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#archaicequilibrirum25
triptychgardener · 1 year
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In regards to that harleycrockerbert post, there’s something about how homestucks first real flash is there to describe the weirdly desolate, isolating feeling of the suburbs, with the audio of wind whipping down the street with chimes. I feel like that was meant to be a bigger theme somehow but got dropped
YES, EXACTLY! Like, that flash is the literal title card for Homestuck! It's notable that, whenever we see June/Jane's neighborhood, there's almost no one around. Just row upon row of near-identical houses, and besides from one possible neighbor, there is absolutely no "community" that exists there. All the kids, to one degree or another, grow up in a place of physical isolation. Dave being stuck on the top floor of a huge apartment complex, Rose being sequestered out in the middle of the woods, Jade on her island, but June's isolation is that particular American Suburban Desolation that's captured perfectly: a neighborhood, ostensibly for people to live in, but completely devoid of life. Even small details allude to this particular interpretation: why the hell does Dad Egbert have to constantly take his car to get more baking supplies? It doesn't take him that long to get back, but it's clear that a car is necessary for getting around in the suburban sprawl. The sort of archetypal nature of the tire swing, attached to a single, scrappy tree in the front yard. The continuing use of "can hardly be considered to be a proper [] at all!" applied to what would be considered normal for a Proper American Suburban Family. I could go on! And this is a much bigger discussion, but isn't it interesting that the game "Sburb" mainly functions through building up an endless, tumorous growth of the same housing, over and over again? One might even say that the goal of the game is to create a Sburban Sprawl so overwhelming that it makes a whole new universe, which certainly has... implications for the world beyond. I'd need to do a thorough reading of like, the Epilogues to see if that's actually conveyed/dealt with, but these continuing motifs of the suburbs never really leave homestuck even as it becomes more fantastical. I do kind of wish there was more textual stuff in the comic that dealt with that, but I think Egbert (and a lot of the kids) in Homestuck proper lack the necessary context and introspection at the time to grapple with the world that came before.
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