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homespork-review · 5 years

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Spork Introduction

CHEL: Hi! I go by Chel, they or she pronouns, and I’m the one spearheading this project. I still like at least a fair percentage of Homestuck, but after the ending disappointed me a great deal, I got bitter, and when Hussie pissed me off further by Godwinning himself, I decided to do something about it. I’m no longer angry about it, but I felt I’d benefit from picking out what I hate from what I love so I can focus on the latter without annoyance getting in the way, and also to benefit my own writing efforts.

BRIGHT: Howdy! I’m Bright, and I got into Homestuck fairly recently. After ploughing through the archive and digesting for a while, I realised that I was thoroughly annoyed by how something enjoyable had fallen apart so comprehensively. I am looking forward to the time-honoured practice of ripping the story apart to identify its weak points and shout at them.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hello, I’m Failure Artist (call me FA for short), she/her/herself pronouns, and I’m so old-school they burned the school down. I was introduced to Homestuck via Something Awful’s Webcomic thread. I checked the old mspadventures.com site and the latest update was [S] John: Bite Apple. After watching that bizarre piece of animation, I had to know what the hell happened before then. I found I enjoyed the wit of the comic though I didn’t really care much about the plot. It was only when Act 5 came around that I became a serious fan. I currently have 122 Homestuck works on Archive of Our Own. I have a lot of free time, you see. I am very disappointed in how Homestuck ended. Possibly there was no completely satisfactory way it could end but it still could have been better. I feel like Hussie was a juggler who threw a lot of balls into the air and ignored them as they fell to the ground and some fans think not catching them was a master move since you’d expect he’d try to catch at least one. Sadly, lots of the problems with the ending are embedded deep within the canon.

TIER: Hi hi. I am Tier, a very late newcomer to the wonderful world of Homestuck (2018 reader!) and average fan overall. I love this webcomic to bits, but the low points are deep and I enjoy seeking out what the heck went wrong. Not particularly analytical myself, hope that's cool!

CHEL: Cool by us! We’ve already done plenty of analysing before we started, as you may realise from my Tumblr’s “homestuck ending hate” tag (at @chelonianmobile).

FAILURE ARTIST: But let’s put that aside for a moment and talk about the good stuff.

Homestuck is incredibly innovative. It is the first true webcomic. It’s not just a print comic posted online. It uses not just still images and words but also animation, music, and interactive games.

Homestuck is the latest adventure in the series MS Paint Adventures. MS Paint Adventures started as a forum adventure. In forum adventures, the OP acts as a sort of Dungeon Master and other forum members give them prompts. Andrew Hussie’s previous works under MS Paint Adventures were Jailbreak (which is little more than Hussie dicking with the prompters in scatological ways), Bard’s Quest (Choose-your-own-adventure), and the actually-completed Problem Sleuth. Problem Sleuth lacks the music and animation and despite the weird physics shenanigans is a simpler story than Homestuck. The characters aren’t even two dimensional.

Homestuck (and the previous MS Paint Adventures minus Bard’s Quest) are set up like adventure games. Adventure games are where the player is a protagonist in a story and are usually focused on puzzle-solving though sometimes there’s combat. In the beginning, these games were purely text. The player would type what they wanted to do and the game would spout back text describing it - assuming the computer parser understood you.

CHEL: Oh god, I HATED that. I wasn’t around for the heyday but I’ve played a couple and

Pale Luna

was barely an exaggeration (horror warning).

FAILURE ARTIST: As graphics improved, adventure games started using them, but the commands were still in text. Only later was the point-and-click interface created and players didn’t have to guess what exact sentence the computer wanted them to type. Homestuck and the other MS Paint Adventures play with that frustration while paying tribute to the genre. The game within the comic uses RPG elements but the comic itself is set up like those good ol’ adventure games. In the beginning, Homestuck was guided by commands from forum members. Even after he closed the suggestion box, he used memes and fanon created by readers.

CHEL: How good an idea this was varies, as we’ll be showing.

We probably don’t need to describe Homestuck much more. Everyone here who hasn’t read it will doubtless have heard of it. Almost everyone with a Tumblr will have seen fanart, almost anyone at a convention will have seen cosplay. Shoutouts have been made to it in professional works such as the cartoon Steven Universe, and the Avengers fandom latched onto “caw caw motherfuckers” as a catchphrase for Hawkeye to the point that it’s now often forgotten it didn’t originate from there.

FAILURE ARTIST: The Homestuck fandom term “sadstuck” for depressing stories/headcanons somehow leaked into other fandoms. Using second-person is actually cool now and not just for awkward reader fics. Astrology will never be the same again.

CHEL: Now, in the interests of fairness, we will say that when Homestuck is good, it’s amazing, and it’s good often. The characters at least start out appealing and are all immediately distinguishable; even with the typing quirks stripped, it’s easy to tell who said what. The magic system is one of the coolest I’ve ever seen, who doesn’t love classpecting themselves and their faves? Hussie also shows a lot of talent for the complex meta and time travel weirdness, and it is fascinating to watch a timeline thread unfurl. And whatever else one says, it’s a fascinating story that’s captivated millions. I think it is deserving of its title as a modern classic.

However, as the years have passed, we have ended up noticing problems, big and small, and they nagged at us until we decided it had to be dissected. Our intention here isn’t to tear apart something we loathe entirely. It’s to take a complex work and pick out what works from what doesn’t. As I said, when Homestuck is good, it’s very very good. But when it’s bad, we get problems of every scale from various offensive comments to dragging pace to characters ignoring problems and solutions right under their noses to an absolute collapse of every theme and statement the comic stood for before.

The comic is ludicrously long; eight thousand pages, or thereabouts, to be specific. Officially one of the longest works of fiction in the English language, in fact. Naturally, we can’t riff that word by word in any timeframe short of decades, and we can’t include every picture, even if that was permitted under copyright law. Instead, as comics have been done here before, we’ll recap most of the time, and include sections of dialogue and pictures when particularly relevant to a point.

Here are the counts we’ll be using, possibly to be added to later if we find we forgot anything. Most of these counts will only start to climb post-Act 5, but we’ll be keeping track of them from the beginning. Most of them could have been fixed with a decent editor, which is sadly a hazard of webcomics, but still frustrating to read.

TIER: Note: we started this endeavor months before the thought of a "technically not but still we'll count it" set of canon epilogues were a twinkle in the eyes of the fandom. That is, by the way, a whole 'nother can of worms that will be dealt with at a later date if that ever comes around. We're judging Homestuck the Webcomic as a whole, so no after the credits stuff is to be noted for whatever reason.

ALL THE LUCK - Vriska Serket constantly gets a pass or gets favored over every other character. This count is added to every time she pulls some shenanigans with which others wouldn’t get away. ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY? - Sometimes it’s not entirely clear whether a thing is supposed to be taken seriously or not. We don’t require hand-holding through every joke, but when, for example, we’re supposed to take one instance of violence seriously while a similar case is supposed to be funny, this count goes up. CALL CPA PLEASE - Instances of creepy sexual behaviour (and perhaps particularly gratuitous acts of violence) from the thirteen-year-old cast. Now, mileage may vary on this one. We won’t pretend that thirteen-year-olds are perfect pure angels, especially thirteen-year-olds growing up in what is openly supposed to be a nightmarish dystopia. However, when full pages focus on said behaviour, there comes a point of it being very uncomfortable to read. Clarification: does not refer to cases where the adults do something heinous, this is strictly when the kids do. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS - When an offensive joke or comment is made, particularly when not justified by the personality of the character involved, or presented in the narration as being okay. GET ON WITH IT! - When the pace drags. ‘Nuff said. Hazard of the format, but it makes archive bingeing very annoying. GORE GALORE - For unnecessary and/or excessive torture porn which is treated less seriously because it features troll characters, and therefore less “realistic” blood colours. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC - When the comic does something mentioned in How Not To Write A Novel, and it isn’t justified by the webcomic format. HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING - Characters repeatedly neglect to do something about or even react to terrible happenings, either because they don’t care even if they should or they forget they have the capacity. Not necessarily anything to do with their magical powers, either - characters ignore personal problems that are right under their noses, too. IN HATE WITH MY CREATION - For reasons that are unclear, Hussie chose to create characters he apparently hated writing, or at least ignored in favour of others. Every time he’s clearly disrespecting one of his own characters, this goes up, whether it’s by nerfing their powers or changing their personalities. RELATIONSHIP GOALS? - Romantic relationships in particular get fumbled quite often. Ship Teasing is used with skill, but that skill tends to be lost when the characters actually hook up. Fumbled friendships and family relations can also come under this heading. SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER - When characters other than Vriska get away with something morally questionable. Covers everything from sexual harassment to not trying to save people from the apocalypse. SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS - Later on in Homestuck’s run, Hussie tried to make up for the offensive humour and casual -isms counted by Clockwork Problematykks above. How successful he was at this varied. This count goes up whenever an attempt at progressivism is waved in front of the reader but doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. WHAT IS HAPPENING?? - When the already confusing plot kicks it up a notch. Admittedly this is as much a selling point of the comic as it is an issue, but either way, we’re going to keep track. Points will be added to when it gets confusing, and taken away when a previous confusing thing is explained adequately. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM - What is shown about Alternia repeatedly contradicts what we’re told about how different it is from Earth. For example, trolls still use heteronormative terms even after it’s established they reproduce bisexually, and the demonstration of the class structure doesn’t always add up. This count goes up every time that happens. It also goes up every time something happens which strongly implies Hussie was envisioning the human kids as white, despite his later claims that they were always supposed to be “aracial”, and every time their economic statuses don’t add up either.

#homespork #homestuck #review #literary critique #sporking #let's read #reread #homestuck meta

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cookiefonster666 · 5 years

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Thoughts on the Homestuck Epilogues (Tumblr Edition)

I predicted the future!

Might as well adapt this Blogspot post I made about a week ago into Tumblr form, why not. With a few minor changes. I don’t like using Tumblr but I figure it’s a good additional platform to share my surprisingly positive views on the Homestuck Epilogues.

The epilogues have a lot of controversial content, most of which I avoid talking about here.

BRIEF SUMMARY

4/20, read through Meat: epilogues pretty good

4/20, started Candy: what the fuck

4/21, stopped: aaaaaaaaughhhhh bluh i hate everything

4/24-ish, continued Candy: epilogues alright i guess also i am sad now

4/27-ish, finished: I LOVE HOMESTUCK

BRIEF-ISH SUMMARY

Meat was a wild ride that started as cool plot stuff and things that make you go "OH FUCK", continued as basically chapters 7-9 of Detective Pony (which I naturally enjoyed a lot), and ended as a mess of sheer chaos and destruction. My thought process ended as, "oh duh, this is the bad ending, candy must be the good ending". I was in for quite the nasty surprise.

I quit reading Candy just a few pages in. It didn't take long for it to suddenly become the weirdest fanfiction ever. Frustrated, I started skipping and searching through later parts and got rather salty when it turned out both sides were the "bad ending". I saw firsthand what vfromhomestuck meant by "clear your whole week": this is not something most people can just read in one sitting. Then I recovered a few days and read Candy in earnest, in a somewhat anachronous order and with many parts read multiple times. Slowly, I started to hope that the epilogues would be followed up with a true happy ending for real this time. I may or may not have written a snippet of some form of fanfiction paving the way for a happy ending.

Once I finally accomplished the equivalent of reading Candy as intended, I got hit HARD with feels. I accepted that the epilogues have many issues but as a whole (not just the sum of parts) are an absolute masterwork, sometimes because of those issues. It didn't take me long to realize the brilliant duality either. Meat is a side-splitting metafictional farce that (for me at least) is impossible to treat as anything resembling a story of people doing things. Candy is a tale of FEELS, and I don't use the word FEELS lightly. FEELS means I almost cried, like I did when I watched the Futurama episode Luck of the Fryrish.

DETECTIVE PONY AND METAFICTION

Before I move on and talk about the CHARACTERS, I'm going to discuss the meat epilogue's resemblance to sonnetstuck's Detective Pony. I love everything about Detective Pony, more than almost anything else in existence. My abnormal love for that godlike fanwork probably skewed my perception of Meat a bit. Starting from page 17, Dirk takes over the narration then fights over it with god tier Calliope; both do rather questionable deeds and Dirk was hit hard by fans as a result. Seeing other fans react towards that character with such hostility gave me a very distinct feeling of "what, am I missing something?" Dirk's takeover felt like a lengthy work of comedy to me; a story that never strips away from the fact that it's fiction, in a vein near identical to that of Detective Pony. I like to think I am in the right for perceiving that arc this way, because I think everyone who has read Homestuck should read Detective Pony. One of the epilogue authors read Detective Pony after writing the epilogues and was struck by it; I take this accidental mirroring of (post-)canon as proof that sonnetstuck understands Hussie's ways through and through. I like to think I have a solid understanding of Hussie's ways by now, but this guy is on a whole new level.

That said, the meat epilogue gets a bit carried away with metafiction to the point of making me think, "god when will things go back to normal". Towards the end of Detective Pony, Dirk goes through an existential crisis followed by a powerful revelation, and then resolves to do whatever it takes to erase his abominable creation. But the meat epilogue ends with (both figurative and literal) crashing and burning; no ultimate redemption for our poor Strider. Homestuck doesn't usually have much of a problem with getting carried away with stupid nonsense; maybe a few rare occasions in cases like Hussie's self-insert scenes. But getting carried away is a major criticism I have with cool and new web comic. I love that comic to death, but the parts that take a long time to dwell on the cool and new characters being creepy or weird are a chore to go through. o (the author of CaNWC) seems to have improved in that regard; the cool and new trolls' arc is much more to-the-point with such nonsense.

Meat getting carried away with metafiction is a major cause of my initial burnout shortly after starting Candy. I was sick of this mass dump of metafiction and expected Candy to be a refreshing change of pace. Haha, if only. My fault for reading Meat first. At night I sometimes ponder in envy of the parallel universe me that started with Candy. Actually I don't do that, I just thought it was a funny thing to say. Though I have on more than a few occasions sat in bed fantasizing about how awesome my life probably is in some parallel universe. What point was I making again? Oh whatever, it doesn't matter. I guess I should write a similar overview of Candy's narrative nature. Here goes:

LUCK OF THE FRYRISH AND SADSTUCK

Sad things are sad.

^ There, that's my candy overview. How hard was that?

With the two summaries out of the way, I figure the best way to dump out my residual thoughts on the epilogues is going character by character. I won't do every character, mostly just the ones who played large roles and were already characters in Homestuck proper. I'm sorting these characters in tiers of how well I think the epilogues handle them, mostly from worst to best.

N-TIER

N is not the lowest tier; it's the tier that cannot be ranked. N stands for two things here: "Not Applicable" and "Narrators". Naturally enough, two characters fit into that tier.

Dirk Strider: I've already talked about this guy quite a bit. I have a fondness for Dirk's character and I think his dialogue and narration in meat do a good job portraying some ascended, ultimate version of his character without straying from his voice, the tone that makes him Dirk. That said, I'm a bit peeved that "normal Dirk", the one iteration of Dirk Strider that isn't total bonkers and just wants his friends to be happy, doesn't exist in this story. In Candy, Rose suddenly loses the memories of her alternate selves, but for some reason Dirk keeps those memories and soon after commits suicide; he's left out of the picture until Candy's postscript, which I guess is a reasonable balance considering his indulgence throughout Meat. But why is only one of the succulently verbose Strilondes let off the hook? Some readers imagine Dave as the comic's protagonist and Dirk as the antagonist; I've toyed with that idea myself and can see it symbolized, but it just feels so wrong to me. Maybe the authors did too good a job writing Dirk for me to be complacent with such a shift in role. His conversations with Rose were just as delightful as I had hoped and they aren't weighed down too much in light of his shift in role, at least not for me.

Alt Calliope: The narrative rival to Dirk, as I mentioned previously. I'm not totally sure what to say about her, other than that one could see her as a counterpart to let's say Anna Harley; a necessary piece in the Detective Pony analogy. Alt Calliope's narrative arguments with Dirk were hilarious and that's all there is to say on the matter.

G-TIER

I'm lucky Gamzee's name starts with a G, because this means I can give him a tier of his own worse than F. As an individual arc that is; he'd get a much higher rating when taken as part of a whole.

Gamzee Makara: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I despised reading every word that came out of this guy's mouth as soon as his """redemption arc""" started. But I can clearly tell that was the point and that the suffering that is reading his words has a much greater purpose. Before you deem me a masochist or the kind that insists everything is "bad on purpose", know that I am neither of those things but really do mean what I say here. Gamzee's role in Candy draws tension between individuality and the whole. Reading this guy's hogwash is suffering in and of itself, but ultimately it serves a role of showing us how fucked up the world of Candy is and helps the reader experience John's existential crisis with him.

F-TIER

As before, these tiers are strictly about character arcs in isolation and not the big picture. This tier is home to none other than the legendary...

Jane Crocker: Boy did I predict the future on that one. A bit like Dirk, I would've liked it more if in only one epilogue did sweet innocent little Jane become such a monster. No way in hell am I going to run through the asshole things she does; it's a load of sensitive topics I'm not comfortable discussing in any capacity. Instead, I'll say that if I had to choose only one epilogue where Jane ran through her crazy presidential campaign it would be Candy; as with Gamzee's arc, this campaign serves well as a part of John's existential crisis. What's weird here is that in Candy she originally cancelled all this, but later ended up basically doing it anyway with Dirk gone. I can imagine Jane going back to normal in Meat, maybe? Or in the hypothetical "true ending" I discussed prior.

D-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier. Mostly the characters that don't do much and I wished did more.

Meenah Peixes: Needed more screen time, god damn it. She survives the Furthest Ring apocalypse, nabs the Ring of Life, then makes her way to Candy Earth and joins Karkat in the rebellion. Maybe it makes sense that her and Karkat teaming up in war is relegated to the background, to show how far the shouty guy has come in comparison to everyone else. I'll come back to this point when I talked about Karkat.

Roxy Lalonde: Doesn't do too much in either side, but does go through some touchy topics I'm not sure what to think about; I'm most certainly not ready to talk about those topics now. And regardless, Roxy's role in the epilogues is better discussed when I talk about John and Terezi a few tiers up.

Calliope: Doesn't do all that much either, full circle to being the exposition alien with mysterious morality. I'm actually pretty OK with that. Certainly beats out the slog of endless "ur pretty" conversations. Calliope pretty much fades into the background on both sides, which is sad but fitting.

(About pronouns: I'll keep referring to Roxy and Calliope as "she" unless I find reason to talk about the little those two do in Meat. I just avoided using pronouns in those paragraphs above.)

C-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier, but with a more positive "meh" than before. It's the "meh" that indicates lukewarm satisfaction rather than annoyance at mediocrity.

Jade Harley: Really should be on a lower tier, because she did dick squat other than being horny and painfully oblivious to all the nonsense going on. But I'm a sucker for Jade being "Jade" and was happy to see even a trace of that early in Meat. As before, I'll avoid the controversial topics surrounding Jade in the epilogues, aside from pointing out that this post reads very different now.

Karkat Vantas: This guy's a bit of an odd spot. His leadership role is addressed in the absolute last way I expected. Could've gotten more attention from the story I suppose, but damn if his character arc didn't get the most triumphant return imaginable.

Kanaya Maryam: I touched upon Rose and Kanaya's relationship when I discussed the "buddy system" in my first epilogues post and I still stand by what I said there. Her strong attachment to Rose is integrated well into Meat without seeming like fluff or defining her entire character, because she actually does other things there too. In Candy they remain a stable happy relationship and I guess I'm cool with that.

Aradia Megido: Role is the same as ever and I'm fine with that. Death fangirl who works for predestination and has ambiguous morality. Her arc with alt Calliope ends with a cliffhanger that is easily the biggest reason to hope for a follow-up to the epilogues; if such a follow-up were to happen, I really look forward to hearing more from Aradia.

Sollux Captor: Sollux is by nature the other guy, that's an immutable fact of life. He doesn't do much other than snarking at whoever's nearby and I can't imagine it any other way.

Jake English: If not for a scene near the end of Candy, I'd put Jake at D-tier. Through all of Meat and most of Candy, Jake's role is one of the oddest spots of all and it's pretty hard to pinpoint what the authors were going for, lest I dabble in controversial topics some more. But Jake's scene with John near the end of Candy is uniquely touching and makes the most out of his role as a second John. He moves in with John, bringing his son Tavros with him, and encourages John to reconcile with his former wife and make amends of sorts, ultimately giving a small portion of the cast a pseudo-happy ending. That whole part of Candy made me tear up.

Talking about the really GOOD parts is a perfect point for me to move on to...

B-TIER

Stuff that didn't make it into A-Tier, which I've reserved for what struck me HARD.

Dave Strider: In both epilogues, Dave's behavior generally seems based on how he acted in Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, which is actually a LOT better than it sounds and hell if I know why that is. Dave's rants about politics and sexuality now have a charm I can't quite describe. His absurd fixation specifically on the economy matches shockingly well with the nature of Homestuck. The three-way romance between him, Karkat, and Jade goes in very different directions on either side, which I'll discuss a bit later. The epilogues even made Dave x Karkat an actually decent ship, how crazy is that??? The writers deserve a big badge of honor for doing that. Not sure what to say about specific things, but Dave was really well-written in an unexpected way.

Rose Lalonde: Again not sure what to say about anything in specific. Just really enjoyed reading Rose on both sides of the story. Shoutout to the heartwarming moment with John near the end.

A-TIER

Oh boy. Oh boy. Time for the big guns.

Vriska Serket: My mind hurts to process just how good Vriska's appearance in Candy was, after leaving the Furthest Ring and landing on Earth. First she talks with John rather aggravated, then she brutally murders Gamzee, then she sits down and has an honest talk with her ectobiological clone raised by Rose and Kanaya, and in the end gets in touch with Terezi which leads to a cliffhanger. The story somehow created the PERFECT balance of sincere reflections and typical Vriska flavor, which was deeply lacking in A6A6I5 with its horrific polar opposite versions of Vriska. Two Vriskas converse once again late in Candy and this time it's incredibly endearing and almost feels like an apology for the controversial Vriska/Vriska encounter back then. I accept the apology with open arms. Why is everything always so wonderful?

John Egbert: <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3. WHY IS EVERYTHING ALWAYS SO WONDERFUL? John gets a deep meaningful existential crisis arc in both epilogues; both cases I easily latched onto and found a bit of myself in. I absolutely loved seeing him and Terezi interact as a duo of people with some perception of canonicity; I'll get back to that point soon enough. John's marriage to Roxy not working out is a testament to both his issues with canon and Roxy's issues dealing with harsh situations. Roxy latches onto John and their son as a huge carefree pushover and he doesn't like that at all. And that's actually cool with me because John x Terezi is better in every way, as the epilogues made me realize. If that wasn't enough, the end of Candy spoils our little hearts by having John reconcile with Roxy anyway and give hope for a better future. Though a part of me does want to see a true happy ending where John and Roxy date with their delightful dynamic from their first interactions, I'm beyond pleased with the epilogues' handling of John either way. Swaying deep into some rather sad territory while remaining 100% faithful to his character that I've always loved so much.

Terezi Pyrope: FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES. Every scene with Terezi in the epilogues was so goddamn awesome. Her interactions with John were such a blast to read, with exactly the mix of humor and touching aspects that make both of the big John/girl ships what they are. How did the authors pull it off, making deeply emotional scenes without ever sacrificing that goofy Terezi flavor???

S-TIER

S in rating systems these days is way misused in my eyes. Normally A is meant to be the highest rating and S is used for the very rare absolutely exceptional case A doesn't do justice. But now you see shit like SS, SSS, SSSS everywhere like one S isn't the ultimate badge of honor? S is a rating I'd gladly give Detective Pony and may or may not give cool and new web comic. Same goes for my very favorite Futurama episodes. I'd give a few of Neil Cicierega's works that rating if I'm feeling up to it. In this post, I've reserved the S rating for:

Barack Obama: THE BEST PART OF THE EPILOGUES, HANDS DOWN. His conversation with Dave near the end of Candy is perfect in every way, it really transcends words. Humor, emotional touching, plot revelations, and straight up "Homestuck feel" are blended into the most delicious melting pot imaginable. When Dave confesses that he might be gay and explains troubles in his three-way romance, Obama responds with a truly inspiring speech about identity that raises an excellent point about the differences between the epilogues involving aspects of people that may seem immutable to some. I think Obama's speech leaves a powerful message I never expected Homestuck of all things to convey so well. I hope readers take that speech's message into account, though I know many will probably be a bit naive about it.

If you refuse to read the epilogues at all costs, then I implore you to read Dave and Obama's conversation anyway. You won't be disappointed.

CONCLUSION

epilogues good

that’s all there is to say on the matter

though if you don’t like them that’s also fine

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #epilogues #epilogues spoilers #homestuck epilogues spoilers #i predicted the future #i love john egbert #i love terezi pyrope #i maybe love vriska serket???#obama obama obama #johnrezi #yes good

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corvid-knight · 6 years

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The Definition of Home

Dave and Karkat had a life on Earth C. A family.

One fucker with a firebomb changed that.

Now Dave's the only one left. And he can't handle that.

(jesus this is so fucking sadstuck)

(Read it on ao3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12936201)

Thirty seconds.

That's all it would have taken.

Thirty seconds sooner, and you'd have been inside with them. Thirty seconds, half a fucking minute, and maybe you couldn't have done anything to stop this but you wouldn't be here, alive, alone, watching the house you and Karkat designed together blaze and collapse and feeling blood drip off your fingers. Yeah, you guess you avenged Karkat and the kids, killed the guy that just tossed some kind of bomb through the window, but that changes nothing. Nothing.

They're gone.

They're fucking gone.

A hand comes down on your shoulder, and you spin around, sword snapping up to defend or attack, but it's just Jade. You still almost drive the blade through her chest before you can stop yourself.

Her mouth is moving, but you can't hear anything over the ringing in your ears.

You lipread your name. You see her trying to ask you some question. You see that she's crying—you aren't crying, not yet, there's blood on your face but no tears—and you can't do this.

You're done. You can't do this. Not without him.

The Time powers are always waiting somewhere in your head, even if you haven't used them for so fucking long. You grab them, don't even think where or when, and before Jade can get a tight enough grip to keep you with her you're somewhere else. Somewhere dark, empty, silent, and full of stars.

You don't think you're ever going to be able to go back home.

You haven't seen Dave for twelve years.

It still fucks you up to think about him. He's not dead, Jade promised you that she saw him, tried to talk to him right after shit went down, but he's been somewhere else this whole time. (Or probably somewhen else, knowing your bro.) Wherever or whenever he is, he won't let himself be found.

(God knows you tried. All the splinters of yourself you know of, you sent out to search for him. Everyone's tried, Roxy spending weeks trying to use her Void powers to call him out of nothing, Jade hunting him through as much of the universe as she can reach, Jake doing his best to warp reality and probability to bring him home. None of it worked.)

He's gone. He's not dead, you still haven't stopped hoping he comes home, but you've admitted to yourself that you might never see him again.

Except you come out of your room one day, and there's a familiar red-clad figure curled up on the floor by the couch.

Your first thought is that you're fucking hallucinating.

Your second thought is that he's going to use his Time powers and be gone as soon as he realizes he's not alone. You really, really wish Jake was here to block that possibility, but no way are you leaving to go find him. Instead, you mentally cross your fingers and move across the room as quietly as you can, kneeling down next to him.

"...Dave?"

For a second, he doesn't move at all, and the thought that he found some way to kill himself despite being godtier crosses your mind. You don't even know what you're going to do if that's true.

Then he shifts, pushing himself up off the floor and looking up at you. He looks horrible—his shades are gone, you can see the new grief-lines, the shadows under his crimson eyes so deep that they might as well be a permanent part of his face. You wonder if he's slept at all in the twelve years since you've seen him.

"Yo." His voice is even worse than his face—rough, unused, not quite soft enough that you can't tell how broken he is. He clears his throat before saying anything else, but it disant get much better. "I...hey. Hey, Dirk."

"Hey." There is absolutely nothing you can say that would be the right thing. You still have a few hundred things you want to say to him, ask him. What comes out of your mouth isn't the best question, but it isn't the worst one either. "Did you go see Jade yet?"

Dave flinches at that, hands balling up into fists in his lap as he looks away from you. (Is he going to hit you? You'd let him, if he tried.) "No. Not gonna." And, even quieter, "Shouldn't've come back."

He's going to leave again.

You grab his wrist, as tight as you can without worrying about hurting him, and he looks back up at you in confusion. "Don't you fucking dare think that, Dave," you tell him, shoving your own shades up out of the way with your free hand before taking his other hand. "We've all been looking for you, we all wanted you to come home. What happened wasn't your fault."

Dave shudders, hard, closing his eyes for a second before he manages to get control over himself. He doesn't try to get loose from you, though. "F-fuck whose fault it was. He's...they—they're still..."

For maybe a full minute there's no sound in the room but Dave's uneven breathing as he tries to keep from sobbing. Eventually, he just gives up, pulling his hands out of your grip to cover his face. You expect him to fight you when you wrap your arms around him, but he doesn't resist at all, just leaning into your touch.

You want to ask him if he's okay, but you don't think he's capable of reaching that state anymore. Instead, you hold onto him and wait for his shaking and soft, pained sounds to stop.

"Let me go," he says, finally, almost too quietly to hear.

"Not until you see Jade." He needs to know what happened with her. You'd tell him, but you don't have the right to do that.

"I can't."

"You need to. She's got some shit you need to know, you've already made her wait twelve years—"

"God, I thought it would've been longer...I can't fucking measure the time shit anymore, Dirk." He sighs, shaking his head and finally taking his hands away from his face, hesitantly wrapping his arms around you. "It's. It's been—you don't even know how long for me..."

"Shh. It's okay." Dave's words break up into another sob when you reach up to brush his hair back from his face. "Where did you go?" Please let him think about something that isn't what he lost, even for just a minute.

"...end of the universe, I think." He sniffles, curling against you and pulling his cape in like it's a security blanket. You can't help but notice that it's ripped, worn-out in a couple places—you didn't even know that that could happen to godtier outfits. "Some place...some time...with fewer stars to wait between. I didn't want to see anything...wanted to remember, at first...after a couple decades I just wanted to forget..." He shudders, again, one hand clutching at your shirt as he closes his eyes. "Couldn't forget. Don't really want to, I guess...want it to not fu-fucking hurt..."

"I'm sorry," you tell him, as gently as you can. He's crying again. When you move to adjust him so you can stand up, lift him off the floor, he weighs less than he ever did.

"Wanted to come home," he whispers, and now he's more or less limp as you carry him into the other room and sit down on the bed with him. "I'm so fucking tired, bro."

"I know, Dave. You're home now." He won't let you go, so you lie down and pull him closer. "Go to sleep."

"Don't leave me...I'm so fucking sorry, don't leave me..."

"I'm not going anywhere. I promise."

timaeusTestified (TT) started pestering gardenGnostic (GG) .

TT: Jade. TT: Jade. TT: Jade, check your goddamn phone. TT: Jade, I realize that I've said you could assume messages from me aren't usually urgent but this is the fucking exception.

GG: why? whats going on?

TT: Dave's back.

GG: what?? GG: oh my god, dirk! is he okay?

TT: Physically? I think so. TT: Mentally and emotionally, he's...really fucked up. From what I can tell, he was gone for maybe a couple hundred years. Spent all of it as isolated as he could get. TT: Which is "completely."

GG: and he just came back to you??? GG: i mean no offense but i would've thought he'd come here first...

TT: He doesn't know about her, so I guess he just decided to go to his blood family. Or he wasn't thinking at all. TT: Like I said, he's fucked up right now..

GG: he doesn't KNOW?! GG: you didn't tell him?!. GG: dirk strider. you tell him, right now.

TT: Jade, he's asleep. And I'm not waking him up, he needs the rest. TT: I'm going to try to talk him into coming to talk to you when he wakes up.

GG: you are going to tell him as soon as he wakes up, you mean?

TT: No. TT: I'm worried he'd just. Panic. Leave. TT: He's already ran away from everything once. TT: I don't want to lose him again, Jade.

GG: well i don't either but he deserves to know. GG: he needs to know.

TT: I know he does. But I can't tell him. TT: Like I said, I'm going to try to talk him into coming to see you. If I can't do that, I'll message you and you can both come here and talk to him.

GG: you should just tell him...

TT: Yeah, well. TT: I'm sorry. TT: I need to stop texting you before I accidentally wake him up.

GG: ...fine GG: tell him i missed him, okay?

TT: You can tell him when you see him.

timaeusTestified (TT) is offline.

It takes a week to talk Dave into going to see Jade. When he realizes that she doesn't live where she used to, right next to where his house used to be, it gets a little easier to get him to do it. You try to convince him to start out by calling her, texting her, anything that'd ease him into it, but every time you press too hard you can see him getting overwhelmed, see him start to think about leaving, and you have to let it go.

Eventually, though? He gives up and agrees to see her, mostly because you will not shut the fuck up about it. You text Jade yourself, tell her you're coming, and drag Dave out the door before he can change his mind. The trip over is evenly divided between reassuring Dave that yes, this is going to be okay, she doesn't blame him for what happened, and clandestinely texting Jade on what to definitely not say to him.

Jade probably doesn't need the prompts, but she's kind enough to recognize that you're dealing with stress by micromanaging, and just lets you do it.

Dave stalls at the door, stopping dead and looking over at you. He still hasn't replaced his shades, and you've neither asked him what happened to them or offered to find him another pair. But that means you can see the fear in his eyes. "Dirk, I can't do this—"

"Come on." You reach past him, hit the doorbell, and wrap one arm around his shoulders, just in case he decides to use his Time powers. You're not letting him leave without you. "You can do this, just calm down. It'll be okay."

"...yeah." He takes a deep breath, but does literally the opposite of what you hoped he would, forcing the panic off his face and going tense instead of relaxing. Damn the Strider tendency towards stoicism. He tries to shrug your arm off as Jade opens the door, but no fucking way are you letting him do that. "...uh. Hey, Jade."

Fuck, she's already almost crying.

"Eleven years and all I get is 'hey?'" The words are scolding, but her tone's definitely not, and you let go of Dave when she glances at you so she can pull him through the door and wrap him up in a hug. "We missed you so much, Dave, we were all so worried about you..."

Dave has not relaxed even the slightest bit, but after a second he does, carefully, put his arms around her. "I...sorry. 'M sorry," he mumbles as you step inside as well and shut the door. "I missed you too. I'm sorry. You shouldn't have—shouldn't've worried, I'm..."

You can't quite hear what Jade whispers to him, but it sounds a bit like "shut up" and the fact that Dave goes quiet bears that out. She holds him until a little bit of the tension goes out of him, than steps back, wiping her eyes. "I have something to show you," she tells him, shooting you a less-than-angry glare. "I tried to get Dirk to tell you, but he wouldn't do it and you weren't talking to me."

"Sorry." You and Dave say it at precisely the same time, and Jade just shakes her head.

"Come on." Jade grabs Dave's hand, leading him through into the kitchen, and you follow a few steps behind.

The girl coloring at the table is familiar to you—you've seen her almost every day of her life, after all, taken turns raising her with everyone else. You never realized just how much she really does look like Dave, though—the similarities to Karkat are easier to notice, the same short horns, the smile that's hard to coax out but so, so beautiful, how her short Strider-white hair tousles up into utterly unmanageable spikes. Now that you have Dave in the same room, though, you can see him in her face, especially when she looks up, smiles at you, and blinks at Dave in confusion for a second.

When you look over at him, his face is completely blank, mouth half-opening and closing a few times before a choked, unintelligible noise comes out.

Your niece—Dave and Karkat's second kid, the only one that survived the fire twelve years ago—tilts her head a little, studying him for a minute or two. Then a look of pure joyful surprise lights up her face, and she slides out of the chair and takes a step towards him. "Daddy?"

Dave nods, but he doesn't move. Maybe can't move. You and Jade both push him towards her at the same time, and he staggers a bit before taking another step forward and wordlessly holding out his arms. As soon as he does she shrieks, launching herself forward onto him hard enough to knock him back a step, wrapping herself around him as he scoops her up off her feet.

Jade's really crying now. Dave's holding onto his daughter like she'll disappear if he lets go, sobbing out unintelligible words. You're about to cry yourself, but you pull one of the chairs away from the table, gently guiding Dave to sit down before he can just collapse on the floor.

He lets go of her with one hand when you do that, wrapping his arm around your neck and pulling you down enough to press his lips against your cheek for a second. "Thank you, fu-fucking—oh my god, I'm so s-sorry, I—"

"Shh, Dave. It's okay." You give both your brother and your niece a quick, tight hug, then step back to stand with Jade again. "You glad to be home?"

He looks up at you, looks down at her, and just nods. Even though he doesn't say anything else, the amount of raw joyful gratitude on his face is all the answer you need.

#Davekat #dave #dirk #Jade #KARKat is fucking DEAD

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heir-conditioning · 7 years

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a kind anon asked me about my yung venuz sadstuck headcanons so guess what kids that’s what you’re getting today

SO. yv. during gun godz, you’re playing as yv (to my knowledge this has been confirmed) and moving up through the current gun god’s mansion place thing, and the end of the game, you kill the current gun god and assume his position as the true OG king of Venus. but this begs the question, what was yv doing before he was ruling Venus? it couldn’t be as simple as fuckin bitches and gettin moni, as in character as that is for him.

now. its been a pretty consistent headcanon throughout the NT fandom as far as I can tell (thanks to the critical chair mod) that every planet has its own gun god, so this begged the question to me, why doesn’t earth have one? I forget exactly how I came to this headcanon, but based on earth having all sort of symbolic imagery based on basic shapes that earth was more or less sort of a burial ground for gun gods, a place where they could leave their bodies and have their powers sort of bleed out naturally without causing any significant damage to the universe. because gun gods are pretty fuckin powerful my dude. but back on point, gun gods of all planets use earth as their final resting place, and their influence on the planet shows through in human society and how we interpret/create specific symbolism for things. its just how the balance works, and the previous god of Venus understood that very well.

for clarification’s sake, the previous god of Venus was NOT the triangle you fight at the end of Gun Godz.

someone (i think on reddit??) pointed out that it’d be weird if the final boss of Gun Godz was YV, because he’s, well. a gun god! he shouldn’t have been that easy to beat or let alone kill. so the natural conclusion to take from this is that it wasn’t YV, and was instead an usurper to the Venusian throne--the throne that was rightfully YV’s when he became of age--as well as the title of Gun God. but since the usurper didn’t have the bloodright, he couldn’t really become a gun god, and could only sap what power he could from the previous Gun God and use it as his own after he imprisoned her on earth.

yes, her. the previous Gun God and queen of Venus was YV’s mother--we know her through the Gun Godz soundtrack by her rap name “Moist Mother”.

Moist Mother, or Super Bass Bayonetta as I call her, was a character that sure didn’t need to get fleshed out but heck if I didn’t do it anyway. she is a very powerful Gun God, being one of the few to be able to create the Platinum Weapons (her signature being the Platinum Crossbow) and she had a power over Venus’ water system, alluding to her rap name. before the coup, venus used to be a lot more lush, but after her imprisonment on earth all of Venus’ water went underground, creating the desert on it’s surface. venus’ population had to turn subterranean after the fact, save for YV’s mansion, because no one other than a gun god could live on the surface.

now, the usurper knew he couldn’t kill Moist Mother, because she was just too powerful. imprisoning her on earth and then sending her son to jail was about the best he could do. and he did! even got the IDPD in on it to make it look legit. YV, at this point not able to create golden weapons was incarcerated, and Moist Mother was imprisoned on earth in its past (they’re interdimensional police guys this isnt that much of a stretch) what was basically a life sentence. however, this made a lasting after effect on earth from that point on; Moist Mother being still very much alive and also with an affinity over water created a dangerous psuedo-wormhole in the area of the ocean she was imprisoned in. we know this area as the Bermuda Triangle, and she’s still trapped in there by the time the nuclear apocalypse happens because TIME TRAVEL’S FUCKIN WEIRD

but. yv. yv already didn’t trust cops because no gun god trusts the cops and he does what his mam says like a Good Boy(TM) but after his time in jail he’s been hardened and ready to fight. and we know the story of gun godz at this point, yv breaks out of venus jail, fights his way to the top, and kills the bitch what nearly ruined his life. to add insult to injury, YV doesn’t let the usurper die out on earth, but instead throws him into space where he turns into the asteroid belt. YV takes up the throne of Venus and picks up where his mama left off, and the IDPD can’t do much about this or else they out themselves as the ones who left this whole coup happen in the first place

SO YEAH THATS. about the gist of it i think!! YV is a big momma’s boy and pushed into adulthood given an unfortunate set of time travel circumstances that gotta get fixed

#nuclear panda #i'm p sick right now so bear with me if i'm sounding rambly #i'#i'm sure i'm forgetting a lot of things but this is the gist of it

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