Happy Mom Girls who all happen to be biologically born into a role they all love because jade bloods are just Like That.

Jadebloods have motherhood themes because Alternia is a dystopian LITERALLY GOD-DAMNED HELLSCAPE that forces trolls into extremely specific + isolating jobs based on their biology, no matter what they want.

As a caste, Jadebloods DO NOT have a choice, and odds are good most of them arent super fulfilled or happy doing the whole selfless mother of the fascist empire thing.

I’ll leave it to women/afab nonbinary folks/TRANS DUDES who have actually dealt with similar pressures right here on planet Earth to talk about how glorifying that dynamic is fucked up.

I just want it to be clear to anyone confused by these hot takes that this criticism isn’t even rooted in an accurate reading of Homestuck and Hiveswap’s actual canon, let alone any semblance of reality.

It frankly boggles my mind. How the hell is this a reading! Homestuck spends literally all of its time tearing biological essentialism the fuck down, whyyy why WHY would anyone expect anything different here.

Take it as a warning about falling too far down your echo-chambery fandom-slash-sjw “activist” rabbit hole. All of this nonsense is grounded in readings so far removed from the comic they may as well be writing their own story.

anyway i usually dont bother with this stuff but i had a moment of weakness, sleep-deprived tumblr blogging is a bad idea. relatedly: dont drink the discourse kool-aid, kids. it’ll fuck you up.