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autumnblogs · 3 years

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Day 44: Preoccupied about the same things as Trolls, revisited

Welcome back y’all! Before we get into this, I want to talk about the Condesce/Meenah as a parallel character to Mom Lalonde/Roxy. You can read a bit about @mmmmalo‘s takes on Openbound, and why they think that Meenah is symbolically Roxy’s Doppelganger here.

I want to call attention to some specific similarities between them, and while I think it’s a bit of a stretch, Homestuck draws parallels between characters all the time.

Both the Condesce and Mom Lalonde are matriarch figures estranged from their potential offspring by dire circumstances and servitude to a patriarchal authority and his time-spanning plan - for the Condesce, that’s English obviously, but for Mom Lalonde, that’s Grandpa Harley - servitude to his design renders her a wreck of an alcoholic forced to endure the end of days with no means to stop them from happening, living with a daughter who wants nothing to do her.

Both Meenah and Roxy are rebels against a repressive order, inclined to shirk their assigned Role in service to someone else’s master plan, but ultimately, through some roundabout means or another, give service to it anyway (for Meenah, scratching the game, and ultimately ending up English’s glorified slave for eons in the end; for Roxy, at first refusing to play Sburb in hopes of spiting the Batterwitch, but ultimately ending up playing into her schemes anyway).

They are both rebellious spirits who are repeatedly forced to participate in Paradox Space’s Alpha Timeline all but against their will by hegemonic forces, slaves to a system that they exist in perpetual rebellion against, and by the end of the comic, they both get to help strike a decisive blow against the ultimate foe. Unfortunately, unlike Roxy, Meenah is ultimately the kind of person who chooses at practically every occasion to continue cycles of abuse instead of breaking them. There is ultimately no possibility of reconciliation between these estranged sisters.

So, I see a lot of the Alpha Kids in the four Alpha Trolls who appear in this flash. As the Faux Heroic Himbo, the parallel between Rufioh and Jake is obvious. I don’t think that it’s fair to characterize Jake’s relationship with Dirk as being “cheating on Jane,” though that’s probably how Jane feels about the whole situation; I’ve always gotten the impression she feels entitled to him.

More after the break.

The imagery here is an obvious parallel between Jake and Dirk’s big damn kiss, and Rufioh and Horuss’s - but between Rufioh’s bravado and general obliviousness, and Horuss’s clear triangular parallel with Dirk and Equius, we should expect that the situation is switched here - Dirk = Horuss, Rufioh = Jake.

While it could easily just be a bit of extraneous characterization, I’m inclined to regard Rufioh’s characterization of the women in his life as “Dolls” especially because of his symbolic proximity to Lord English. (He is at best one degree of separation from him, as Jake English’s Alpha Troll Doppelganger) - and the fact that Puppets and Dolls are pretty much synonymous with each other in terms of the way that English interacts with them.

More extremely obvious parallels.

Both of the Zahhaks have hangups about dating down the Hemospectrum, and as long as we’re examining Dirk through the lens of the Zahhaks, allow me to speculate; I think that part of the reason Dirk chooses not to directly identify with the label of gay is less aloofly progressive futurism, and more that he is uncomfortable with his own sexuality.

As a guy who repeatedly appeals to reactionary ideals and rhetorical devices like “Western Civilization,” “Reason,” “Logic,” maybe there is a degree to which we can read Horuss and Equius’ self-repression through the haemospectrum into Dirk suffering from internalized Homophobia.

This is a real long shot, but I’ve always gotten the impression that Dirk is a bit of a bottom. Maybe his desire in building up Jake into a powerful counterpart, like English’s desire to transform Jake into a powerful rival, is built out of a desire to be Oedipally usurped by a former pupil - to have his Eromenos turn the tables, and become the Erastes in turn, in power-dynamic terms.

In Classical Civilization, homosexual relations weren’t unheard of, and were pretty reasonably common, but it was seen as shameful to bottom, especially for someone of a lower social standing than you were (Julius Caesar was mocked as the Queen of Bithynia when it was rumored that he bottomed for Nicomedes IV, which was a serious attack on his political career).

Wild speculative tangent over.

Now this is interesting; Meenah is unwittingly drawing a parralel between Damara and Vriska. The main commonality between them is that, like Vriska (and also like Rose, and also like Jane - who is the fourth and final character in this particular set) her spite and resentment is used as the vector for English’s manipulation of their setting.

Like Vriska, Damara deliberately sabotages the ability of her session members to win, helping to create a powerful foe who forces a session to be scratched.

Like Rose, Damara descends into nihilistic substance abuse to cope with feelings of emptiness.

Like Jane, Damara’s actual feelings of emptiness come about as a result of feelings of rejection in relation to betrayal from within her close friendship circle.

Ironically, while Damara’s reaction is far worse than Jane’s, her anger is actually probably far more understandable - Jane is not entitled to Jake.

The situation between Horuss and Rufioh is also similar to what will resolve between Jake and Dirk shortly - they are just basically incompatible, or at least they will be until both parties do some work on themselves, but a combination of an oblivious party who can’t stop talking about himself, and social timidity on the part of the other prevents the situation from resolving amicably.

“As Long As I Know That I Am Free”

Sometimes, encountering our ancestors doesn’t have to be a source of tension, anxiety, expectation, and fear. Porrim models parental love for Kanaya in a way that, unusually for ancestors in Homestuck, is purely beneficial for her younger counterpart.

It’s okay to identify with roles and identities that have been corrupted or hegemonized by our culture. There’s nothing intrinsically bad about being a man, or about being a woman, as long as our embodiment of those roles is emancipatory to us.

Kanaya can still be a Mom, if that’s what she wants to be. Violence and money aren’t the only form that power can take.

Sometimes, learning the right lessons is just a matter of pausing for a second and being critical of all narratives; deciding for ourselves what we want to be. It’s the lesson that Porrim has to teach Kanaya.

This is just objectively true.

Aranea positions Rufioh as both a foil to Cronus, and to herself, further strengthening the Jake as Rufioh parallels.

What I think is really interesting about all this, is if we want to read the other three trolls as Jake, Dirk, and Jane, that makes Meenah the Roxy of this group! And while Roxy has never been vicious or deliberately cruel, there’s a certain resonance between her persistent hassling of Jane, her meddling in the Jake English Sweepstakes, and the disaster that it provokes, and Meenah’s bullying - I even early on in my first readthrough took a disliking to Roxy because of what I viewed as exactly that - bullying her counterparts, assertively trying to get them to behave the way she wanted.

https://homestuck.com/story/5401

Oh man, where to even begin with Karkat riding off into the Penis Sunset. Like, the Sun in relation to Dave is persistently an icon of Bro’s surveillance of him, and then there’s his burgeoning affection for Karkat (he mentions story time with Karkat in the third Openbound suggesting that he actually took Karkat up on his offer to read through trashy Troll Romance).

Like, there’s probably something in Dave’s troubled psyche that’s on display here but damn if I know what it is. Maybe he’s ruminating on the fact that Bro would probably not be too accepting of his relationship with Karkat, hence the juxtaposition of the symbol of Bro’s hostility with the imagery of Karkat riding a dick?

https://homestuck.com/story/5404

I don’t really need to explicate much on what Rose is trying to say, I think but just in case, here’s a little rundown of what she’s trying to explain.

The apple is a symbol of an irreducible idea. Many ideas are reducible - as molecules are reducible to atoms, and atoms are reducible to quarks and stuff, so are ideas reducible to increasingly more abstracted and basic units.

The closer to notionally irreducible a thing becomes, the more difficult it becomes to express an idea, until at last, that which is truly irreducible resolves, and reveals to us the true, intrinsic nature of reality. For every complex idea, we can refer to more fundamental ideas, until at last, we arrive at an idea, which when probed, responds back simply, “It just does that.”

This, I think, is that to which we ought to give the name of God; that force so fundamental that it truly does just do that.

In the world of Homestuck, Symbols, and with them, Rituals - stories! Are manifestations of the primeval and irreducible ideas. Everything else is a universe in orbit around the Divine - the Aspects themselves, perhaps, or something more fundamental than the Aspects even.

What makes reducing these stories to the irreducible principles that they allude to so difficult is that you’re effectively trying to explain the electromagnetic force by comparing it to rubber bands, when in fact, the electromagnetic force is what makes the rubber bands behave that way in the first place.

As a Ritual, Rose’s drinking is pretty similar to John’s Dad roleplaying - an attempt at unity with Her Mom. Another empty signifier.

https://homestuck.com/story/5405

Dave is already really embracing his new role as the actually most sincere and straightforward member of the party. Lovin’ it.

It’s kind of nice that Aradia and Vriska are getting along now. That’s gratifying for personal reasons.

Ah yeah, I forgot that was ever addressed officially.

https://homestuck.com/story/5435

The man

HASS the ring.

https://homestuck.com/story/5440

And with the depressingly empty Void session established via a single flash, we shall conclude for the evening.

Tomorrow, we’ll get to know our little villain.

For now, it’s Cam signing off, Alive, and a little Annoyed that I wasted a couple hours playing the Outriders Demo this afternoon. Seriously, what an aesthetically bleak and kind of mediocre-looking class-based cover shooter.

#liveblogging #commentary #pederasty mention #richard feynman

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