i saw someone say "damara sexually harasses people, mituna says slurs, and meenah dated a 16 year old so all the alpha trolls are equally bad people" to defend their conkri nextgen fluff au. hell world hell planet hell forever.

Does intent mean nothing to people? Framing? Nuance?

YESSS more love for alternative history!!! There’s nothing better than hitting someone w/ ‘Moroccan Gibraltar’ or something similar and watching the confused humorous wonder as you explain how a thing came to be.

Alternate History On Fucked Up Earth worldbuilding is so fun, because that means with Sovereignstuck I can look people in the eyes and say "Texas and Mexico are now one country called Texico because Texas was part of Mexico originally anyway" and people will nod thoughtfully, and need no further explanation. Then I say "Britland, which we know as England, is a fascist military dystopia with an archaic blood-based class system that you cannot move up or down because you cannot change the physical composition of your blood" and they nod again but start asking questions, and then I say "Wolftopia, a country we know as Germany, has a government ran by and based in Furry Law, and you get your first government-made fursuit at 13. Every year you must attend at least one con. The tickets are tax funded and provided by mail free of charge" and they just go nuts. "What we know as Brazil, Florida, and Australia are all largely populated by lizard people due to the climate" is fine, no questions asked. But I mention "Mormonism is still a thing" and everyone is screaming in agony. "What we know as Russia is largely Jewish in population and pretty normal aside from the extreme climate" is fine and doesn't need any explanation, but I say the words "The Kingdom of Ohio" and everyone's in the Yamcha death pose suddenly. Fantastic.

sorry if i should be able to figure this out myself / this has been asked before, but how did you choose your vers. of louie's surname?

Neither are applicable! You're good! Besides, I love getting asked questions, lol.

I chose it because I thought it fit him. "Louie Wilson" just fits his vibe of Poor White Southern Country Boy. Completely normal dude working at a shipping company he hates. I have met this man before.

Yo hey are you taking commissions in that experimental style you did for the Spot? If so I would Love smth of my atsv OC Spotter, a Horrible Fusion between The Spot and Spiderman.

Yeah, sure!! I actually added a new listing onto my Ko-fi Commissions Page just for this- it sounds fun!!

Here's the link to the page!! Thank you for your interest!!

I love. You Dave of gal

Dave of Gal my best friend Dave of Gal.

thank you for hating cronus. ive had to block every person on this site who just draws sexy fanart of him. also exploring kankri as a bigot hiding behind progressivism. people should have been able to read that porrim disliking him as an avid feminist and him shooting down her dissection of real issues in beforeus and not just uh… bubblr discourse as proof that hussie wasnt just dumping on the idea of sjws.

No problem! The fact that I am in the minority hurts. Sentencing everyone to infinite infernos for the grievous crime of being wrong on the internet.

"Meenah dated a sixteen-year-old" Yeah no it's worse than that. It's so much worse than that. (Vriska) is physically AND mentally thirteen years old. THIRTEEN. And dating a NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD. (All the ghosts are implied to not have aged mentally since their death.) Even if you think that the ghosts have aged mentally, they start dating (at least in the comic's chronology) two years after (Vriska)'s death, which means she would have been FIFTEEN. Dating a NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD.

Meenah, a fully-grown adult troll, having definitively reached the age of majority, is dating the Alternian AND Beforan equivalent to a thirteen-year-old.

Not to mention that Meenah expresses romantic interest in a fifteen-year-old Karkat.

It is SO much worse than just "Meenah dated a sixteen-year-old". She dated a thirteen-year-old. There is a six-year age gap between Meenah and (Vriska). SIX. YEARS. And they're both TEENAGERS. BARELY even teenagers (on both ends of the scale).

I think it's weird that people would make an argument that "the ghosts have aged mentally" when, like... The Alpha Trolls haven't. That's kind of the point. They're still stuck in vicious cycles of teenage drama and brainrot. And it's verging way too close to the logic of "She's mature for her age" employed by pedophiles and the "Thousand-Year-Old Loli" trope, also employed by pedophiles.

It's also weird because (Vriska) isn't the one that says she's 16.

That's regular Vriska.

It's not unlikely that Meenah knew how old (Vriska) was. I get this info based on the fact that she says that Vriska's age of 16 is "a little more respectable", presumably than... You know, (Vriska). Who would be 13.

Let's not forget she had a weird thing with Karkat. Also 13.

She's a sleazy little bastard and she's aware of it to an extent. At the end of the day, blaming (Vriska) or even Vriska for Meenah's behavior is fucking ridiculous. The former especially, because frankly, what the fuck. That is a 13 year old grooming victim. Yeah, Meenah was unhappy with the relationship and felt bad about it, but she was still the one that... Did the grooming.

Visual Metaphor Enjoyers, eat your heart out.

Saw a sad comic about how no one wants to be around Cronus 💀. Like uh yeah I don't blame them he'd probably sexually harrass them, tf ?

I think it’s normal to not want to interact with a guy who would relentlessly sexually harass you out of the gate and then sling verbal abuse at you the moment you turn him down. That’s normal. You can’t make that avoidance angsty from the perspective of the harasser in question without coming across as Posting Apologetics.

This is because you would very literally be Posting Apologetics.

Making an abuser a sympathetic sadboy and turning them experiencing social consequences because of them abusing people into angst material is abuse apologism.

GOW MANY LBIORALS. DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LOG BY BuLB.

NONE. THEIR TO BUSY ??? THEIR JENDER.

what are some common character misconceptions that you often see get thrown around in the fandom?

re: the misconception poll

can you clarify what you mean when you say "Dirk being uniquely mentally ill and not just 16 and isolated"?

i'm not sure i'm following the entire point

Most of Dirk’s issues can be summarized with “16 year old”, “isolated”, and/or “Prince of Heart”.

People tend to make him “uniquely severely mentally ill” by religiously professing that he is the worst off and either making him cut to the bone and/or straight up just putting him in an asylum. He’s often singled out as the most mentally ill Homestuck character, and when you question why, it’s always the most overblown shit you’ve ever seen. You wind up with takes like “Dirk is schizophrenic and only drinks flat sodas because the carbonation whispers terrible things to him” and people will just, like, nod along to that, and then keep adding onto it to make it progressively more and more severe.

The way Dirk’s mental illness is treated is often just a little bit nauseating, but not in a fun way. It feels oddly fetishistic a nonzero amount of the time. If I may be petty, the way some people handle Dirk is basically the Homestuck fandom’s equivalent to that brand of Yandere fetishism that’s literally just a deeply uncomfortable and inaccurate portrayal of BPD. It just kind of gives me the ick.

Is he mentally ill? Yeah. Is turning making a 16 year old boy’s mental illness catastrophically worse into a voyeuristic sport just kinda weird and creepy? Also yeah.

Hello, pardon and I don’t want to be a bother but I would like to ask for your take on something. And if you’re not down to answer this question, that’s completely fine, you seem to make large opinion posts on a noteworthy basis so I understand if you don’t have the energy or motivation to give an opinion right now.

But I wanted to ask for your take on the ethics of enjoying Homestuck in the modern day. Many people such as myself and seemingly you as well enjoy Homestuck but are painfully aware of all the gross stuff in it. And as I see the comic pop up in more and more dni lists, with people claiming that enjoyers of Homestuck are supporting these things inherently, no matter the fact that most of us stand against Hussie and attempt to reclaim Homestuck as something to express joy and our identities in, it makes me wonder more and more the ethics of enjoying Homestuck. Since you seem to have thoughts on the matter, I was wondering if you’d like to share your take.

I once again want to stress though, absolutely no pressure to answer. I am not entitled to your time or hearing your opinion. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. I was just asking in case you wanted to speak about it.

Hi, Anon! This is a very interesting question, and you were right to assume I have thoughts on it. They might not be as long and complicated as some of my other essays, but they still exist, and I would quite like to share them. Thank you for the opportunity.

My opinion on The Ethics of Enjoying Homestuck is that I believe it's perfectly fine to do so. I also think it's perfectly fine to dislike, or hate, or not want to associate with it or any fans of it. This is a personal boundary set by and for the individual, and it's not my business to question, nor my place to cross it. However, I don't really agree with the way some people go about communicating or enforcing this boundary. I've seen some people put Homestuck and Harry Potter on the same level before. I've seen some say that enjoyment of either piece of fiction is, at least in part, comparable. I heavily disagree with this- and the fact that this is a point that comes up shows to me that there's quite a few people who don't actually fully understand why so many people are saying to stop supporting Harry Potter.

The conflation of the two things reads to me as if some believe that Harry Potter has been "cancelled for having a problematic creator"- and that's not wholly true. Yes, J.K. Rowling is, by definition, problematic, and she is the creator of the Harry Potter franchise, but people have drawn such a hard line against supporting the series not just because J.K. Rowling is Transphobic, but because she has honest to god legislative power. She is, as it stands, currently the backbone of the TERF movement, and is spending a lot of time and money to ensure that Transphobes dominate the government. Monetary support of Harry Potter pools into her funds, which adds to her ability to further Trans Genocide. Communal/Fandom support of Harry Potter increases her visibility as a public figure, which adds to her ability to further Trans Genocide. J.K. Rowling has made very clear statements saying that she takes any support of the Harry Potter franchise- any at all, including Queer/LGBT+ Friendly fan content- as support of her beliefs. Support of Harry Potter is a method of legitimizing and validating Transphobia, and is being used as a way to further Trans Genocide.

If J.K. Rowling was just an average Transphobe, the outcry would not be nearly as severe, and the line wouldn't be nearly as clear cut. It would just be disappointing, bring to mind the phrase "same shit as always", and many would make the personal choice to distance themselves from it. But that's not the reality we live in. We live in the reality where J.K. Rowling has sway on the government, and is getting real people hurt and killed.

Andrew Hussie, creator of Homestuck, however, is just some random asshole with no political power outside of his own vote. Yes, Homestuck is filled with plenty of unsavory elements- random out-of-place interjections of Hussie's own past bigotry included- but at the end of the day, Homestuck has no influence over government action. Hussie has no tangible political influence, and does not want to have tangible political influence. We don't even have evidence that Hussie still holds the same beliefs as he did during and prior to the creation of Homestuck. This is just some random indie comic, made by some random guy in 2009. J.K. Rowling is dangerously close to billionaire status, and using that power for evil.

It's fine to like something that's not very morally clean- or something made by a not very morally clean artist, during a not very morally clean point in time in a not very morally clean place in this world. It's okay. The fixation some have on this is OCD-inducing. The best that can be asked is that one recognizes the bigotry, and doesn't perpetuate them. That's all. You can read, watch, play, and enjoy just about anything, as long as you don't make the more unsavory elements out to be a good thing. Don't start acting like Racism is awesome, or Antisemitism is cool, or Transphobia is based, et cetera, and you'll be totally fine.

The ability to find value in something impure or unsavory is a valuable one. Some may not want to associate with that, or find the particular flaw in the work in question to be too uncomfortable to stomach, and that's fine, too. Not everyone can just sit through Era-Appropriate Casual Homophobia or Racism and come out feeling fine enough to keep going. I'd argue- hope, even- that most feel at least a bit bothered by such things. It's all about personal tolerance levels. No one's committing a moral crime by either enjoying it or not wanting to even look at it.

Do you have any thoughts on Equius

Equius is a fucked up kid who has done a lot wrong, but he is still a kid. He reads as a startlingly real portrayal of a pubescent autistic boy with an unhealthy and shaky grasp of his budding, overwhelming sexuality, with a concerning amount of influence from the internet. He is the result of adults failing him, and exposing him to hardcore fetish porn at an age too early. This is a real kind of guy that exists. A very common one, who I have met, like, at least 40 of.

Like Eridan, he feels like a kid stuck in a pipeline — except instead of the alt-right pipeline, it’s fetishism and hypersexuality. He feels like a pretty solid example of how getting involved in NSFW spaces online as a child can both deeply fuck up your sexuality and completely destroy your perception of what consent is, and what is and is not okay. He doesn’t have a grasp on boundaries whatsoever, and while this manifests in ways that are quite honestly horrifying and uncomfortable — like constantly projecting his Caste-Play BDSM fetishes onto nonconsenting, unsuspecting individuals, and… The things he did to Aradia — I cannot help but view him as an autistic boy having a rough time of puberty who got groomed through the internet over-exposing him to pornography at an early age. He’s deeply sympathetic to me from that angle. Again, I have met this kid. Homestuck is fantastic at presenting characters that are exact archetypes of real people you have known, be it personally or not. People you would have either been close friends with in middle school, or terrorized by in a random chat room on the internet. Maybe they were even you! There’s a complete nonzero chance someone is reading this who has played the role of Equius in their youth, who is totally fine and healthy now. And if that’s true, and this describes you… I’m proud of your growth!

Back to Analysis- His ardent Hemoloyalty is fascinating, also. I’ve written about this before, but there’s something compelling and very realistic about how his bigotry comes from a place of deep insecurity, rather than pride. I find bigotry coming from insecurity to be more common than it coming from overt pride. Many fictional bigots have such a genuine ego to them, a fine layer of paint labeled Badassery, when for the most part real life bigots are total losers with nothing better to do than worry about… Where someone was born, or how much melanin they have, or what’s in their pants, or whatever.

I get why people don’t tend to be fond of him, but the disquieting parts of his character are both very deliberate choices and also shockingly… Earnest, in a weird, Hussian fashion. I’ve never quite seen a character with his traits get portrayed before. He’s easy to work with, analytically speaking, you just have to be willing to stick your hands in the uncomfortable muck that is messy teenage sexuality. Many aren’t willing to, which is fair! But many also mislabel his uncomfortable traits as not intentionally uncomfortable, or simply a product of Hussie being weird and wrong and having bad opinions. This… Just blatantly isn’t the case. Sometimes fiction isn’t comfortable on purpose. Big whoop.

I think Equius could’ve been quite a fine person, had he been given the room to grow up. He’s like Jake to me in the sense that he’s one of the only characters I genuinely wouldn’t mind seeing expanded upon more, provided he be taken seriously, and not completely sanded down.

Alas.

thoughts on eridan?

With the way people talk about him it's like everyone forgets he's a deeply mid 13 year old white boy in the alt-right pipeline.

What a about Caliborn makes him so cool in your opinion?

Go keep track of his progression as an artist alongside his development as a character and think about how these are intrinsically linked. Ponder the fact that he is both at his most obnoxious and at his most amateur when trying to ignore his unique style explicitly brought on by his canonical learning disability and mimic others rather than truly be himself. Consider how his explorations of art are genuinely cool, not a bad thing, and how we get some really neat multimedia stuff out of it.

Caliborn may be a shitty little teenage wretch but the way he is portrayed as an artist and as a disabled person is both really good and very real. It comes from a place of love. His learning disability is handled with a degree of gentle care that you would not really expect from Hussie. The place Caliborn's art style ends up in is so fucking sick and I actually unironically love it. The technique he uses is really interesting. It's intentionally reminiscent of an Etch-a-Sketch, and I'm a little obsessed with it.

This is so fucking good. I mean this seriously. He's right - that is some Pure Art Skill.

I just love the way art is employed as a necessary component of his character arc. It's so neat. You don't see visual cues that intricate too often. Usually it's just in character design, but watching his entire art style and even his medium of choice change several times over is fascinating. You can really tell Hussie had a lot of fun with him. He's also just really, really fucking funny. Just about every sentence that comes out of his mouth is Grade A Absolute Fucking Gold, and I'm honestly obsessed with his dynamic with Dirk. This may get me thrown to the wolves, but I personally think Dirk and Caliborn have way more chemistry than Dirk and Jake. Maybe that's because we actually see Dirk and Caliborn interact on screen... Lmao.

Necessary Topic: I don't know why people hate him so much. Like, I understand hating his misogyny and fatphobia, sure, but those are deliberate character points and not just Hussie-isms. I see people act like Caliborn is indicative of Hussie, as if Homestuck-era Hussie wasn't, like, famously really fucking good at writing female characters and absolutely not a misogynist. Caliborn's a parody of Homestuck Anti-Fans - which is a term we really ought to bring back, god, anti-fans are absolutely still a thing and good lord they're everywhere - who really were just shitty little bigoted haters. Calliope, the opposite side of his coin, was representative of, essentially, "the best kind of Homestuck fan" - an ultimately sweet young teen girl who willingly dedicates almost all of her time to this piece of fiction she loves so, so much, who draws a lot of fan art for the joy of it all, has OCs that don't fit any of the design conventions in Homestuck whom she pairs with the characters in it for innocent fun. Someone who has a lot of theories and analyses, writes a lot of fanfic, and is genuinely just having a lot of fun. Everyone loves Calliope. Even the characters in Homestuck love Calliope. They just think she's the cutest, sweetest little thing they ever did see. Caliborn was the worst kind. He sucks on purpose. No one likes him. He is a total nuisance to characters he is by all means trying to impress. I love them both.

It's also just funny that he's a canonical Intersex Transmasc who is probably Gay and this has, like, no relevance to anything about him, really. So no one really talks about it. Gender Hilarious, Gender Nefarious.

Absolutely love seeing someone who's right about Damara, she deserved so much better. I really liked the brief interactions we see where she's talking to the beta trolls, where she's being a whole lot more friendly. Girl just wants some friends and she deserves some folks who treat her good.

Damara deserves the world. World’s most out of pocket way of dealing with assholes and getting them to never want to interact with you. Rufioh can absolutely eat shit, he deserves to catch WAY more flack for the way he treated and still treats Damara than he does. No one ever really shines a spotlight on just how terrible he is and was, because they’re just too busy fawning over how supposedly attractive he is. He’s pixels. He’s literally pixels, I don’t understand how this is getting to people so bad. The Homestuck fandom would fuck an active blender if it was gray and it’s age started with a 1.

Damara’s canonically very sweet and does want more friends, she’s just rightfully angry at the other Alpha Trolls for how they treated her like a punching bag. She’s allowed to be hostile, Meenah tried and succeeded in breaking her mentally and emotionally just to try to goad the others into being more competitive. We need more attention on that. She deserves so much better. Sadly, Rufioh’s “Psycho Ex” lines worked on everyone. >:/