big version of a shipping clock i made for reasons

ohhh you know what time it is

Last night I dreamed that I was at the movie theater but before the movie started there was a live action Homestuck short film and I was like "oh, this is where Hussie is taking the Homestuck franchise next huh"... it mostly involved the God Tier alpha + beta kids flying around acting happy? Then I realized that I recognized the voice of the actor playing Dirk, and it was behold-theturtle AKA @mintchocolatechimp

assuming that a HS epilog happens at all (OF WHICH I AM VERY SKEPTICAL), what are the odds that Hussie just farms out production of it to the Hiveswap writers and/or the Paradox Space crew and has little to no input himself

(and then everyone who was so desperately waiting for the epilog immediately declares it non-canon)

jake: I just dont know what to get him! Believe it or not in all the years weve been dating weve never actually been together on our anniversary.

kanaya: Well They Say You Give The Gifts You Wish To Receive

kanaya: For Example I Was Perplexed By How Rose Repeatedly Gifted Me Baked Goods Despite My Own Limited Affinity For Sweets Or Human Food Or Food At All

kanaya: But Then I Realized This Was Because She Values Cooking As A Demonstration Of Care And Wished To Be Cared For In Kind

jake: I hardly think i quite have the chops to build him a murder robot!!

kanaya: That Gift Was Probably An Outlier

jake: No he mostly just builds really fucked up robots for people!

jake: I guess he wrote jane an entire christshitting novel for her birthday one year, but i cant reach that level of circumambulatory blowhard pseudoacademic wank. Even with a dirk living in my brain!

kanaya: You Are Relying Too Heavily On The Word “Gift”

kanaya: Are There Some Things He Does For You In Your Day To Day Life That He Thinks You Will Like But Really They Are Probably More For Him

jake: I think im getting it... So you mean all those times he left pre-recorded messages explaining that he poisoned me while i was sleeping and id only find the antidote by sifting through a pile of used syringes, or yanked my teeth out in a certain order to read the combination numbers written on them, its because *HE* wants to have a jigsaw death trap escape room experience?

kanaya: Thats

kanaya: Sure I Guess That Could Be A Thing That He Wants

kanaya: Were You Actually Poisoned

jake: Guess not! I never solve the puzzles in time and im still kicking like dolph ziggler. Do you think dirk would like to be actually poisoned?

kanaya: Well If I May Be Honest At This Point In Time Im Doubtful I Have Experience That Could Be Relevant To Your Situation

>Kanaya: Rise from the ashes

Inspired by this pic by grithanatos. Also a more triumphant sequel to “Cremation” here… 

truly a defining experience of my generation will be to look back and wonder if you will ever feel the same intense highs and lows, the same wild sunk-cost fallacy of emotional investment, the same feverish attempts to somehow make sense of it all as when you were, like, super into homestuck

march 8, 2020

Very interesting that the “foul” word being covered up here is good-bye. This is a bit on-the-nose, even for Strider.

we’re the motherfucking pony pals, and we’re here to fuck. shit. UP.

The blame credit for this goes to @naked-bee, Duckface, and, of course, the ever glorious @sonnetstuck. and also andrew hussie i guess? and jeanne betancourt? these credits are getting too long

I’ve finally gotten around to reading the most recent HS books. Here is some of Hussie’s commentary on Dave and swords:

It's a complex symbol. First, there are two symbolic modes, an "Unbroken Sword" and a "Broken Sword," which have meaning in relation to each other. The simplest translation is that the unbroken sword is "The fully manifest, wholly embraced heroic arc. Suppressing reservations, answering the call, putting the tough training to use, despite the cost to oneself." Versus the broken sword, which is "the fractured heroic arc. An incomplete, broken self stemming from past trauma. A conflicted semi-refusal of the call, resulting in pursuit of combat and quest-fulfillment navigated through half-measure, wavering resolve, and compromised investment." Only one of these symbols can be fully embraced, and it means something to embrace one over the other. It becomes a statement Dave is making about himself, and the type of person he wants to be. [...] There are ways of reading into what this means. Maybe it's that making yourself whole as a person isn't so simple? Maybe it's that Dave embracing the broken sword as his heroic talisman corresponds with his embracing who he is as a person, flaws and all? Those things aren't going away, and they contribute to making him who he is.

The hero who wields an unbroken sword will swallow his traumas, spill blood, and self-harm in the course of his heroic duties. Dave consistently declines to follow through on such measures. Contrast this with Dirk's "heroic" path, the way he operates, and how he notably has an "unbreakable" katana.

I remember at the time [S] Collide was released people seemed uncertain about exactly what the symbolic significance of Dave breaking Dirk's katana was supposed to be; but these notes make it pretty clear it's about Dave helping Dirk to finally embrace the "broken sword" path (i.e. open up more and be vulnerable about your problems instead of trying to be the flawless hero who’s always in control). Makes sense.

It’s 4/13 - the last 4/13, as with the completion of the Detective Pony movie Homestuck is officially over.

I have prepared a poem to mark the occasion.

MC ESCHER x HOMESTUCK - happy 413!!! 
(TITLES: Weightlessness in the Canonical / Horrorterrors in Cue Ball / A Perfectly Impossible Cube / i warned you about the penrose staircase bro! i told you dog!)

Hussein Bazaza, spring 2018

There’s nothing more disappointing than a found family dynamic that ends with “And then they all went their seperate ways and remembered their wacky found family fondly” like no shut up they all live in the same place and their lives remain interconnected forever

100% Serious real Pesterquest theory

MSPA Reader teleports Jane to Alternia to meet their other friends.  Before they can make introductions, Terezi walks over.  She and Jane already know each other.  They briefly attended the same high school.  Davesprite was there.  The logistics of this are never explained, and once the characters move past it the conversation is never brought up again.

Thinking about the troll dancestors and their apparent uselessness to the plot, I came up with this little schema:

Beta kids = The point in childhood where you’ve just barely edged into adolescence, the part that’s awkward but before the emotional maelstrom begins. You still don’t quite have enough perspective on life to see where you truly stand in it, but awareness is creeping up on you in uncomfortable ways. E.g. you realize you’re starting to realize that you don’t really understand your parental figure and it’s worrisome.

Trolls = Adolescence just a year or two later, in the maelstrom proper. The bad years of middle school and early high school, when friendships are made to be broken. Parental relationship is more equal but unhealthy.

Alpha kids = The later years of high school, but a particular path only some kids take. Specifically, never breaking out of your earlier habits. Instead of being remade through socialization, you retreat into your shell. In their case, socializing only online (not that they had a choice). Parental figure totally absent other than leaving you supplies like the parents of a hikikomori leaving lunch outside his door.

Dancestor trolls = Young adulthood, as in people who are independent but still barely formed, but seen from an outside perspective. Basically the older siblings of you and your friends in their early 20s. People you might have looked up to when you were younger, but now you see the downsides of being a stoner, or an SJW or whatever like them. They’re barely in your life except for the time when you dated one of them and it inevitably ended badly. But this is the final transitional figure from childhood to adulthood, seen from someone who is not yet an adult but is finally getting a sense of what it will mean when they are.

Looking at it this way, I can see what the thematic purpose of the dancestors was supposed to be, although that doesn’t excuse the way they were actually used in the story and how much space they took up.

Also for what it’s worth, the Hiveswap Friendsim trolls are mostly just twentysomethings.