#when i first got into homestuck my favorite character was john for a long time and i vividly remember everyone characterizing him- | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whumpsday · 8 months

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i'm gonna talk about my very first ocs because i feel like they deserve it :) when i was a kid i didn't quite have the imagination yet to create whole worlds, so my ocs were often inserts into existing things i was into.

this is a very long post with a lot of useless personal information, and is more a diary entry than anything.

i had many more ocs than what's listed here, but i can't remember most of them, so here are just the ones i remember.

childhood:

at 7, the very first oc i can ever remember making was Maya, a pokemon oc. she was the fourth member of team rocket in the anime canon, and could shapeshift between being a human and a celebi. i remember her being "older" but that could mean anything from a middle schooler to an adult.

also pokemon-related but not quite an oc, i had a lot of fakemon around that time. the only one i remember was a raccoon-like one named Tyco.

at 9, soon after was Tanya, a fairly oddparents oc. she was a little girl who was friends with the main character.

at 10, i really got into oc-making, and the next bunch are all from when i was about 10.

i started getting into "somewhat whumpier" things and made my first "edgy" oc, Deepheart, for warrior cats. she was a black cat with purple eyes and a tragic backstory i can't remember, who eventually got with stormfur.

i was very into danny phantom and continued my tragic backstory experiments with Chelsea. she was a ghost and the younger sister of ember (she was basically an ember recolor) who died in the same fire. she also had fire+music powers, but a polar opposite personality to ember (she was nice).

i can't remember the specifics or names of the ocs i made for a bunch of these, but i also made oc-inserts for the following around this time:

total drama island - multiple ocs, i think i had a whole fancast, which was the closest i got around this time to making an original story.

monster buster club - character existed to be friends with chris, who was my favorite. she was a monster in disguise or something of that nature.

percy jackson - i definitely had one and i was REALLY into it, but can't even remember what god she was a daughter of.

in middle school as i entered early teenhood, i started reading YA books. sadly, my taste was not that great.

preteen:

at 12, i made Chelsea (reused the name from the danny phantom oc because i just rly liked the name), a twilight oc. she was the first vampire oc i ever made, so i guess she was the start of All This. she was the youngest cullen at 14 years old (i do not remember if this was a chronological age or just a physical age and i think i was too oblivious to realize just how significant that difference was), and had a Forbidden Romance with seth, the werewolf kid.

at 13, i realized i could have ocs that were boys! a fantastic revelation! technically i already had ones from the total drama fanseason i had in my head but they were all side characters. made my first main guy, Oliver, a scott pilgrim oc and ramona's 8th ex-boyfriend.

i made a LOT of other ocs for YA books in middle school, but i don't remember much about the others.

teenhood - homestuck:

at 15, i got into homestuck, and that was when things got out of control.

i started with a literal self-insert with my birthname, who eventually got split into 2 alt-timeline versions of herself (i was a girl at the time), one who went with dave and rose during the timeskip and one who went with john and jade during the timeskip. when they met back up, they fell in love and got together, which i think might be the truest expression of self-love i've ever had.

but it didn't end there. i got really into making fantrolls, and made TONS of them. i don't remember their names very well (esp bc they were all made up alien names) but i remember my favorites: a bronzeblood with an eyepatch whose name started with a P, and a violetblood whose name started with an I.

the violetblood was probably my first true whumpee. while violetbloods are normally amphibious, he was born with lungs that don't work, and was forced to remain underwater at all times since he could only use his gills. when sgrub caused the apocalypse, he had a little tank he would stay in on the ship. and when gamzee started killing everyone, he couldn't get away.

this was also where i branched out into creating original characters not tied to an existing IP!!! FINALLY!!! it all started with fantrolls. i made two more significant sets of fantrolls: one centering around an abnormally overpowered purpleblood who had his memory erased and used to be a cruel whumper-type (and a set of supporting characters to go with him), and one centering around a purpleblood who'd been tortured and the lowblood who acted as his caretaker. you can tell i was very much getting into whump at this point, despite not yet knowing the term.

i eventually decided that homestuck's lore was not equipped to carry the stories i wanted to tell for those two, and split them each off into original universes. i am not into homestuck anymore and it's really a relic of its time, but it impacted me quite a lot creatively.

teenhood - original stories:

the amnesia guy came to be named Nova, my first wholly-original character. he existed in a magic/fantasy type universe, and was the most powerful magic-user in his world. he'd previously been extremely evil and caused untold carnage, countless people tortured to death. the heroes, after realizing they could not stop him, decided to try to wipe his memory instead. this did, in fact, work. Nova became a character saddled by EXTREME ANGST about his past wrongs. to make it worse, his pre-memory-wipe evil self eventually started to slowly come back as a separate entity in his mind, essentially haunting him. i daydreamed about Nova for a long, long time, and occasionally still do.

the whumpee-caretaker duo became Dwar and Clobu, members of an original alien species i came up with. unlike Nova's story, which became so divorced from his fantroll beginnings that his origin was basically unrecognizable, this one remained heavily homestuck-inspired. the aliens here were grouped/inspired by the layers of the atmosphere, rather than the signs of the zodiac. Dwar (the whumpee) had skin that looked like the night sky, dark blue with stars all over, while Clobu (the caretaker) looked like a cloudy day. they were pretty :) these guys are a very very early inspiration for the Kane & Jim dynamic.

i also started making non-IP-related ocs without "converting" them around this time. in particular, i became very interested in demons.

first i made Charlie, a teenage demon raised by humans who just wanted to be A Normal Kid. he played the guitar and used tumblr and was all in all very nonthreatening and normal. he was a bit boring.

at about 16, i later made Nicky, a "redo" of the Charlie concept but with more pizzazz. his mother had brought him on a hunt (for humans to kill and eat) while he was an infant, and she was killed by a demon hunter. the hunter couldn't bring herself to kill the baby, so she took him in and raised him instead. Nicky's story is very very long, because he is the only oc from my childhood i still regularly daydream about to this day, and i have been building him up for a decade. some highlights:

accidentally burns his adoptive mom when he's a little boy who's just gotten his fire powers, and it's what makes him realize he never wants to hurt people. she forever has a scar shaped like his tiny little 5-year-old hand.

demons generally need to eat human flesh to be healthy. this is obviously not something Nicky wants to do or even feasibly can do when he's younger. he eats a lot of other meat (mainly pork), and is basically constantly hungry. he carries jerky around with him all the time to snack on.

as a young adult, he and his (human) best friend (mutual pining crush) are stuck in a cave (entrance blocked by rocks) with a bunch of demons waiting to kill them when they leave. Nicky knows he's not strong enough to defeat them, but he could be if he wasn't malnourished. in a moment of desperation, his friend ends up giving him a few fingers to eat so they can make it out alive, and he feels guilty forever that it's the best thing he's ever tasted.

his mom is killed by demons in a fight in his early 20s, and he goes on a ballistic rampage murdering everyone in sight. after this, he runs away and ends up moving to hell.

when he's in his 40s, he sees a little human girl who's been captured and brought to hell, and quickly rescues her. he can't find a way to smuggle her back to earth, so he ends up raising her in his apartment.

when he does eventually get her back to earth years later, he moves in with her dad and they co-parent. becomes a love triangle thing with the dad and his childhood friend who he eventually reconnects with- not for the usual "you have to choose one!" reasons that i hate, but because his relationships with each are honestly very tumultuous.

my other early demon oc was Crimson, a magicless demon who'd been captured by hunters and tortured until a kind hunter rescued him and became his caretaker. this character would later become Kane, but originally there was no "former whumper" backstory, he was just a pathetic little guy.

at 16, my other main obsession as a teenager was dangan ronpa, and of course i made several dangan ronpa ocs whose names i can't remember. one of them was a girl who had a fierce rivalry with togami. i started getting into g/t around this time, and liked to play around with that with my dangan ronpa oc for some reason. i don't know why, it's not like DR had any kind of g/t in it. but i would always imagine a story where togami became tiny and he and my oc came to a begrudging alliance as they tried to fix it.

i also ended up converting this into an original story, taking place in a low-fantasy universe, where a bully character Damien got shrunk by magic, kept in a jar, and was tortured by some of his former victims. his one victim who thinks this is fucked up (can't remember his name) rescued him, and they put aside their differences to fix it. i just love reluctant caretakers and whumper-turned-whumpees.

and that's all the notable ocs i can think of from my childhood! figure they deserve at least a small space on my blog :) and i still might write Nova, Nicky, or Damien's stories someday.

#txt

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bittersweetresilience · 5 days

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sunny's favorite fanfiction

By no means a complete list of what I've read and loved, but these are some of the fics I have found the most memorable, captivating, and influential to me. Mostly oneshots. Mostly dark. Mind the Sunny.

clear blood

Prince_Enby (OMORI, 2,674 words)

Hero took a little too long.

I am pretty sure this fic rewired all of my neurons. I wrote a sequel to it. I wrote multiple sequels to it, though only one published. I think about it all the time. I have absorbed it into my body and my writing. The slow build, the foregone conclusion, the denial, the interspersing of memory, even the summary and author's note Altered™ me. This is my all time favorite fic, and from my all time favorite video game.

Each That We Lose Takes Part of Us

aceofbasedesires (The Untamed, 12,652 words)

“Wake up,” he says to his body, alarm making him itch. There’s no response. He says it louder, and then yells it, trying to drift forward. He can’t move. He’s curled over his own body, staring down at it, without being able to do anything. From inside Burial Mounds, Wei Ying’s mind reaches out to those he’s left behind.

Exquisite sadness indeed. I wrote a sequel to this one as well. I love fics that haunt me. I love fics that make me feel like a ghost. I love unhappy endings. I love this part of the show. I love hurt people hurting people. I love inevitability. I love tragedy.

tarnishing

ruthwrites (Mob Psycho 100, 21,147 words)

Reigen realizes that he never gave the man his name. He knew it, anyway— as well as the slogan for Reigen’s whole business. There must be some sort of reason for it. Maybe they’ve met before. As Reigen walks, he becomes more and more certain— he’s seen the man before.

There is nothing I appreciate more than a well done piece of horror. So insidious, so creeping, so everywhere. Lingering. A work of art and a model for manipulative relationships and gaslighting. The final scene with the rope has a full body grip on me.

Cold Water

messageredacted (Homestuck, 6,551 words)

You’re barely finished with your ascension to god tier when they drag you off your quest bed.

Iconic fic forever. I have reread this fic and its remix an unknown number of times over the years. Made for me.

The Decline

EzraBlake (John Dies at the End, 5,284 words)

I'd never heard him make a sound like that. It was almost inhuman coming from John – John, who once drank an entire bottle of tabasco sauce and then got it all over the bathroom because he was laughing hysterically while he vomited. John, who fucked up an alternate dimension by aiming an uncontrollably shitting dog like a rocket launcher. John whimpered.

This fic is so intensely, faultlessly in the spirit of the books, which I adore, that it makes me want to blow up my house with grenades.

power & control

instead (Miraculous Ladybug, 1,404 words)

“Was he always like that?” Félix asks on a ride home from school. She glances to her left: in the passenger seat, he smooths out his uniform, clenching and unclenching his hands into fists. “When you first got married.”

I write the most about Félix and Amélie, and this is the best depiction of them I have ever seen. I call Amélie my queen of England constantly.

This Time I'm Coming Down

telm_393 (The Good Place, 3,585 words)

Jason makes a lot of decisions he might regret.

I had a really hard time deciding between this and Some Things You Can't Touch. True to the characters in a way that makes me want to bite things and scream.

like the sheep

zehecatl (Night in the Woods, 1,564 words)

Sometimes, reality mixes in with memories, and so there's Angus, right across the median.

I am pretty sure it's still sad, but it's a tender sort of sad, like Angus loves him so much it's a sad thing osmosed into my entire personality. Dreams. Gore. Bleeding.

runner ups

The Arowana

chesslyfe5eva (Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, 6,486 words)

"Thank you, father. I've always wanted to look like a third-rate Yakuza lieutenant." "You're welcome. It's a beautiful creature. Kind and self-sacrificing. If anyone in its household were to die, it gives its life and dies in their stead." When Kiyotaka is born, his grandfather gifts the new parents a baby arowana.

Writing about side characters who are almost original characters in relation to a minor detail in the franchise, love of my life. It is so well made.

Terrycloth Mother

rowdymouse (Mother 2: EarthBound, 4,325 words)

Tony's faced with a hard task: providing Jeff all the love he never got and desperately needs.

This actually spoke to my core. It has a very particular feeling shared by The Arowana. Second person perspective never misses.

Until the Walls Break Like Waves

attackfish (Avatar: The Last Airbender, 21,095 words)

It was just before the winter solstice when Earth Kingdom soldiers captured the prince of the Fire Nation and his uncle, the Dragon of the West. It was the dead of winter when they were brought to Ba Sing Se.

I feel like I have to include such a powerful and iconic fic. Good thing this exists.

ten thousand grit

besselfcn (Hunter × Hunter, 1,310 words)

Killua isn’t anything. Killua is a sharpened blade. Killua is the teeth and fillings left behind when a body burns to ash. So what’s another whetstone? What’s another funeral pyre?

Since I read this, what’s another whetstone? What’s another funeral pyre? has not left my brain.

special mentions

running in the shadow

wackus_bonkus (Miraculous Ladybug, 3,062 words)

Félix doesn’t miss the soul bond between him and Adrien until it’s gone.

How could I not award this masterpiece? I love nonlinear narratives and vignette style fics. Especially when they are written by my friend and for me. This is worth the world and deserves everything.

The Homestuck Epilogues

Andrew Hussie, Cephied_Variable, ctset (Homestuck, 190,398 words)

Ten years after their adventure began, the heroes are enjoying a well-earned retirement on Earth C. But John still has one last choice to make.

Can I count this? I'm counting this. This inspired my love for metafiction and shaped me as a person. Narratives, futility, meaning, characters getting worse. I've never seen a more creative usage of visual elements in fanfiction. I devour experimental media.

#GOD I LOVE UNHAPPY OR AMBIGUOUS ENDINGS #it's overwhelming how many fics i didn't include HJSHHJSHSFKJDSK #my almost 6000 bookmarks on ao3...#looking at this lineup is interesting to me #because i read and enjoy whump the most but it seems #a great number of the fics that actually stick with me and weave their way into my body are the experimental ones the horror ones #the ones that make me do or feel or think something new and interesting #i hope my fics can be that for somebody...#🌃

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ewingstan · 11 months

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top 5 favourite characters in any piece of media ever?

Oh Christ*. I doubt I could do real justice to this, but lets see if I can at least list in no particular order some of the characters I most like that have at least an orthogonal connection to this blog.

Rachel Lindt: Look, getting through the early parts of Worm were rough for me. Everything seemed a bit too exaggerated and ham-fisted, WB hadn't really learned how to do prose, and the only thing keeping me going was remembering that my cousin recommended it a while back and that that some out-of-context posts I'd seen from blastweave made it sound like it had some interesting ideas. But one of the early inexplicable hooks the story got into me was introducing this character who'd seem from a distance like another stock bully character, and almost immediately making me think "wait, I wanna see what he does with her. There's something there." And then there was! There's just something so satisfying about all her interactions with Taylor throughout the whole story; to the extent that I basically divide the story by the different periods of their relationship. She's everything.

Also, my posting about her was some of my first interactions with wormblr. Which is also the first fandom I think I could say I'm actually a part of? Like, there's plenty of things I'm a pretty huge fan of, I even have another fandom sideblog I started before this, but Worm got me actually posting instead of just passively reblogging for pretty much the first time. And Rachel got me there! So I have her to thank for answering this question at all in the first place.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus: The first character I liked in a blorbo kind of way, if that makes sense. Like, there's plenty of characters who I love, or who make the stories I love shine, or who I always had a fun time thinking about. But Harrow as a character just cracks open my brain in a way nothing else does. The Necromancy. The goth space Catholicism. The theatricality. The general horribleness. The specific combination of overwhelming presence and sad shitsack vibes. The specific combination of genius and ingenuity coupled with the crushing stubbornness and lack of creativity. Its not even like a key sliding into the lock in my heart, its like a lockpick that's clicking through all the tumblers in my heart-lock and revealing it for the flimsily-built masterlock-ass shit it is. I never used to get people who talked about how a character inspired them to pick up a hobby or take up an interest in something. But I ended up reading Lolita because of how much I loved Harrow! I started getting into Nabokov as a whole and finding one of my favorite writers because of Harrow! Nothing else does that to me! Which itself leads to...

Rose Lalonde: Did Harrow have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Harrow at all had Muir not loved, one summer, a certain initial witch-teen. In a comic by Hussie. Oh when? About as many years before GtN was written as my my age was that year. You can always count on my favorite characters for a fancy prose style.

No but Rose's verbose prose style really did cement her as one of my favorite characters. Like Bitch, she's a character that got me into an overly-long work I wasn't sure I wanted to tackle. I had attempted to start Homestuck a few times before I actually got into it, and the early computer-game jokes and user-submitted prompts weren't really engaging me. I did not see myself enjoying reading about John futzing around in his room for a few thousand pages. But man oh man, when the narrative switched focus to the literally purple-prosed kid obsessed with Lovecraft, I was ready for whatever the story wanted to do. I related to her and idolized her instantly. When I reread Homestuck much later, I related to her for much less complementary reasons. I have a particular (read: grating as hell) speaking style that's a result of being a kid who both thought of himself as smarter than everyone and was completely unsocial to the point of barely being able to have a conversation. I sound like an analytic philosophy paper written by an undergrad who's not invested in the topic or the course but who really wants to sound like he knows what he's talking about. The unique and specific character voices in Homestuck are the best part of the work for me, and when I first read Rose, I was basically reading who I wanted to be. And reading her later and realizing all the ways she's just a dumb kid makes me think of all the ways I was just a dumb kid, and how I'm trying to get to a place where I can converse with someone and feel comfortable without being condescending.

Look, there's a reason that despite Dave and Karkat having all my favorite moments in the work, I ended up owning two pairs of Rose t-shirts. And its the same reason I have a Ninth House outfit.

Kaladin Stormblessed: What if there was a story about trauma giving you superpowers fueled by bonding to an alien intelligence, but instead of the bonded spirit driving you towards self-destructive behavior it tried to make you into the best version of yourself? I've already talked a bit about how the Stormlight Archives has a surprising number of similarities to Worm, and reading it when I was a young teen probably contributed to developing the sensibilities that made Worm click for me. Plus, the cosmere was my first real multi-property media I got into, so it probably preempted me getting into comics as well (which this blog is also theoretically about). Speaking of—

Roberto da Costa: Feel weird about this, because I'm not even very familiar with the original Claremont stories he originated from. But the Al Ewing stories I read with him were some of the first Marvel comics I read at all (USAvengers was a weird-place to start that journey, tell ya hwat), and he set the tone for what modern big-two comics could do well perfectly. There's a lot of obvious problems with the eccentric billionaire hero archetype, but he's the best of that type of character. And while Ewing has written much better comics than the New Avengers/USAvengers runs he first used Roberto in, those stories were the ones that got me interested in Ewing in the first place. And I initially made this blog as a comics subblog devoted to his work! So again, this blog wouldn't really exist without Sunspot.

Special mention to: The March Hare+Doormouse. Putting them together because my parents met while playing them in their college theater program. Owing my existence to these characters means they probably deserve at least a mention. Also Jessie Pinkman and Sylvester Lambsbridge and Clint Barton and Saint Perpetua and Celestina the Witch and Smurov from Nabokov's "The Eye" and Quentin Brooks from Eidolon Playtest and the fictionalized version of Al Swearengen from Deadwood and Sister Carpenter from "The Silt Verses" and—

*No, I'm not putting him on the list.

#apologies for the extended lolita bit #especially for the horrible 'the sea'/'Hussie' rhyme I should have my keyboard taken away for that #ask game #leo says #i prolly got too personal with some of that sorry gents #also somehow all the characters I put on the official list were ones I related to or who got me into a sprawling work #while nearly all the special mention characters were conniving tricksters who get over their head but still end up looking damn impressive #so I guess that's the two ways to be my favorite character? Be a lovable huckster or be an uncomfortable reflection of my past self

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crappy-homestuck-confessions · 8 months

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hooh, this is gonna be a long one. prepare yourself before you read this.

i was reading homestuck for the first time when i was around 14 or 15. of all characters i could've chosen to be my favorite at the time, it was davesprite. not any of the beta kids. or the alpha kids. or even the trolls. fucking. davesprite.

it wasn't because i had a crush on him or anything, but it was mostly because i related to him for some reason??? i mean, i was struggling with a lot of awful feelings like nothing i did mattering after a certain point in my life, no one caring all that much for me because "i didn't act like a real person", and feeling like i was just there, either for others' sake or to just lie on the outskirts of all the cool stuff that was happening around me. i was depressed and one of the things that brought me joy in life was when i got to see this fucking orange crow ghost boy show up and say his shit. seriously, whenever he showed up, i was internally like that one vine where a person watching dr phil starts cheering very loudly when he takes his coat off and slings it behind him as he walks around the stage. (if you know, you know.) in the end, i just really wanted him to find the happiness i felt he deserved after everything he went through, even if he was kind of a asshole at times (like the time he insulted john's taste in movies). i even played through his namco high route several times because i wanted him to feel loved and appreciated. yeah, i was the definition of being "very normal about him", but i didn't really tell anyone about it because i knew it was weird as hell.

so when he became part of davepetasprite^2 and found fulfilment in that way, i was happy for them, even if it did feel like a cop out when i read it for the first time. seeing them be the dave that fought lord english was like watching someone who got lost their identity as "the real dave" due to time shenanigans who then found a new one get their revenge on the being that made their suffering inevitable in the first place. in retrospect, i am proud of them.

sorry for this one being a lengthy one. i just wanted to give a shout out to the side character i obsessed over when i was younger because he made me happy during a tough period in my life, and i wanted him to be happy too. (oh, and he made me like the colour orange.) sure, my tastes in favorites have changed as i've grown up and gotten better, but i still can't help but feel a fondness over him whenever i see him.

that's all.

I like this confession; it's very emotional, yet gentle. I like seeing someone relate to a character and find that simple joy in it. Thanks for sharing anon, I smiled at it. I've experienced similar things and I'm sure others have too.

#homestuck confession #mod anu #homestuck

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thewertsearch · 2 years

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Asks Compilation 16/6

The best thing about categories like Sburb Titles is that once you have a big enough sample size of Person/Category mappings, you can extrapolate their traits to any character you like.

Example: I got an ask a while back asking whether I have any Titles for my own OCs, and to be totally honest I can’t stop thinking about it

Oh, that is awesome. I’m bookmarking that for reference, when I’ve finished the comic. Biology is not my strongest suit, but I do find it fascinating, and speculative biology is my jam.

It’s a balancing act, trying to make a quirk both unique and readable. i thought about a capitalization quirk WHERE i only capitalize common programmINg keywORds, but it looks kind of funky, and I wasn’t sure how to define what keywords to include.

@capribornio submitted: Part 1! Terrible memes to help you cope with what just happened.

Part 2! (Dunno why tumblr wouldn't let me submit you the two images at once, but.)

jettison to the moon drop it on those stupid pawns bye bye kids, you're gonna die now your session's dead and gone

That was made by abysswarlock! Their blog is linked below the main links in my bio. It’s great, isn’t it? Really makes the Land come to life.

Man, I’m really mad I missed the Club Penguin craze, because if I’d played it, I would absolutely have answered this ask with penguin designs for each of the kids.

Classic Tumblr. When you edit you blog description in the appearance editor, it actually scrubs all the HTML you added, and replaces it with plaintext. To update your description properly, you need to do it in the theme editor.

I fixed the blog description on desktop, but I don’t think it ever worked on mobile, since tags generally don’t work properly on the app. I think it should work if you access the blog through say, Firefox, rather than the app itself?

So do I!!!

That’s one of my favorite anime tropes, and it’s vary Homestuck-friendly, considering how many characters are bespectacled. I’m glad that my ‘sona is continuing this proud tradition.

Thank you! I think a big part of it is just that Homestuck happens to deal with stuff I’m really into. I love time travel and alt-self/identity shenanigans, so I was already looking at the Paradox Clone system from every angle even before the Veil. Once that cursor targeted Nanna, a lot of things immediately clicked into place.

I didn’t see the paired tubes coming, though. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment.

Maid! That was the first class I chose for myself, because I liked the connotations around ‘organizing’.

I’m planning on doing a bunch of Title tests over the weekend. The Official Sally Classpect will be an open question for a long time, but I am interested in how much the various tests will agree.

We’ve already talked a bit about it on the blog, but Homestuck is a kind of meta story on a lot of levels.

We saw it with the reader suggestions at first, but there are other things too, like Hussie’s narration interacting with WV. Is that ‘canon’, per se? Much to think about...

[ sent on the 12th! - Cat ]

Happy belated birthday Carcino ‘Cancer’ Geneticist! May this year bless you with Grist, Boondollars and a successfully salvaged Sburb session!

Honestly!!!

Hussie is very good at turning on the waterworks. It doesn’t happen much in Homestuck, but when it does, it hits hard.

True, true. But that was just John’s opinion - now Hussie’s narration is saying she sucks!

These guys really have been great recently. It’s like Hussie has spent a while giving them improvised character traits based on reader commands, and now that their personalities are fully established, they’re actually getting full arcs with awesome moments of development.

I honestly can’t wait to see what the Windswept Questant’s real plan is. She’s abdicated to PM, and seems to be putting a team together. Did she know WV had the Ring all along? What’s up next?

#full liveblog #act 4 #asks #classpect

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29pageshomestuckeveryday · 11 months

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Homestuck, page 2,626

youtube

[S] ACT 5 ACT 2 ==>

Song used: Homestuck by Mark Hadley

Song commentary:

Mark Hadley:

Plazmataz came up with a melody to use as an anthem for Homestuck, which they then used in Homestuck Anthem. While that was a very driving melody, I opted to come up with something that might be more suitable for credits (opening or end) or a title screen. I really like how this came out; it sounds a bit moody, but still optimistic, which is what I was aiming for.

Storyboards: http://readmspa.org/storyboards/02625.swf.html

Author commentary:

Here it is, yet another book hopelessly clogged with your favorite webtoon series, Homestuck. It's Book 5, which covers Act 5 Act 2. So in other words, a rare moment where the book number coincides with the act number. Don't worry though, that won't last long since this volume covers only half of Act 5 Act 2. So I guess it's…Act 5 Act 2 Part 1? I think I'm already getting a headache. Hey, is it too late to cancel these books? What's that? You're telling me it's too late for everything? We're all going down on this ship together? I see people in the crowd nodding their heads. Is what I'm doing by making jokes down here tantamount to what those guys were doing in playing classical music on the deck of the Titanic? Wait, I'm being handed a note from offstage. It says…yes. Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. It also says I should keep it up, if I know what's good for me, Joke Boy. Joke Boy?? Come on, guys. This book is 480 pages long, so I've got my work cut out for me. Maybe jokes are overrated. Maybe I'll start with a poem instead. Here goes: Curtains are red. Curtains are blue. Here's some more curtains. Instead of one, there are two. /Bows, ducking under brick thrown at head./

Can we start over? The note on the first page probably sounded a bit unhinged. Time to pull my shit together, splash a glass of cold water on my face, and add some fucking VALUE to this book. I promise I will do my very best to be coherent, articulate, and funny on every single page from now on. Oh, what's that? NOW you start laughing? Here's an idea. I'll start making some remarks about Homestuck, and you can all chill out. Deal? A5A2 opens with a stately, low-key animation reintroducing us to all the plot threads and characters we put on hold for what must have seemed like an eternity but in truth was only a few months of real-time updating. It's a piece conveying narrative integration, a montage of transmission, redirecting the energy just generated by the engine of Hivebent into torque, which then begins turning the wheels of the greater plot. When this animation ends, we finally take our foot off the brake and peel outta here. Since we just took such a long detour, we need little reminders of where we left off, which was [S] Descend. One such reminder is delivered by showing direct evidence that baby John has, in fact, literally murdered his grandmother with the huge joke book he rode down from space after getting shot through a portal during the Reckoning. Perhaps I should add that ending the life of another human being via a vast collection of corny jokes is a proposition I can identify with on a very personal level.

The old threads we're being reminded of wind into the new threads we just caught up with, by way of reviewing the life and times of John Egbert through the eyes of our new and favorite buddy, Karkat. The old and the new coming together like this lets us know what we're in for over the remainder of Act 5, which by now we can infer is a Whopper Act by previous standards, because we've just been modestly informed that the rest of this act is labeled with an entirely new subdivision called Act 2. Layering acts within acts is a thing that we didn't even know Homestuck could do. But really, we should have known, because Homestuck is always trying to let us know it can do anything it wants, but we just keep not listening. When I do things like drop the label "Act 5 Act 2" on readers, maybe it seems like I'm just clowning on you as usual. Maybe it's all a big goof. If you think that, fair. But there's real purpose here. By signaling that this is the beginning of an entirely new act unto itself, yet one still contained within another act, I'm letting you know the remainder of the arc is likely to be substantial. The process of merging two major narrative rivers into one huge river is itself going to be a very substantial narrative undertaking, and the story isn't going to bother pretending otherwise. Fooling around with the story's partitioning system in this whimsical way is actually a direct, totally up-front mechanism for dropping that pretense. It is literally using bullshit in order to stop bullshitting you.

Every little morsel of John's life, no matter how mundane or foolish, is absorbed by an absolutely captivated Karkat. Every tiny increment of this strange and exciting alien boy's journey through childhood is feeding into Karkat's brewing hatred just a little bit more. We coast through a few endearing moments we hadn't seen before, such as when John met Jade for the first time. As one might expect, it was a simple "hi im jade! hi i'm john!" type of transaction that got their friendship rolling. We also get a peek at John's ludicrous Harry Anderson wallpaper. A few weeks before I typed this note, Harry Anderson tragically passed away. R.I.P. to this magician guy who barely anyone knows of, or cares about. We hardly knew ye, or cared about ye.

The gag here—okay wait, this isn't even a gag, it's serious as hell… Whatever this is, here's what's up with it. Basically, when Karkat discovers John for the first time, when he connects the dots and decides that this is the boy who is directly responsible for all his failures and problems, it's "hate at first sight." Even though this may not be a gag, it does serve as a pretty good punchline of sorts to all the buildup we just went through: getting to know Karkat through a long detour/review of his journey, learning about troll romance and how that system works, etc. Then we finally return to the A-plot, and we see the spades in Karkat's eyes, and…ah, yes. We get it now. This is why Karkat is infatuated with John and spews impotent rage through a clumsy reverse-linear deluge of hate-flirting. In a way, this is something readers can relate to, since we've had a similar experience in following John's journey and growing to love him. But for Karkat, that love transmutes into hate, due to his displaced anger and his culture. It must be very confusing for love and hate to be almost interchangeable emotions. When you add being a stupid teen to the equation, it's no wonder all the trolls are such hot disasters. And now we know all this, and so have valuable context for fully appreciating the A5A2 arc. It only took getting steamrolled by hundreds of pages of Hivebent to enjoy these dividends.

#video #Youtube

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thenarator · 2 years

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⭐️10 Characters, 10 Fandoms, 10 Tags⭐️

i was tagged by @humangerbil who apparently agonized over their top ten. i meanwhile am going to name the first ten blorbos that come to mind. no pictures or gifs, because a lot of them are books.

1. trisana chandler from the “circle of magic” quartet

a chubby girl who likes books and thinks she’s crazy for the first half of the book? a character after my own heart!

2. bilbo baggins, from “the hobbit”

i appreciate a good cowardly character who overcomes his fears, but never stops preferring peace and comfort. plus fighting smarter rather than harder and using misdirection and tricks are always things i admire.

3. cisco ramon, from “the flash” (2014)

while i do like to draw elements from the comics when i write this character, i really like the incarnation from the cw’s flash tv show. even though the writers did him dirty, and i’m forever mad about that.

4. stiles stilinski, from “teen wolf”

another cw character who got a pretty raw deal, a sarcastic little shit who’s loyal to his friends and has just a touch of magic to him is definitely my type.

5. newton geiszler, from “pacific rim”

see entry #4 for my thoughts on sarcastic little shits. i also just love scientific types who are the top of their field, and newt definitely qualifies.

6. emily fletcher, from the “web of magic” series

i haven’t touched this series in years, but it’s one of my favorites from childhood. i’m hard pressed to choose between the three main girls, but emily is the first pov character and i think i like her best

7. sophie hatter, from “howl’s moving castle”

i am simply loves a woman who does magic by politely asking it to work. or occasionally shouting at it to work, but only when its urgent.

8. merlin, from “the adventures of merlin”

arthurian legend is great, but the bbc series was my obsession for a long time. i love the character of merlin . . . even if i hated the last season of the show.

9. bel-imperia, from “the spanish tragedy”

i didn’t want to fill up this list with shakespeare characters, because that would be extremely pretentious, but i did want to pay homage to my favorite character from one of his contemporaries. bel-imperia is a force of nature who conspires to avenge her dead lover, writes a letter in her own blood, and stabs a prince.

10. izuku midoriya, from “boku no hero academia”

there isn’t a lot of anime on this list, but it just wouldn’t be complete without my current blorbo of the hour! he is the light of my life and his creator can have him back when he learns to be nice to my baby.

honorable mentions: sailor moon, beast boy from “teen titan” (2003), maple from “bofuri,” john egbert and karkat vantas from “homestuck,” and every protagonist from every tamora pierce and diana wynne jones book (limiting myself to one from each of them was HARD!)

i tag @churchyardgrim @hawleypop @hedgiwithapen @isi7140 and anyone else who wants to do it!

#characters #faves #favorite characters #tag game

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ghostfacekickasshero · 2 years

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FINALLY

after 3 months of dedicating my time to Homestuck, I finally finished it.

and I’ll say it’s worth it

i’ll spoiler it, just in case you’re not finished with homestuck yet

At first I was confused when the trolls would appear, but I wanted to read the entire thing, since I don’t like missing out on stuff.

The first Act was entertaining enough for me to keep reading it, like with John trying to get his b-day gift, his posters, his dad. Not to mention captchaloguing. The captcha thing was confusing, but eventually, you get used to the term.

Act 2 got more interesting, with new characters introduced, new outfits John wore, John being commanded to do stuff, and I wanted to see the protags win the game of Skaia. And I was foolish enough to think the plot wouldn’t spiral and spiral until the last page was placed precariously.

I think I started to laugh at some jokes in Act 3 - Midnight Crew Intermission. The Betty Crocker joke was reaaaally funny since I learned John hated that cake, and Midnight Crew was just really fun to watch. I think John descended down at the end of this Act, and Jade might have been introduced too. Anyway moving onto Act 4.

Act 4 was interesting because the lands each player was on was assigned specifically to said person. At this, point, I had no idea what the goal was, but I kept reading anyway. I think this was where the trolls became more involved, like they were hinted here and there in Acts 1-3 I think, but now we sorta see them text to John, Rose, Dave, Jade, mostly we see John’s interactions I think. Oh and I can’t forget the moment GC (Terezi) sent John to the death entrance before Dave from the future saved him. THAT was fucking something 💀💀Oh and I can’t forget about how PM and AR helped distribute John’s present

(I forgot where exactly in the Webcomic Wayward Vagabond had the goofy moments when he drank so much soda and drew on the walls. And how Peregrine Mendicant was dealing with ships and stuff, and when Aimless Renegade tried to shoot WV and maybe PM, but it happened.)

And then we have ACT 5, or ACT 5 Part 1. This was literally the troll’s session handed over to us to enjoy. (This probably was the Act that might have been a fan favorite and the one people skipped too—) I never expected 12 trolls to be present before, but I definitely did learn about their love interactions, interactions all together, and blood rankings. Now that I’m thinking about it, I liked the Nepeta and Equius moments. I like how Equius is stereotypical and un-stereotypical at the same time, it was interesting to know there were handicapped trolls like Tavros and Terezi (maybe Vriska if you count the arm) There was even a kissing joke (that I mentioned eariler) that made me shaking my arms until they turned into funny bones. THAT was the best part

oh and I learned the trolls were the creators of John’s universe

Act 5 Part 2 was where things went chaotic. Gamzee apparently became a murderous troll because Dave sent a clown video I think? Jade’s dream self was dead at this point and she started becoming more active in the game. I think everyone got upgrades (Rose with magic, Dave with time and a Welsh sword) oh and the four human players died. In order to become God Tier, which was intriguing. I know John was trying to find his dad by letting WV take the drive, which was adorable! ^_^. And John’s dad was in love with Rose’s mom which was quite adorable, but dad and Rose’s mom died. They died from Dog Jack, who is basically Jack with a ring that affects his form due depending on what or who is prototyped. Prototyping Becquerel was a mistake because he was a powerful being. and that caused WV and AR to die in the future (after the session) died. He also killed Dave’s bro, WQ, the king character, some others I may forget. (Idk when the author the ACTUAL AUTHOR dies 💀💀) PM became a dog and she fought Dog Jack for a long time.

idk what was going to happen after this, but I saw a Doc had Act 6 tucked away. And I never expected Act 6 to be John and his friends but paradox forms of their elders. Jane, Jake, Dirk, and Roxy. They all had their unique vibe compared to the og cast. Jane focused more on pranking and got in trouble with her dad more. She was also connected to the Crocker Corp. Jake was a silly goofball who loved adventures, any movie, and blue alien girls. He also had a skull helmet to respond to his friends with. Dirk was as cool as Dave; but he made robots. Rap robots, autoresponders, a teleportation device. And Cal was his first and best friend. Roxy was freaking drunk all the time, but she loved wizards, a thing Rose hated. Dirk and Roxy were basically from the future where their ancestors (Dave and Rose: thought off clown mayors who were part of an evil fish woman, but civilization was destroyed. There was also GCat who was a strange occurrence. And there was UU and uu messaging the players. I know I laughed a lot in this Act. From Gamzee selling blood, to Jake kissing Dirk’s decapitated head, to a whole lot other things.

Uhhh what else do I have to say (man there’s so many things that happen in Homestuck It just keeps happening. I’ll have to skip some parts. I never expected cherubs to be a thing. I never expected that cherubs looked like skull people either. I know Jane and Jade became part of the evil fish lady is is basically a grown up version of Meenah who is one of the older trolls who created Karkat, Sollux’s, ect. universe. People got involved in the fight and died. John, at some point got goofy ahh time travel powers, so he had to go to his denizen to get that helped out. Roxy had to go to her to learn more about her voidy powers. Terezi also asks John to fix stuff in her session that she thought would make a better timeline, a not doomed timeline. So he does, and John and Roxy go to the universe where things went better (almost forgot about the Intermissions in each Act Act, those were a little sad to watch) but not in the timeline J and R are in. People just talk a lot about stuff before Vriska puts them in groups to fight different foes, Lord English, Dog Jack, Robot Jack, Lord English Jack, Batter Witch. V also sends Karkat and Kanaya to go off to Echidna who is a denizen.

I think, more conversation happens, Jane meets Nannasprite who is the adult dead version of Jane. Oh and Sprite^2 becomes a thing. Dave and Dirk are (thankfully) chill with each other. Then the fights happen, the fights with all the foes I mentioned. Some people die (when i mean some people, i mean some of the main cast who died and got healed by Jane and Nannasprite and the ghost trolls who double died from Lord English and did not get healed.) At this point, I loved the art, and it got even MORE detailed after I watched the 15 minute video that i’m trying to summarize here.

But It turns out, the enemies are all defeated. The power of exceptional art shows the main characters happy with each other, all happy back on the lilypad. But one villain is still there.

Lord English

I believe he gets captured by Vriska with the secret weapon that was used to defeat him. I also have a theory that Calliborn and Doc might be the same person, who knows the last part might be pretty interpretable *shrugs*

I never expected watching an anime frog develop into an anime universe in the anime video I watched. Big props to whoever animated the last part in Act 7.

After reviewing this, I can see why people would want more of Homestuck, because I heard the ending got mixed reviews for some reason. Oh well. At least the Homestuck Epilogues exist

oh boy this was long. But i’ll say this, thank you Andrew Hussie for making Homestuck. Thank you for dedicating your time in making each page count while dealing with a rabid fanbase at the time. I’ll promise to give your other comics a go. (i really do hope i do haha)

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wheremakingthishapen · 7 months

Note

for character ask thing davepeta, dualscar, and roses mom

ohhhh these are fun! this might get a little lengthy though so let me do these below the cut

for davepeta:

first impression:

iirc, i liked davepeta's design but i found them kind of annoying at first tbh

impression now:

i'm kin with davepeta they're literally me if they've ever done anything wrong UM. no they haven't

favorite moment:

claw claw motherfuckers

additionally i really love the undertale themed battle with them in [s] collide

idea for a story:

head is,,, enmpty,,,

unpopular opinion:

none that i can think of!

favorite relationship:

uh idk i don't rlly ship davepeta w/ anybody but i guess i liked their dynamic with john in the epilogues?? bcuz that part where they were just like "meowr you got vored" was so fucking funny

favorite headcanon:

oh man oh jeez oh boy i

for dualscar:

first impression:

i wanna say at first i didn't pay him much mind bcuz literally the only ancestors that i cared about were the signless, the dolorosa, the disciple, and the helmsman BUT

impression now:

now i literally love him to death like don't get me wrong the signless dolorosa disciple and helmsman will probably like always be my favorites out of all the ancestors but dualscar would probably have to be a close second for me i swear

favorite moment:

the part where he fucking dies- SHJHAJKAJK okay but the fact he canonically died bcuz he told a BAD JOKE to tgh is so fucking funny to me i will never recover

idea for a story:

sorry wow my head is enmpty

unpopular opinion:

i don't think i have any :(

favorite relationship:

definitely him and the helmsman i know they're kissing. him and the dolorosa are also kissing i know it deep down in my heart

favorite headcanon:

i like to imagine the joke that got him killed was a candice dick joke. like he went up to tgh and asked him like, "hey have you seen candice?" and tgh's just like "candice..?" and dualscar's like "CAN THIS DICK FIT IN YO MOUTH HA-" and then tgh just starts like fucking strangling him idk

for rose's mom:

first impression:

bitch ass motherfucker

impression now:

bitch ass motherfucker

favorite moment:

none of them get this bitch off my screen

idea for a story:

rose's mom FUCKING DIES noooo no i'm kidding idk i just like. idk i want more angst between rose and her mom i personally like to interpret rose's mom as like. neglectful at best and downright abusive at worst

unpopular opinion:

okay i actually have no idea if this is an unpopular opinion or not but it sure is an opinion!

so we all know that the epilogues, homestuck^2, and pesterquest are all dubiously canon right? meaning they are as canon as you want them to be and listen when it comes to the epilogues and homestuck^2 i don't rlly take them as canon as much as i take them as like, these wacky what-if scenarios like "HEY what-if everything went to shit huh what then" bcuz like they do bring up some interesting concepts i just refuse to believe that's what actually happened like fr, y'know?

but my point is is that i do view pesterquest mostly as canon bcuz i rlly rlly like pesterquest and in pesterquest rose says this:

ROSE: You know how long it's been since I've had a homecooked meal? ROSE: And I'm not saying that I require, or even deserve, a lovingly crafted culinary masterpiece every time I sit down to eat. That's going a bit far. ROSE: I know John complains about being plagued by fatherly concern every chance he gets. ROSE: He is overwhelmed by pastries whenever he ventures from his room. ROSE: I'm glad my mother doesn't poke her considerable nose into my private affairs. ROSE: But I'm sick of eating oatmeal.

so it is in my humble opinion that rose's mom is too drunk off of her ass most the time to so much as MAKE FOOD for rose

basically tl;dr she's a piece of shit thanks for coming to my ted talk

favorite relationship:

NONE. she deserves nothing

favorite headcanon:

i like to imagine that she is literally the worst <3

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misdemeanors-are-stolen · 2 years

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a recommendation of homestuck fics

long edition

these are fics i treasured enough to come back to over years of browsing homestuck content. fics that take homestuck itself, translate it beautifully into pure text, and make it something new; like a cool caterpillar into an even cooler somehow butterfly

TLDR at the bottom if you just wanna get my summary of a fic’s vibes instead of all the rambling. also, this gets long, so here’s a read more:

Like One Sundered Star by Oriflamme https://archiveofourown.org/works/869819/chapters/1670205 The longest fanfic narrative I’ve ever read, and what’s even more impressive than its 1.7+ million words is the high quality throughout the whole of the tale. I’ve avoided saying ‘fanfic’ singular because it’s actually split into three works, with the second two fics in the series being linked to at the appropriate point in the main fic; don’t go out of order, or you will be massively confused. LOSS is a fanfic of a fanfic, an AU of an AU; it sources from Real Men Wear Tights, a superhero AU centered around John and Karkat, and then adds so much to it (like reincarnation and mafia elements and horrorterror POV) that it ends up outgrowing those roots to become a fully-original fic. It’s got deep depths of characterization and introspection for every main character. The eight human kids, the twelve prominent trolls, the four guardians present, three Exiles for the beta kids’ session, all four of the Midnight crew, plus a handful of extras like the aforementioned horrorterrors - they each get a long POV section to their own. And it’s not overcluttered or crowded - nobody is forgotten in a scene, or squished somewhere awkwardly. The time travel ends up being clear enough to track, although it is very clever the way it wraps everything up, and because there are so many characters, you get to see so many interactions that never ended up happening in canon. Plus the adorable friendship between Dave and the Mayor. It defines and makes use of fraymotifs and game powers in very fitting ways, giving them weird arbitrary conditions and abilities, and clarifies what the Sylph class actually even does! Epic battles - emotional sincerity between parties and partners who really need it - John’s journey of learning to reach out to others and ask for help - the true horrors of Horrorterror possession and what can go wrong when you have such a condition - as well as slice-of-life when you have a bunch of superpowered kids living under one roof. They’re remarkably like regular kids, except traumatized, or Jade. And the side characters, such as Janine and Rose’s fellow magic practitioners, are lovable characters that pop up every so often to remind you that yes, there is a whole planet besides our main characters. I can’t even pick a favorite part, because I keep running through it all and finding things I like just as much as what could have been my favorite. What I will mention is that Dave teaches WV to make horribly inaccurate use of sign language, has a lovely platonic hate/rivalry with Karkat for half the fic, and ends up making an enemy of the Condesce. Over apple juice, that is. It’s a long read, and by the end it’s so full of thick loss and genuine concern over whether anyone’s even going to survive till the end it becomes slow reading where you have to take it all in before the next blow hits you, in the most admirable way a fic can be. I’m not typically emotional when I read, but this one got to me a good few times.

Refuge In Oblivion (series) by Adjourned https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569664 Comprised of two fics of comparable length; You Are a Refugee From an Omnicidal Empire and You Guard the Pyres of a Stillborn Universe, either of which may be read first, as they both provide context for the other.

YGTPOASU is the prequel, centered around the four beta kids. This one features a wonderful dive into sort of the actual process of playing through Sburb’s world quests; the themes, symbols, and metaphors the game uses, and a glimpse at intended boss fights and progression and all. (And quite possibly the saddest scene involving an anvil ever written.) It’s mostly told from Dave’s perspective, but does branch out for the other kids. YAARFAOE happens after YGTPOASU, but can be read first for a unique experience that becomes totally recontextualized after reading YGTPOASU next. It sits firmly on Karkat’s perspective for a while before going back to Dave, and is mostly average college life when the weird kid in shades indoors who won’t talk to anyone suddenly becomes a chatterbox around Karkat. Who he shares Sburbian Mythology 101 with. RIO hasn’t been updated since 2020 and may not be again, but it’s still a read worth your time, especially as it’s the shortest of these three fics at merely ~220,000 words. It really weaves theater magic in front of your eyes, especially in YGTPOASU, I can still feel the magic of those scenes. Hephaestus’s last challenge for his Knight, the ache of realizing what the anvil scene comes out to, the outsider’s view of Jade and Rose that really puts into perspective how terrifyingly powerful these kids are, even if it doesn’t seem so compared to the strength of the opponents they face. And it has, by quite a measure considering Like One Sundered Star is among the fics I’ve read, my favorite interpretation of in-game mechanics of Sburb; fraymotifs, power activation, the truly impressive timeline monologue in the anvil scene, and the alchemization process itself is touched on.

Dayvhe’s Broken Diamonds Club by Unda https://archiveofourown.org/works/16031783/chapters/37419350 (fic is locked to AO3 members only) Another long-haul fic at just over 1.1 million words, this one is a trollstuck, no-sgrub au that does a fantastic job turning what little we see of Alternia in canon into a whole living world, really leaning into the sci-fi alien society of it. And I can’t praise well enough how it manages to stick the trollified beta and alpha kids into Alternia’s current and old history as if they were always meant to be there. The fic centers around Sollux, Karkat, and Dayvhe (trollified Dave, as is obvious) - unlike the other fics, Sollux gets roughly 80% of the POV, with Dayvhe and Karkat sharing the other 20%. Still, the 12 main trolls and trollified human players have a large presence in this fic. The big strengths of this fic are in 1) its development and care for the alien world trolls have; taking care to remember trolls’ nocturnal nature, changing terms and expressions to fit it; plus the definitions in troll quadrants that really illustrate how, when taken seriously, they would work; and bringing in little-mentioned facts of alternia like the existence of zombies, 2) its interpersonal relationships and how these people, so flawed, still choose each other, they don’t flake off at the slightest inconvenience or distaste but continue to work to be better - or sink and fall off by refusing to. The fic’s summary does a great job of describing the start, but know that this fic ends up with full-out war between the Condesce and an Heiress or two, assisted by a famous movie director. !! It does tag a few things readers should know about, but particularly by the end it gets quite heavy, and does feature legitimate mental illness/health issues, plus torture (physical and mental), dissociation/doubting reality, and a couple other things I don’t know what to name as. If you’re unable to deal with anything in this vein, you might not want this fic.

TLDR: Like One Sundered Star starts out superheroes and ends up cycling back around to Sburb the long way around. It can’t be summarized as a humorous or plot-focused fic alone because it balances both simultaneously in a similar vein to Homestuck itself. It has sad chapters, funny chapters, despairing chapters where you can feel just how overwhelmed and outgunned these kids are, but they’re still moving forward.

Refuge In Oblivion is a two-part choose-your-starting-point series where either fic you choose first will provide half the picture, which the second fic completes beautifully; will you choose the college au where Sollux and Karkat get in over their heads with Dave right by their side; or the events leading up to that, the kids sorting through a world intertwined with what Sburb used to be and what’s on the kids’ plates now, before sending off a goodbye to one of the two.

Dayvhe’s Broken Diamonds Club is all about romance. Troll romance. Troll romance and also ludicrous levels of violence - well, not all that ludicrous if you’ve read anything about Alternia. Also turning Alternia into a whole planet, expanding on the many ‘wondrous’ horrors and tortures trolls have at their disposal, and following a rebellion against the Condesce’s rule that ends in a wildly unprecedented way.

that is actually as much as I could attempt to condense these fics to, summary-wise. i’ll have a shorter-fic list out some time whenever, these are just the three cream of the crop fics i’ve seen. genuinely if you’re just looking for good homestuck content, if you like novels and prose more than comics, go read sundered star and/or refuge in oblivion. but if you’re aching for something alternia with trolls and troll culture, dayvhe’s broken diamonds club is for you

#homestuck #homestuck fics #homestuck fanfics #fanfic recs #homestuck fanfic recs #homestuck fic recs #like one sundered star #dayvhe's broken diamonds club #refuge in oblivion #not tagging those two fic titles cause theyre LONG

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fbfh · 3 years

Text

dave strider dating headcanons

1k words, spoiler free

warnings: some swearing, mentions of brief fears (spiders, heights, loud noises), some swearing

pairing: dave strider x gn reader, optional brief skirt wearing

a/n: I am still in act 4 of homestuck so pls !! no spoilers !! take my interpretation of the characters with a grain of salt !!

also why is there no homestuck x reader fics?????? Am I looking in the wrong place????? Why are there barely 80 dave x reader fics on ao3 and almost none on tumblr??????? Did homestuck’s popularity just miss the x reader fic train???????? if so I fully intend to fix that (this is the first two or so pages of my dave dating hcs doc, I’m on page five and show no signs of stopping)

also since I’m still in act 4 right now I’m only writing for Dave, probably Jade, John, and Rose (maybe some of the trolls but it’ll be on a case by case basis until I feel like I know them well enough to write for them)

aged up to 18+ for moderate sex jokes lol

Someone told me once that they think Dave is the only character they know of who can match my feral chaotic energy

And honestly I have to agree

Dave is a very strategically feral, chaotic person

You know that thing where

Wait I’ll see if I can link it here

I can’t find the post but

I forget what it said verbatim

But basically that if you want to take the piss out of someone who has an Intellectual Superiority Complex you just need to act brazenly confident and sure about something you know is incorrect and as long as you don’t let on that you’re joking they’ll argue with you endlessly and it’s fucking hysterical

Dave does that

All the time

He will deadass argue with the Smart Kid in his class that the moon is fake for hours

He’ll argue endlessly that Terry Crews, Kevin Hart, and Kevin James are the same person shifting forms with randos online

He does that thing where he one ups conspiracies with more outlandish conspiracies

“The moon landing is fake”

“Uh, bro, you still believe in the moon?”

You got a truly delightful video once of him arguing with a smart kid in class about one of those ridiculous topics

Like glinda being a princess

He leans forward, tilts his glasses, and says in the most confident self assured voice

“Okay- riddle me this, bro,”

He points to the guy

“If pee isn’t stored in the balls, where do you hold it? In your hands?”

The entire class erupts into screaming laughs

The teacher enters to the guy getting up in Dave’s face screaming about sperm and piss

Both of them got a detention

If you can match his irony and sense of humor beat for beat

His brain goes into in love overdrive

You basically never “break character” and it’s fucking immaculate

He didn’t know you could vibe so well with someone

Every bad joke you make

Every meme reference

Every act of idiocy for the sake of the joke

He falls harder

It’s kind of scary for him at first

Having these raw genuine feelings so close to him

He covers with humor as usual

But part of him is freaking out a little

It’s sort of like finding a possum in your house

And then you realize there’s more possums hidden around

Then you run into the bathroom, look in your closet, check the pantry

There are possums everywhere

They don’t seem mean

They’re actually kind of cute

But what the fuck

Aren’t possums usually supposed to stay outside?????

So yeah when he falls he falls hard

I might do Dave crushing on you hcs too

One of his favorite ways to spend time with you is just chilling together doing separate activities and periodically updating each other

He’ll be working on some sick beats

You’ll be sitting on his bed doing something you love

Drawing, bullet journaling, blogging, editing videos

Whatever your thing is

It genuinely makes him feel so close to you to just

Be near you

He has this sort of deep quiet admiration for you

For a while he genuinely has no idea how to connect the two aspects of his feelings for you and how he’s used to expressing himself

He feels like he can’t tell you how much he likes you cause like

That’s not swaggy bro

So a lot of his affection is in little ways

He knows all of your favorite snacks and drinks

Favorite candies and gum

He will protect you from anything you’re afraid of

Spiders? Gets rid of them so fast you literally didn’t know it was there

Loud noises? Has you listen to his latest mixtape when you’re going through somewhere noisy

If you have any mental health problems or we you bet your ass he will do so much research on how to support a friend with [insert thing]

Picks up on a lot of your cues and mannerisms quickly

Knows exactly when to give you his jacket, when to show you the perfect meme, when to take a study break

When to just pull you into a random dance party

He really likes dancing badly with you

Just failing around and spinning you around

If you like to wear skirts he likes the way your skirt flows when he twirls you

It looks so flowy

Like water or something

His favorite part is after you’ve been dancing for a while

When the song ends or when you get tired

How you’ll both kind of slow down and laugh and catch your breath

You’re still holding his hand

And you’re standing really close to him

He thinks you’ve never looked more beautiful

He never wears his sunglasses when you dance

He claims it’s because he doesn’t want them to fly off

But it’s really bc he doesn’t want anything getting in the way of watching you laugh and smile so much

Oof he’s got it bad for you

#homestuck #dave strider #dave strider x reader #homestuck x reader #homestuck fic

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gyroshrike · 3 years

Note

Tell me why you love Gamtav; give me a whole rambling essay if you can. I like seeing people excited over the things and ships they like!

Oh, are you sure you want this? Do you really want to open Pandora's Box? Are you ready for the amount of rambling I can do about GamTav? How much time do you have? Because this is going to be a doozy. I haven't even started writing it and I can tell.

And before I get into it, people gotta know that most of this is based off of pre-murderstuck Gamzee

What do I like about GamTav? What do I like about GamTav??? One of the things that plays into me loving this ship so much is how much I love Gamzee and Tavros as individuals. Whenever I start reading a new piece of media, without question my favorite characters are almost always the really, really nice ones. Boku no Hero Academia? Kirishima. Anohana? Poppo. Legend of Korra? Bolin. And in the beginning of Homestuck, Gamzee and Tavros are just really, really NICE.

Oh, well, Gamzee is really, really nice. When we first see Tavros, he’s being a little shit to the kids, but that's because he was intentionally trying to troll. But once we get into Act 5 and we see Tavros interact with his friends, we realize he's generally a really kind person. His conversations with Nepeta, Gamzee and Aradia are all really sweet. His pesterlog with Vriska, which is the first one we get to see after he is revealed to us as a character, immediately paints a picture of him as someone struggling with his self-esteem and someone who is trying really hard to build himself up as a person. Way to fuckin’ endear me to a character IMMEDIATELY.

For most of the early comic until Act 5, we see all the trolls trolling the kids and even talking shit back and forth to each other. Gamzee was one of the first trolls who we see be purely sweet and supportive to his friends. His first pesterlog after we’re introduced to him is with Karkat and Karkat does nothing but talk shit. xD He does his usual song and dance of saying just the absolute worst things possible in that Karkat way of his and Gamzee just laughs and nods and basically says, “Yeah brother, you go, I love you, you're my best friend.”

We see Gamzee talk with Equius and we already know at this point that Equius is weird, but Gamzee is so jazzed to be talkin’ with his friend. He's just so supportive of Equius and even when Equius tells Gamzee that he must stop doing soper, Gamzee just says, “Okay, sure, you got it, I trust what you're telling me because you're my friend.” Now Equius is not actually ready for Gamzee to listen to him and backtracks and is like, “Wait, no, you don't have to listen to me, let's roleplay instead,” and Gamzee's like, “I don't know how to roleplay, but I'll try for you bro.” He’s just really fucking cute???

Short version: When we meet them, Tavros is someone you want to root for and Gamzee is just the nicest guy on the planet.

Gamzee loves his friends so much and from early on it's made apparent that he wants to love and support them, and would honestly do a lot for them even if he doesn't know what he's doing.

Also along with just being a generally sweet guy Tavros is the nerd archetype I love? He loves the troll equivalent of Pokemon and card games and other things like that. Also he just really loves animals? And I always love the characters who love animals. It's a really big weakness I have. Not to mention, talking with them? That's so COOL? So badass??? Like, UM???? He could control them, but he doesn't like forcing them to do bad things against their will. (Going off of how when suggested he control the imps to defeat them, but feels like that would be unfair/mean.)

SPEAKING OF THE IMPS. Of the twelve trolls, Tavros and Gamzee are the two of them who BEFRIENDED their imps. Isn't that so fucking rad????? They both started off fighting them at first, but then they both later mention that they are able to chill with their imps instead. Gamzee shares pie with them and Tavros communicates with them using his powers. I freaking LOVE that parallel. When I first noticed it I almost keeled over. See, I'm also a sucker for characters who like to attempt peace before conflict, so of course I'm going to love that both of them made friends instead of enemies.

So Act 5 Homestuck has already set me up to basically completely love these two characters. Now, I am a really big shipper. In almost every piece of media I go into I generally come out with ships and that's a big way that I engage with fandom. Now Homestuck, I actually didn't ship that much at first when I first started reading, which is pretty strange for me. I think I just kind of let the ships fall into my lap up until that point. I know my brain had really enjoyed the ideas of Karkat and Terezi, Dave and Terezi, and had even teased inklings of "What if?" and "Oh, I like them," about Rose and Kanaya. But for the most part I wasn't really into Homestuck for shipping at first.

The concept of GamTav, or PBJ as it was more commonly referred to then, was introduced to me by my friends. I had two irl friends who were reading the comic with me and they were ahead of me by some decent amount of pages at the time. At one point they started making references to PBJ and really liking PBJ and I was a little confused because I didn't quite know what they were referring to at first. I learned pretty soon that PBJ was Gamzee and Tavros and I remember being really excited for the ship because it was the first time I'd seen my friends get that excited for a ship. Which is really funny because now in the twilight years of the Homestuck fandom, of the three of us, I'm the only one gripping white-knuckled onto GamTav and breathing it like my life depends on it, while the other two have moved on to much different things. If I'm being honest, I'm pretty sure one of them doesn't even really like Gamzee that much anymore, but respects how much I love him and lets me rant and rave to her about him whenever I want.

It wasn't long after that that I finally got to the infamous "Make out a little" conversation between Gamzee and Tavros. I read the pesterlog and suddenly everything I had seen and heard from my friends made sense. I mean, not that I'm saying that's the ONLY reason GamTav makes sense. I just mean I understood what my friends specifically were talking about. Of the pesterlogs we've seen between them before that, Gamzee and Tavros obviously had a decent friendship. I'm pretty sure in the comic Gamzee was the first person to have a pesterlog with Tavros who is genuinely nice to him. (And this is conversation happens directly after Tavros’ conversation with Vriska, so it’s a wild contrast.) So as a friendship, I was already super down with Gamzee and Tavros-- you know what? Now that I think about it, I feel like I remember in [S] Make Her Pay being disappointed that Gamzee and Tavros were fighting alone and not with each other. Because a lot of the other trolls had paired up to be cool duos, you know? We had Karkat and Terezi, Feferi and Sollux, Nepeta and Equius, and I think I remember being bummed that Gamzee and Tavros weren't paired up. So I, at the very least, think I wanted things for these two even if I hadn't stepped into the realm of actually shipping them yet. I don't remember, this was YEARS ago.

Anyway, the infamous makeout conversation happens, and I'm sold hard for life. I have a lot of other Homestuck ships that I'm into and I enjoy, but none have ever, ever, ever, ever come close to GamTav.

I realize that I've written so much and I still haven't gotten to the meat of why I like them.

So I like ships where the parties involved are best friends. I love it when the characters in a ship are bros who love hanging out, who love doing silly things together. That awesome video "What your favorite Homestuck ship says about you" had me dead to rights. Called me out so hard. My ideal ship dynamic is "being stupid together"? Way to come for the throat. That's exactly it. At their core, Gamzee and Tavros are one of the funnest bro combinations I have ever seen. And what makes them so fun is both of them are huge dorks. HUGE dorks.

When we first meet Gamzee, he stares off into the colors of his miracle modus while making the most ridiculous face, tries to unicycle but just fuckin' pieruettes right off if it because his legs are too short, and just straight up reaches into his modus with his bare hands. Don't even get me started on how he scares himself with his own horns. That shit kills me.

We've already talked about how Tavros is a huge nerd, so that's covered. But like… have you heard him rap? This guy just gets so into it and has so much fun while simultaneously sounding so silly. He's flirty and awkward and ridiculous and has this shit eating grin on all the time.

They are those two friends who get up to shenanigans where everyone else around them just kind of shakes their head and thinks that they're so dumb (in an affectionate way), but they don't care because all they DO care about is how much fun they're having together.

One of my favorite things about Homestuck in general is it lets its characters be bad at things. John and Karkat suck at coding. Gamzee, Tavros, and Dave are bad at rapping. Rose becomes a prolific author, but I would argue she's bad at writing when she's 13 because, wow is it a slog to get through her wizard fanfiction LMAO.

And GamTav is a perfect example of two people who just have fun together being bad at things together. There's no pretense of needing to be cool or needing to be good at something or any type of shame or embarrassment. They're just so silly and they don't mind being silly around each other and they never make the other person ashamed of who they are. We even see some of that last bit in the comic. Gamzee never puts Tavros down. In one conversation, he acknowledges Tavros' disability, but doesn't taunt Tavros for it, doesn't make it a joke, or make him feel bad. It's just acknowledged and then they move on. Then Tavros mentions that while he doesn't share Gamzee's religious or spiritual views, he is supportive of them. I am such a sucker for shit like that.

In every way, shape, and form, Gamzee and Tavros are supportive of each other and just and totally uplift the other person. Both of these characters go through so much verbally (both jokingly and maliciously) at the hands of their peers for being who they are that Gamzee and Tavros' conversations were so refreshing to just see them be unabashedly themselves with another person.

And they make each other happy! Tavros' first conversation with Gamzee was the first time we see where Tavros is purely elated to be talking to the person he is talking to. And Tavros obviously makes Gamzee really happy. They just make each other so happy! And I love that shit!

Gamzee is, without restraint, supportive of everything that is Tavros. Gamzee is the type of person who would look at anything Tavros wants to do or is trying to do and put his whole heart in supporting Tavros and telling him, "Yeah bro, you can do this, you're amazing, I love you, go get 'em, you're the best, you can do anything you put your mind to,” and I love that for Tavros.

Gamzee was the friend I spent all of Homestuck wishing Tavros had. Tavros spent so much time talking to Vriska, interacting with Vriska, adventuring with Vriska. And that entire time I was just wishing that Gamzee was there instead, just so Tavros would have someone to be nice to him.

After murderstuck, I spent years waiting for Gamzee and Tavros to meet in a dream bubble. That was all I wanted. I wanted Gamzee to have to look Tavros in the eye and face what he had done, own up to everything to the person he loved most in the world. But of course, post murderstuck, Gamzee gets everything stripped away from him that made him the character he was in the beginning. It wasn't even a satisfying villain arc! It was just confusing! I feel like I could have dealt with it if Gamzee was a well-rounded villain. But instead his entire villain shtick was just surrounded by a bunch of question marks! I spent all of Homestuck waiting to learn what exactly was going on with Gamzee and then we never got that and that fucked me up.

And of course, oh, of course, up until the very end of the series, in the very, very, very last animation we ever see, Homestuck Act 7, Tavros is standing by Vriska's side, as he has had to do since the very beginning.

I haven't read the epilogues or Homestuck 2, so I'm not going to touch on anything that happens in those series and I would appreciate it if no one responded to this with spoilers. Don't even tell me things like, "Oh, you'll like Gamzee," or "Oh, you'll hate Gamzee," or anything like that. I don't want any hints. I already got enough. I want to form my own opinion when I finally get the energy to go in.

Nowadays, I stick almost exclusively to humanstuck AU's for my GamTav. Because even if canon GamTav wasn't so sad and depressing, there are other things that make me way too sad to think about. As a bronze blood, Tavros's lifespan is going to be significantly shorter than Gamzee's. No matter the good or bad context surrounding their relationship. Even if they were the perfect, fluffy, happy couple in canon, I can't deal with that lifespan difference. It breaks my goddamn heart.

I live in a world where I can rewrite the circumstances surrounding these characters and make it play out in a way that is much more to my liking. Writing them in humanstuck AU's lets me take away all of the things that make my heart hurt and instead repurpose them for really meaningful, emotional character building arcs and that's my main focus when it comes to GamTav.

Something I'm also really picky with when it comes to this ship is that I need the core of Gamzee and Tavros' character growth to happen apart from each other. I have found that I don't like stories that center Gamzee and Tavros or their relationship as the pivotal point of their development. I don't like when Gamzee is the pillar of Tavros' confidence. I do like when Gamzee helps out building Tavros' confidence by being supportive and saying nice things and encouraging him, but I don't like it when he is the main source. I don't want Tavros' growth to be hinged on Gamzee being in his life.

The same goes for Gamzee. I don't like stories where Tavros is the one thing keeping Gamzee from doing bad things. I don't like when their relationship is framed as being the one thing keeping Gamzee from going murder mode all over his friends again. I've read fics where Gamzee struggles either with murderous instincts as a troll or mental health as a human and Tavros is one of the only things that keeps him from going off the deep end. I don't like that. I want Gamzee's growth to be primarily on his own or at the very least not supported by his romantic partner. Of course, I love it when Tavros is there when he needs him to hold him or soothe him or say kind things or help him through his struggles. I'm not saying I don't want Tavros to comfort him at all or ever, I just don't want Tavros to be his sole anchor.

I just love idiot best friends in love.

Oh, OH! ALSO. Gamzee doesn’t give a FUCK about the hemospectrum. One of the first things he says to Equius is how he doesn’t get it, how he’s not better than anyone else, how he doesn’t even know how to ACT better than anyone else. How am I not supposed to love that?

Opposite sides of the hemospecturm relationships are so fun. I love the idea of Gamzee entering a room full of strangers and them being like “Oh no! :O !!!! Scary subjuggulator!!” and Tavros comes rushing over all happy and excited and they just snuggle all cute and gross and everyone watching’s jaw just drops.

This might sound weird, but I also think one of the things that endear me to characters is them getting misinterpreted and then me having fun drawing them more ‘accurately’? Tavros is so often depicted as uwu soft weepy boi and I love drawing him with a mischievous grin just as ready to do something stupid and get himself into trouble as Gamzee is. Equius TOLD Tavros not to go near the stairs with his new robo legs. What is one of the things Tavros does immediately? Go try the fuckin’ stairs. And he KEEPS DOING IT.

*lays down on the floor* I just… I just want domestic GamTav where they move into a nice wheelchair accessible home (modified in a similar way to Tavros' hive in Pesterquest) and Gamzee massages Tav's back when it aches and tells him he's the light of his life and in turn Tavros holds Gamzee close on his darker days and Tavros kisses his hands and brushes his hair out of his eyes and boops his nose and they laugh so hard together that they cry.

#homestuck #gamtav #gamzee x tavros #gamzee makara #tavros nitram #hs pbj #homestuck pbj #asks for me #anon #HERE IS IS ANON #RAMBLY AS ALL HELL

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hms-no-fun · 2 years

Note

what's your favorite joke you've written into godfeels

i love writing dave, ironically his sense of humor is the closest to mine of any of the cast. pick just about any conversation with dave and you'll find one of my favorite jokes in there somewhere. i love recurring gags like "i AM telling you" and roxy's "8nt". actually the joke that i enjoyed the most for a long time came from roxy in 2.2:

"shit my ass" is one of those lines i wrote and immediately laughed myself into hysterics. roxy is a lot of fun to write in a way that's very different from dave, but they're both kinda in the same wheelhouse?

what else... dare's rant about the lost boys is maybe my favorite thing i've written and probably the funniest bit of chapter 8, especially considering the context? but i think the jokes i'm most proud of are in the circus egotistica, when dave and dirk are arguing about dave's rap:

imo this is the best dirk i've ever written. angel dirk is kind of a different character from dirk in that he's at least started to accept that he's not "dirk prime" or whatever, so as much as i enjoy his john mcclane-style repartee with the host, i know it's not really DIRK in the prototypical sense. but this? this is 100% classic dirk. you could argue that godfeels is a laboratory in which i teach myself how to write various homestuck characters, and i think this is the moment i really finally GOT this version of dirk.

i'm certain there are others but these are the ones that jump to mind first

#godfeels #homestuck #dave #dirk #angel dirk #sarahposts

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autumnblogs · 3 years

Text

Day 1: A Young Man Stands In His Bedroom

I don't expect Day 1 to be too eventful, but I'm also pretty wordy.

https://homestuck.com/story/3

Homestuck has this sort of weird relationship with the idea of "Started just now, but always was that way" that I think probably is pretty important to the way it tackles cultural narratives overall. Growing up, cultural narratives have a huge effect on our day to day lives, but we're not really cognizant of them until they are right up in our faces. That's my thesis, by the way, or at least one of them. Homestuck is a story about stories. That's not the only thing that Homestuck is about, and it might not even be the most important thing it's about, but that is one of the things that it's about.

Or maybe I'm full of horseshit. Wouldn't be the first time. More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/4

I like Homestuck’s character intros. They’re cute. Instead of actually characterizing these characters much, they have a pretty strong tendency to sort of create the background radiation of the comic. Like, I don’t think that John and Karkat ever bully each other about the fact that they’re mutually bad at coding, which would be hilarious, but there are loads of weird programming gags in Homestuck that I think are a part of the universe because John is bad at programming as much as they’re there because Andrew was into Comp Sci at this time.

https://homestuck.com/story/6

The first of our funky gaming abstractions. Homestuck is a story about stories, and the kind of story that it’s often about (when it’s not about highly abstract cultural narratives) is the video game. Especially the point and click adventure game.

There are a lot of weird things about Homestuck’s story and themes only because it engages with video games the way it does. I’ll come back to that. As long as I’m writing, this, I might as well take a minute to say that I think this whole sequence of screwing around with puzzling and slightly irritating gaming abstractions loses a lot of people on an archival read. It lost me a couple of times before I was able to get past it and lose the next eight years of my life to Andrew Hussie. Nowadays though, there’s something endearing about it. I like watching John scramble around.

https://homestuck.com/story/12

I’ll never get tired of Dad Egbert. Is he the Platonic Ideal of Dadliness? Maybe. Dadliness, and more generally, Manliness, is a lens we can look at a lot of John’s character arc through. His room, as we’ll see in a few panels, is full of Manly dudes, and I think he cares a lot about being a manly guy - a romantic lead, a badass, maybe some day even a Dad himself. Maybe.

https://homestuck.com/story/16

This one is a new train of thought for me.

Back when this was written, I gather the comic was still being written pretty much entirely off of prompts, and I think it’s probably just part of Andrew’s playfully antagonistic writing style, at least in a Doylist sense. I wonder how much, though, retroactively, we can read the narrative’s general aggression toward John as being his own self-criticism? Sometimes the Narrative in Homestuck is Andrew Riffing. Sometimes it’s a character’s own internal monologue. Often, I think it’s probably both.

Maybe I’ll keep a tally of how often it happens.

https://homestuck.com/story/26

Our first sign of Dave. I think it’s funny how people glom onto some things and not others. Apple Juice has become practically Dave’s Trademark Favorite Food if you look at some peoples’ perception of the character. I don’t think people think nearly as much about how much of a surly jackass John is to his pals in early acts. He’s a little mean. Is it early installment weirdness? It certainly adds character to him.

Poor Dave. Maybe I’m reading too much into this. I probably am.

https://homestuck.com/story/42

These don’t really exist any more. GameBro is one of those things about Homestuck (like John remarking on Black Presidents) that really makes it a period piece. It is, as another commentator put it, aggressively contemporary. I remember drooling over gaming magazines when they were still in print but never really buying any due to a lack of allowance funds. My friends and I shared a moment of silence when Nintendo Power went out of print.

https://homestuck.com/story/63

Rose appears. This is a character I’ve got a love hate relationship. I think out of everyone in the comic, Rose is the one I’m the most like. We’ll come back to her later. Not a lot to say here except “A Weakness for Insufferable Pricks” is a collection of syllables I’ve always enjoyed. And that Rose knows her friend’s quirks well.

https://homestuck.com/story/78

The narration is, once again, weirdly aggressive to John. (Also the Peanut Gallery thing is a cunning bit of wordplay.)

https://homestuck.com/story/82

I like this page. It’s weird and eerie. If anybody has a good take on what it means, I’m all ears. (The other houses in John’s neighborhood have always made me wonder things like, what is John’s neighborhood like? Does he have any other friends? Any neighbors who are important to him? It never comes up, so I think the answer is probably no. What about School? Does he go? He never mentions any school chums. John is a pretty lonely kid.)

https://homestuck.com/story/90

Teenagers are little shits. I certainly was one, although my general shittiness didn’t flower until I was probably between 16 and 18 years old. I was at least well behaved before that. Anyway, I think your relationship with your parents can be adversarial at the best of times when you’re John’s age. That’s always been my interpretation of Strifes, but maybe there’s more to it. John’s is pretty mild. Some of the later ones, less so.

https://homestuck.com/story/103

The Narrative gets weirdly aggressive toward John again.

https://homestuck.com/story/109

Maybe I should watch some of these movies at some point so I can be in on the joke. I don’t think I’ve watched any of John’s favorite movies, actually.

https://homestuck.com/story/132

John and Rabbits are related to John in at least two ways - magicians pull rabbits out of hats, Nic Cage puts bunnies back into boxes. John’s a bit flighty like a rabbit too. Like the legendary lapine hero Elahraira, one of John’s main strategies as the Heir of Breath is avoidance - he runs away. There’s kind of a basic tension between that and the fact that, as a self-styled manly dude, John is also, at times, pretty confrontational.

https://homestuck.com/story/153

I’ve always had an interest in like, the specific way Homestuck characters talk - getting a feel for what words they use, what words they would probably never use. Rose goes for a plethora of multisyllabic words, and then occasionally peppers her pesterlogs with Buffy Speak and profanity.

https://homestuck.com/story/154

I think they’re elegant too, Rose.

https://homestuck.com/story/171

Of all the kids, Rose uses fuck more than any other profanity. Karkat uses it more than Rose does, but a higher percentage of Rose’s curse words are fuck compared to all the curse words she uses. Just a fun fact.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Rose is the only main character to definitively end up in a stable romantic relationship by the end of the main comic. Girl has fornication on her mind.

As long as I’m on the subject of romance and fornication, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to bring up the other theme I’m going to riff on in my exploration of Homestuck a lot - Reproduction. Shipping is a bit part of the Homestuck fandom, and not for no reason - all these kids have finding a mate on their mind, and the idea of each other as potential romantic partners is one of the very first things anybody brings up - it’s the first thing Dave talks about in his very second conversation with John.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy pretty much any time John and Rose talk to each other? I am not a Grimdorks shipper, but I’ve always been of the opinion that John and Rose are closer with each other than they are with their other respective relationships. Besties.

https://homestuck.com/story/199

More narrative aggression for John.

https://homestuck.com/story/217

It is a matter of critical importance to me that Rose’s Room is messy and her bed is unmade. We learn quite a bit about the aesthetics Rose is going to bring to the story here, but my favorite is that Rose’s room is a fucking disaster.

Anyway, I think that’s about all from me tonight. I’m about an hour out from the end of my shift. I’m largely going to be doing these while I work, since I’ll be at my computer anyway, waiting for jobs to come my way.

This is Cam signing off, alive, and not alone.

#homestuck #liveblogging #commentary #giocities #tvtropes #personal stuff

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