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#that's fundamentally dave to me
ottiliere · 2 years
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i am absolutely obsessed with your alpha dave because you just hit that itch for me when it comes to the idea of guardians being the worst version of what their kid version could become. i've always wondered that, if the alpha guardians had the same concept the beta guardians did, how would they be-- especially dave, cause the striders relationships with their guardians are always so like. volatile? just the idea of dave growing up with no one to give him proper attention or care or love, (1/2)
and instead of bettering himself he just turns to the constant attention and eyes of the public when he becomes famous, because he NEEDS attention, he needs people to want him and crave him and look up to him and shit. and alpha dave just going down this spiral of doing more and more wack shit to get the public's attention, doing hard drugs with nasty circles he shouldn't be getting himself in, cause he's constantly chasing after the euphoria of people "loving" him. thats all thank you for listening to me go on and on like a maniac. tldr alpha dave being the worst version of who dave can be is an idea i am absolutely obsessed with partially due to your interpretations of him. ur art and ideas are stellar about the striders (2/2)
oh my god I love you. yes this very much how i envision alpha dave to be and it really falls into my stringent devotion to the concept of "universal karma" i.e. where beta dirk strider was so aloof and in his own head alpha dave strider must exist as an extreme direct inverse of that. needy, demanding, overbearing. this man, much like beta dirk, was not built to be a guardian. I think he kind of sucks super bad and it's so awesome. i could go on and on and on about this but I already have another ask in my drafts about him that’s hit 1k words with no end in sight and who knows when that’ll be ready. thank you for your kind observations. picture me smiling at you right now.
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#alpha dave strider#ask#lucy art#I would have given him a coke nail here if I thought I could’ve make it look good#and also. like. tangentially. but very related.#the reason i view him as a cocaine addict isn't just because ohhhh hollywood superstar of course he does drugs#though that definitely enables his access#coke is a death trap for those with no spine and no self esteem because it makes you feel on top of the world.#if you're miserable and spiralling if you're insecure whether or not everyone in the room hates you you can snort a line#and abruptly perceive yourself to be the hottest shit ever#have read stories of many doing coke and thinking they're the life of the party only to be told afterwards that they were being a jackass#there are many such cases of diffident actors becoming cocaine addicts for these reasons#and that everyone hated them for being there#that's fundamentally dave to me#definitely a product of the environment. I think he has ALWAYS been quite insecure but in an environment like this the stakes are amplified#like it's a social game. everything is a social game there. and he is NOT a naturally confident man#the thing is with a lot of the high-profile coke addict actors the thing is like. they're alone. or they perceive themselves to be alone.#alone in hollywood afraid they're just not cutting it not fitting in with the scene not making ''friends''#which is really more attributable to the social scene being so cutthroat and highschoolesque#a bunch of self-centered preps who would be nobodies if they hadn't grown up in wealthy families and shit like that#and I don't think dave would've come from an upbringing like this at all. alienated this guy craves attention and peer approval#doses and mimosas.flac#this is almost opposite of my view of dirk and i often use dave as a tuning fork for him#i had typed up a whole essayramble here and when i saved tumblr wiped out half the tags. did not realize there was a limit.#i suppose i will save to topic i discussed for its own post. thank you all for reading my tags as usual#sorry i edited your three asks into two asks so this post wouldn't get super long. hope you don't mind.
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weirdmageddon · 7 months
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sorry for liking davejade in 2023 btw its in a cool way though
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#hs#davejade#like that one person said bi4bi cool silly girl and her lame ass court jester bf who enjoy each others company a lot#“its boring” well not everything has to be conflict sometimes it can be two people really vibing#and being good foils to each other and just sort of being like a lock and key#i dont dislike davekat but i felt like they bickered too much which is Funny dont get me wrong#but i like davejade for different reasons#in that i feel like dave is at his most heartfelt with her#bc jade doesnt do anything to warrant snarkiness. she doesnt make him uncomfortable and that earns his trust like a lot#ppl say its boring cause its a mf ship and they dont get them like i do#and my answer to that as an agender person is who the fuck cares#i hate ppl dismissing mf ships out of hand like…hey bi ppl exist. and even if they were straight they still got a good dynamic#of care and interest towards each other#hes not her knight in shining armor bffr. she has uhhh fucking GUN#they are Equals#jade slaps the shit outta people on more than one occasion lol#they infodump to EACH OTHER and they both listen#remember when jade wanted to infodump to john about physics remember that#dave would eat that up like oh damn that so dope and tie it back to time or whatever. special relativity#since space and time are fundamentally related#sorry im running on fumes rn i didnt sleep last night#ALSO THEY HAVE MATCHING ALCHEMIZED OUTFITS#jade’s dead shuffle dress and dave’s four aces suited both use a midnight crew poster as ingredients#i should draw them together in that mspa style#maybe theyre not even romantic. who said ships had to be. its short for relationship#well theres multiple kinds of relationships. what if they were queerplatonic
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bellerocks4 · 1 month
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Funny meme :)
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asthe-crow-flies · 5 months
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“my child is fine” your child has been listening to judas from clown bible on repeat for the past two and a half hours
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solluxdyke · 1 year
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hm kind of obsessed w/ this <333
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featherymainffins · 22 days
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Local fictional piece of shit attracts fictional BPD-havers specifically and they are trying to kill each other because of it. More news at 11.
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leoprosy · 2 years
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...
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derseprinceoftbd · 1 month
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This is a rant I've been meaning to get off my chest for a while, but the conception on Tumblr, AO3, and sometimes here, that Jake is capable of "teasing" Dirk, and all that implies, irks me deeply.
Let me be clear: Jake English is not self-aware. He, in Canon, never does anything resembling self-awareness, maturity, emotional boldness, or anything else that requires a spinal column. This includes apologizing to anyone, talking about his problems in a way that doesn't end up being selfish, teasing someone, particularly Dirk, or transitioning. (I maintain this especially; he does not have the boldness, maturity, self-awareness, or nerve to have transitioned his gender presentation pre-Act-6.)
He has an *understanding* of pranks, if we allow Paradox Space as evidence, but that's it. He makes *Tavros* look like a fully-roleplayed-into-Class-shift Lord.
You know what the popular Fandom perception of Jake, as a member of a DirkJake relationship, lines up with? *John*, before his main writing trait became a deep, all-consuming depression and repression thing.
Like, John’s original Act 5 and earlier characterization before his underreaction to his dad's death and the spiral that sent him down towards his current "transition would not save her" characterization is what people use for Jake (charming, funny, actually seems to have his shit together enough to maybe be transmasc (man, remember *transmasc John*?), and, most importantly, seemingly capable of dealing with the levels of vaguely sociopathic bullshit that an even-close-to-accurate Dirk would throw at him), but DirkJohn/JohnDirk is less popular, to the point of not having a consensus order, simply because Jake and Dirk are *coded* as liking each other.
I think a lot of people miss that DirkJake is fundamentally the Equius of relationships; Hussie isn't one of those writers that feels pride in finding pathos in the ridiculous, but spiteful glee and humor. He genuinely does not care if he accidentally touches people's hearts in a way that doesn't involve Dave, or *maybe* Vriska. The fact is, DirkJake is a joke relationship, which is spelled out very clearly in their conversation.
You know, their conversation. The one they have together. The time we see someone who is actual Dirk Strider, not Hal pretending, not Aranea co-opting a memory, not a Brain Ghost, talking to Jake. That time.
Yeah, that doesn't exist. DirkJohn has as much conversational basis as DirkJake.
DirkJake is a joke, a long, subtle one being made on everyone who saw Dirk's affections and immediately wanted him to get together with his disabled(?) ongoing harassment victim. Hussie was having a lot of fun making it seem like Jake found it important in the Masterpiece, I'll tell you that much.
@thelifetimechannel/@geejaysmith/@clonerightsagenda did magnificently wringing blood from this stone, I really do mean that, their Alphas are genuinely written better than Canon for 3/4, but that's all it ever was; every DirkJake writer is the YouTube comments under [this video](https://youtu.be/B7bpv5xyrOY?si=wYTCFDHM5ZzOY8fp) saying Equius could ever have been more than what he was.
TL:DR
1, Jake is pathetic, and we should remember this.
2, Hussie is a jackass who hates us one and all for the sin of caring and everything he has done with this franchise since maybe EOY2 has had an ulterior motive, and we should remember this.
3, Most people who write longfics set in SBURBless AUs, whether normalcy or fantasy, and want to ship Dirk and Jake should really be shipping Dirk with John, since now that history of Dirk-Jake interactions that justifies the ship in-Universe is gone at the Author's leasure, John would have the dynamic they want, and they talk *exactly as much*.
4, If you want to trans Jake, [there's a sensible way to do that](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8619856), but there's no in-character way to make him transmasc.
5, Read DDOTA, I beseecheth of you. Like yeah the Striders are emotional to a kinda weird degree but apart from that they really got everyone down right.
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nekropsii · 4 months
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Not to be controversial, but I do think it's quite silly to knock on Homestuck: Beyond Canon for having references to internet memes in it, saying that this will "inevitably date it", and calling that an inherently bad thing. I understand if that's just not your personal taste, modern pop culture/online culture references is definitely something that will turn a lot of people off, but... Homestuck itself was filled to the brim with those same kinds of references. It's truly just keeping in the spirit of the original work, people only find it jarring now because they aren't experiencing it in a state of being a beloved time capsule.
Homestuck, as a piece of fiction, is fundamentally extremely derivative, referential, and reactionary, completely chock full of inside jokes and references to at-the-time modern media and memes. The level in which HS2 is engaging with current memes and media is honestly substantially lighter than Homestuck itself was. During early Homestuck in particular, it's difficult to go even one page without some kind of reference being present in it, especially considering a major point of the setting design and character writing is their relationship to other media. The posters on their walls, the games they play, the fact that Dave is living in a Saw trap, et cetera.
I find this train of criticism to be particularly fascinating, as to me it shows that, in some way, it doesn't really feel like a lot of people ever look at Homestuck as something that was ever new. The time period it was made in is almost never taken into consideration when analyzing the work. Homestuck never was, it just is. HS2 has current-day meme references because it is a current-day Homestuck story. This is exactly how things should be. This is just how Homestuck is.
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meenah · 1 year
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i wont lie dirkjohn is like. hilarious to me as a ship. imagine being dave and going through a 3 year arc of understanding you're bisexual and the guy you grew up with that you thought was 100% straight comes up to you and is like hey i'm dating the paradox alternate timeline version of your brother. we're getting married in a few weeks. and you go to the wedding and the immortal version of yourself who is also half catgirl and fundamentally more happy as a person is there too. i would simply wither away
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my problem with postcanon jade was that it said she was a cis girl before fusing with bec. i took it as the same "true in a transmisogynist way" troll as transmasc roxy
like, truly, i miss transfeminine roxy every day, and my house is fairly glass when it comes to things here considering i'm writing The Butch Lesbian Jane Comic, but like. the way homestuck fans exert ownership over the text of homestuck is fundamentally what the homestuck epilogues and post-canon are about. act 7 is about the dead calliope saying "fuck canon" and making her own, and she does not know how to care for the characters in question. i genuinely believe reconciling these facts, that what homestuck wants to be and what fans want homestuck to be are tangibly, ideologically opposed, is what post-canon is about
"fans read this character as X identity" is fine and good but that's paratext at best, and making demands of a text that has no obligation to respect them at worst. the epilogues are cashing in that desire to not respect them. homestuck has always been shaking off its readers who exert too much ownership, feel too comfortable with it. this goes way back as far as act 5 act 2 - the author commentary describes switching between walkaround sprites and hussnasty mode in such close proximity as a means of saying "if you always get what you expect, you will become complacent and that's no way for a reader to be", the "come in, go away" routine of homestuck is so repetitive now that i'm surprised basically nobody's caught on - homestuck is always doing insane flips to try and shake people off of it.
and now homestuck is doing that with your headcanons. like, this is a thing i see genuinely, all the fucking time in fandom over the past 15 years or so, people hype themselves up on paratexts and pretend the paratext is the source. the worst i ever saw of it was people having full blown self-harm threatening panic attacks because klance was not endgame in voltron legendary defenders. genuinely, i remember this so well - i think there were still two more seasons of the show after that event too, but i didn't watch it.
i only looked on from afar because what i saw of season 1 wasn't especially novel. castiel was never gay, no matter how many times he was caught leaking omegamusk in walmart or whatever, i'm stealing valor with this joke i was never a superwholock omegaverse girlie. there's so many fandoms i'm not a part of, it's unreal.
anyway, my point is people get really invested in their reads on characters and pretend it's real for the same reason a normie's sports team is gonna go the distance this season. and when they don't, they riot. this is literally just sports fandom 101. we may as well be talking about fucking inflategate here. i also don't go to sports. it's basically just homestuck for me these days.
i imagine this is what it's like to run my little pony before bronies came along: the show was negligible in relevance beyond its capacity to show off the new toys to play with. but the difference is that my little pony is about the toys, it's about encouraging that kind of play, it's fundamentally a set of toys they made a show about, as opposed to homestuck, which was always niche art for webcomics weirdos that caught on, quite literally, with the brony audience. i remember the first time i ever saw dave strider was on fucking ponychan, chronologically it would have been mid-act 5 act 2. it was an image of dave ransacking the lohac stock exchange, which is an a5a2 thing, it was before season 2 started, etc etc.
this is one hell of a tangent to say as far as the text of mspaintadventures is concerned, problem sleuth characters have gender signifiers that are more similar in nature to drag and performance of gender roles than any actual sexual dimorphism. homestuck characters are built atop the gender expression of problem sleuth. jade was a 13/16-year old girl, and that's the only information there was. over time, this changed.
this was an explicit change, too - it's in the change to act 6, passing through the fourth wall, that these characters, who fundamentally are game pieces, that homestuck starts to contend with the fact that people are emotionally invested in them as people. people don't like dave or vriska in the same way that people care about problem sleuth or nervous broad, and this comes out in the text. we get a lot of the best stuff in homestuck out of that change, too, like. the retcon only works because of that emotional investment, and i go so hard for the retcon. the retcon is the coolest thing ever.
and with that change, now, in 2024, she is explicitly a 39 (? i think she's 39.) year old woman with a penis. she didn't go from "cis woman" to "trans woman", she went from game piece to human person. there is no "cis jade" to be overwritten. you're assuming a "cis is default" worldview of a team of transgender and/or nonbinary people and thats just like. its not ideal, really
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red-elric · 1 year
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SO HERES THE THING ABOUT DIRK
whatever else you can say about him, he cares so so so much about his friends. he rewrites an entire book for jane and builds her a robotic rabbit designed to help and protect her. he loves roxy so so much and yeah, maybe sometimes hes a little freaked out by her flirting at the beginning but its so clear that he loves her anyway. he's obsessed with jake, kind of in an unhealthy way, but he KNOWS that and he tries so so hard to be who jake wants him to be, to make jake even a tenth as happy as jake makes him. he literally cuts off his own head to save their lives. and god. dave. DAVE. he meets dave near the end of the session, and he finds out that an alternate universe version of him was an abusive shit to dave, and he apologizes. and you can tell he blames himself but he does such a good job trying not to make it about him. and he cheers dave up with stories about HIS alternate universe self and he gives the guy a hug and lets dave chop off his head later to save them all, no questions asked. this fucking guy. THIS FUCKING GUY. so sweet and so considerate and literally always thinking of the people he loves. the fuckin hallmark of 'maybe his alt self was evil, but he himself is so so good and is proof that people arent fundamentally good or bad, but a product of their environments.' youre telling me that THIS dirk strider. what. decided it was a good idea to amalgamate all potential versions of himself--including the super abusive piece of shit versions--into one 'ultimate being,' and became the bad guy for the epilogues and homestuck^2?????? I think the FUCK not!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I stopped reading hs2 a while ago admittedly, so I dont have MUCH of a leg in the game, but man. thats not my dirk. if theres not something else going on there, ill eat my cool bro hat.
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brostateexam · 5 months
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Dave and Buster are no longer tending to eggs. On the off chance that any miraculous babies appear, I will let you know.
Otherwise, things are chill over here. It's the last day of work for me until the week after Thanksgiving. My boss has realized that a thing I have been telling him since literally this time last year is true and that this scope is way, way too big for one person to do all by themselves. In the meantime, what that means is I am picking work back up from one of my colleagues that I was supposed to be divested from permanently, but no matter.
Meanwhile, people from two other groups at work have approached me and encouraged me to apply to higher level positions that are opening up on their teams. I'm a bit torn because I love my scope and I would love an opportunity to lead a bunch of the functions my current group has open, but I fundamentally don't really want to continue reporting to my current boss, and I feel like if I put in the work and keep plugging away l at it, what I want is 2-3 years away, minimum, if it happens at all. I'd rather return to managing a team and doing more high level stuff (with a corresponding pay increase, perhaps) than hoping that [Big Corp] will give me what I want.
My pain from my oral surgery is at like a 4 with the painkillers instead of like a 7 or an 8 last night, so I'm pleased with that. Hopefully, the recovery won't be too wretched and both of my implants will root into my jaw properly so I can get some crowns placed next year.
Miss California is on a new med regimen of trazodone and gabapentin to keep her nice and sedate while she waits out her bones healing but so far she's been recovering like a champion. Praying that her time to recovery is on the shorter end at 6 weeks instead of the longer end at 10 so that by New Year's she can be free to roam about the house.
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weirdmageddon · 7 months
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oh my god reading the classpecting document while high literally cracked something open in my head and wrapping my fingers around the concepts this is awesome
so im pretty sure i’d be a light player. im on the fence of seer-knight, so seer of light or knight of light.
edit: OHHH MY GOODDDD THEY PUT DIPPER PINES AS AN EXAMPLE OF A KNIGHT OF LIGHT THATS PROBABLY WHY I RELATE TO HIM ON SUCH A FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL GOD FUCKKKKK IT WAS IN THE CLASSPECT WAY
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I UNDERSTAND CLASSPECT AS A TYPOLOGY SYSTEM NOW I GET IT SOMETHING JUST CLICKED IN MY HEAD AND THE WHOLE CIRCUITBOARD IS ON. its so funny you can kinda see him as a mix of dave (the knight part) and rose (the light part) and thats also ME
ok so im all about that knowledge and knowing stuff but maybe that comes from the light aspect itself rather than a seer
but the role i usually play around others is “just some guy” wrt their aspect. knights are like the responsible underpaid mcdonalds workers with their aspect
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pesterquestrewritten · 2 months
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Sorry if this is an inappropriate question to ask, but why do you want to rewrite pesterquest? Was there anything wrong with its original version, or are you just doing this for fun?
brain is a Lil Loopy rn so please excuse if this answer is semi incoherent - recovering from ankle surgery rn.
im gonna try to not harp on the original pesterquest as a project/talk about my percieved issues with it. from what I understand about the work environment where it was developed, it was hell -- poor communication, tiny budgets, little overall direction. plus every artist/writer involved was likely busy with other things at the same time (for example finishing the development of Hiveswap Act 2). they had so much going against them, and... it sorts shows in the final work, which isn't their fault. the original PQ team was passionate and cared and like. the absolutely last thing i want to do is disrespect them.
(generally also stating for the record that calling the original PQ "trash" or "replaced" is like. not good vibes. please don't do this if you're trying to enjoy PQR -- the last thing the original postcanon team needs is more harassment.)
anyway.
pqr is fanfiction, fundamentally.
i started making pqr because in september i was sick with covid, i wanted to learn renpy, and i wanted to study homestuck more. i wanted to figure out what made PQ tick, literally, figuratively, all of the above.
plus i really wanted to write a different story arc for mspar.
i also really love the side characters in Homestuck, and wish they all got more time to shine. the pqr prologue including a set of Spades Slick sprites just for a brief encounter i think helps establish what i want to do with the like. raw potential of the premise of a Homestuck visual novel.
damara is the other big thing -- i've wanted to make a story with her in it work for ages. (if anyone remembers the old MEGIDO hades mod, that was my first big public attempt. she was gonna be the protagonist, breaking out of scratch's mansion. turns out coding in renpy is WAY easier LMAO)
like. the plan wasn't even initially to have the prologue be a full damara route? i just let the writing take me where it wanted to take me. it's been deeply fun and cathartic.
the prologue's "bad end" has some incredibly intimate themes of like. inevitability, and worrying you've let everyone you love down, and i showed it to a college friend who i hadn't spoken to for ages and she set a screenshot from it as her background.
like. to me. that's pqr. that's why i make it.
pqr is the laundry room ending of rose's route, a deeply personal look into my own fears and anxieties as an author reflected back through this girl's circumstances. pqr is also the retcon ending of rose's route, a wildly stupid and indulgent romp through my own past fanfiction for a silly gag that people seemed to really love.
pqr is about dave and myself looking for a place to stay simultaneously -- pqr is about jade leaving prospit, and how i was adding to that part of the game in real-time as i dropped out of college, changing both of our destinies to something unexpected but hopefully better, at the same time.
pqr is also a silly extended sleepover scene. it's just fun to see them interact.
pqr is an excuse to turn over corners of homestuck and see if we can't peek behind them. what was it like for roxy, to think she lost joey and then find rose's meteor barely a year later? of course she'd think it's impossible for her to succeed as a mother. pqr is about finding empathy for yourself for your own mistakes, reflected back at you through homestuck characters.
because really, isn't that what we're all here for?
pqr is me coming back to my last long-abandoned attempt at an act 5 rewrite. pqr is an excuse to watch my girlfriend grow in confidence and style as she makes all the endcards and incidental art (except for joey route pt 2, but THAT was an excuse to work with a NEW friend!!!!!!!)
pqr is a friendship simulator that i am winning by having an incredibly supportive and collaborative group of friends in the dev thread who are cheering me on with every segment of text i post, friends who will hop in vc to check out the newest segment. friends like @dare0451 who literally yesterday rendered out some new audio to upgrade the June route to be even more fucking amazing and terrifying than it already was, AND DARE HASN'T EVEN PLAYED IT????? IT'S LITERALLY JUST. IT'S FRIENDSHIP MAN. PQR IS FRIENDSHIP
what the hell was this question again.
oh right.
yeah it's been fun basically. that's why i do it lol
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ultra-rockart · 7 months
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I have a problem with the Ahsoka series...
As someone who didn't watch Rebels and just getting back to Star Wars after being out of the fandom, episode 5 left me kinda flat...
WARNING: SPOILERS TO JEDI FALLEN ORDER AND AHSOKA EPISODE 5
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Anyone who plays Jedi Fallen Order will immediately realize that the scene is a mirror of Cal and Jaro's 2nd vision duel. In fact, there were major Fallen Order vibes all throughout this episode and other episodes including all that psychometry (which Ahsoka has never demonstrated before this series but hey... the power of retcon compelled Dave Filoni).
But why did Ahsoka vs Anakin feel so flat for me? What should have been an emotional scene didn't hit me with the same feels that Fallen Order did.
And I got to thinking...
In Fallen Order, we first meet Cal and from the get-go we understand that this is a kid who's had to live on his own for a long time. He doesn't really think that much of himself--as evident by his "Trash, just not approved trash" comment. 
Fallen Order and Survivor have been brilliant, character-driven games that really delved into issues of trauma, survivor's guilt, PTSD, insecurity, and loss of self-worth. 
We learn that Cal survived Order 66 when he was just 13.
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And that his master sacrificed his life to save him. And we soon realize that Cal has remained trapped--emotionally and psychologically--that day he escaped clutching his fallen master's lightsaber in fear and helplessness. The fear became a means to survive--a coping mechanism.
When Cal first meets a vision of his master, Jaro Tapal, it's on Dathomir. The vault is booby trapped to test anyone who dare enter. He's faced with a vision of his fallen master and is overwhelmed with his own failures and breaks his lightsaber.
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Through Cere's urging and guidance, Cal travels to Ilum to retrieve his crystal and rebuild his lightsaber.
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There, he is tested and he faces his failures and shortcomings. He learns to forgive himself and face the past head on. He returns to Dathomir and back to face his master. 
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What was the lesson in Cal facing Jaro? The lesson was forgiving himself of what happened. Of learning to trust that 13-yr-old child within. Jaro's sacrifice will always be a part of him but he also needs to move forward with the lessons he's learned. As long as Cal is alive, he has a choice to keep fighting--"Hold the line, and trust only in the Force."
It's a classic heroes journey.
The Anakin vs Ahsoka scene is similar in a lot of ways. But I found myself not having the same reaction.
If I watch that Fallen Order scene, I'm always moved to tears because in the hours I spent playing as him, I lived all of his failures, his fears, his emotions--I was Cal Kestis. I was that 13-yr old boy who emotionally shut down to the point that he lost his connection to the Force.
Fallen Order took the time to establish that Cal had been dealing with the guilt of not doing enough to save his master for the last 5 years. It took the time to lay the groundwork so the emotional beats really hit you in the feels in moments when they should.
My problem with the Ahsoka series is it breaks a fundamental rule in storytelling--Don't assume anything about your audience. A good chunk of that audience never saw Rebels. So, a good chunk of us were asking ourselves, "huh, so what exactly was the lesson here?"
In Ahsoka, we're never shown what her attachments to Anakin are. Is she a Padawan feeling abandoned by her master? Does she feel betrayed? What exactly is that baggage that she needs to move on from?
We get none of that because the series doesn't do enough character work to make her struggles known to the audience beforehand. Unless you watched Rebels, you'd have no clue nor feel the significance of the scene. What we get is her looking forlorn at any mention of Anakin. They just expect us to understand that she has unfinished business with him. What that is... it's never clear in the dialogue. So when we have a vision of her facing her master, it doesn't have the same emotional punch in the feels that Fallen Order has (unless you saw the animated series).
So her lesson was to live? Did we see her struggling with her purpose before this scene? No. Did we see her doubt herself and her place in the Order (in or out of it)? No. Do we see her still yearn for the past and what would have been her place in the Order but struggle with their betrayal? No. The message is jumbled, the lesson is vague because the show didn't do the work it needed to to earn that emotional payoff.
The one thing I loved was the visuals. Cinematography in this episode was breathtaking but it sacrifices storytelling over fan service and nostalgia.
Collider put it bluntly, "Ahsoka’s “training” stands in the place of actual storytelling. By driving Ahsoka and Anakin straight into a duel, we’re robbed of dialogue and character moments that could heighten the story that Filoni is attempting to tell. Filoni mistakenly believes that what audiences have been longing for is another poorly lit lightsaber duel — only this time between Anakin and Ahsoka — but that isn’t what anyone has been pining for. Especially not casual fans who know who Anakin is, but have no concept of why this duel with Ahsoka should matter to them... Star Wars is more than just lightsaber duels and resurrecting the Skywalkers for drama. It’s about the connections forged between the characters who are thrown into situations, cast against the backdrop of a galaxy at war, both seen and unseen. Those connections feel hollow when left to molder in the shadow of nostalgia."
Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor work from a storytelling perspective because they made us care about these characters. They built connections to Cere, to Jaro, to BD-1 and the rest of the Mantis crew and how they play a significant part in Cal's growth as a person and Jedi. And likewise, how Cal plays a part in each character's journey to self-actualization.
The more I think about the episode 5 scene the more pointless it felt (for lack of a better word) because this happens 5 years after Return of the Jedi... the part where Anakin was saved by Luke. She's also met and spoken to Luke so would know that Anakin was saved in the end. 
So unless this is just Ahsoka sorting out her own issues of abandonment or whatever inside her head... it doesn't make sense for Anakin or the overall story. He was already saved. He went back to the light side after defeating Palpatine. Luke was able to do what no one else did. Or did she resent that or hate herself that it wasn't her that brought him back to the light? The problem is the show doesn't make it clear what her attachments to Anakin are. If it had spared a few episodes looking back at her training, Anakin's betrayal and her feelings of abandonment, it would have felt like a more full circle moment. If the show had taken the time to portray her going about her life without reason or purpose, the lesson would have meant something. The dialogue doesn't do the visuals justice. It's purposely vague and cryptic because the show doesn't know what Ahsoka ought to be struggling with. She has baggage but what that is they don't even know. So the visuals try to cover for the lack of any compelling dialogue.
We didn't need a duel or callbacks to Vader or Rebels. What we needed was to see was the same Anakin at the end of Return of the Jedi-- the same Anakin that was saved and made whole. We needed a conversation, not cryptic lessons--a conversation about why he lost himself, Luke and Leia's place in his life and salvation, and a reassurance to Ahsoka that she couldn't have prevented his fall from grace because he made the choice to fall to the Dark Side. Anakin alone made the choice and paid for his sins. That conversation would have brought more closure than "I choose to live."
It felt like the writers went "This would be such a cool scene to have" and "What would happen to get there?" Rather than have everything matter and happen organically to the overall story. By doing that, Ahsoka suffers the same problems as the sequels.
Fan service should serve as a purpose to further enrich your story. And your story should be clear to everyone not just a niche of your audience. A good story, no matter how simple it is, should stand on its own merit. Good character work and set up matters.
Just my 2 cents.
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