marcille

long meditation on jade and dave's relationship - part 1

here's a three-part heavy homestuck meta. took me about 3 days to scrobble together and format and everything

part 2 part 3 cooking

i apologize in advance for the disorganization of my thoughts. after writing it i realized this is probably one of the clearest glances into how my mind thinks associatively so everything relates in some way to something else in here. the foundations for my thoughts might be invisible to others because they can’t see the connections ive built upon but you can probably see them here, and that strong foundation is also why i care so much about them and why i chose to lay it all out. sometimes i feel like i have Got to get this tangled associative web out of my head and into some form of writing so other people can be like, “oh so This is why you have so much to say” and can just. see into my head and where it all comes from for me. people have expressed interest and the general opinion tends to be that people like hearing my thoughts a lot so yeah. pov you are in my brainwebs. seatbelts everyone get on the magic school bus in that bitch

some time ago i saw this post i saw as i was going through florals jade tag again. my homestuck hyperfixation flared up again and ive been hyperfocused on dave and jade and particular just absolutely entering these monotropic black holes over them and turning them around at different angles and looking at discussions and what people thought both now and in the past and now that im older i can appreciate them even more. ive always been a fan of dave and jade both, but i cant even lie dave has my whole heart so maybe im biased as well. but i like to believe that regardless of my liking for dave and interest in not even x-ray scanning him just straight up 3D mri scanning him and rotating him in my head that my argument is still very reasonable. i just understand his psychology a lot

i want to preface this by saying i absolutely love floral and im so glad she’s on the hsbc team because i know she can do jade harley justice. one of the best jadesters fr. we all come into media analysis with different personal experiences and perspectives, and i understand this was from her perspective as someone who had run ins with dumb boys and relates a lot to jade which is why she can put so much love into her <3 i just found myself disagreeing with some of the arguments that she presented in that post just as a peer who also read the comic from my own perspective. keep in mind i also love jade to bits and want the best for her

so yea this isn’t a targeted post at all. it just got the juices flowing and inspired me to actually write my pre-existing thoughts down and i used it as a springboard for them

i think it ended up being pretty insightful overall especially because i was stoned as fuck writing it and ive come to realize being stoned amplifies and improves the output of my deeply inwardly associative thought processes tenfold. or maybe weed just changes how significant it feels. maybe a little of both

part 1: on using davesprite as a basis for interpreting jade's relationship with all daves

i love what hussie does with alternate versions of characters and. it’s one of the coolest things about homestuck’s characterization. like floral quoted:

… we see that Jack is a simple man, no matter what name he goes by. He is, if not much else (and he’s not), impatient and violent. We only got the briefest glimpse into these qualities when we were first introduced to him on Derse. But now we get to spend much more time with him, albeit in the form of a completely different character. This is another bit of sneaky utility provided by this intermission tangent. It serves as an arc to help indirectly characterize the villain of the early acts. Having multiple copies of a character operating in totally different circumstances turns out to be a great stealth characterization tactic, and it gets used much more aggressively later in the story. In fact, it proves to be inseparable from one of the story’s most essential themes. (Hussie’s Intermission commentary)

so i agree in principle and think the alt self thing is fucking brilliant

however, i disagree with the argument it’s supporting.

So, not the same character, but if switched, I would go out on a limb and say that Dave would experience all the same issues as Davesprite did, but without the “bird” part acting as an easy explanation. That doesn’t make Dave responsible but it does speak volumes to how their personalities respond to each other, insinuates that a relationship involving any Dave would end badly for Jade and that “Real” Dave indeed has Some Issues To Deal With.

i don't agree that dave and davesprite should be compared in this context. yes they are splinters of the same character and floral is right on the money in that canon deflecting the relationship failing on "bird issues" doesn't really explain anything meaningful, but i do not think its the case that all of jade’s relationships with dave are doomed to fail because of what we saw with jade and davesprite.

yes, if switched, dave strider would be practically identical to davesprite since they were the same exact person until a branch in the timeline

however, it's the unique things davesprite has been through that made him like this. davesprite has baggage that dave doesn't. a timeline where john was tricked into fighting his denizen early and died and jade couldn't get in on time and was presumably wiped out dinosaur style on earth. with alt future dave's year-worth of knowledge, gear, loot, and experience, he rescinded his player status and "realness" as a human person to be a game guide for his naive past self right before the timeline split in order for himself and his friends to continue existing.

that would mess anyone up mentally. it's no wonder he's jaded, no pun intended. he's depressed as shit and bitter and probably has trauma issues unrelated to his bro, though they do compound on it. yes they both experienced bro's abuse but i'm talking about the differences between alpha timeline dave and davesprite; right now im not going to talk about things that are the same about them prior to the timeline split because it applies to them both so it's redundant.

essentially what's setting them apart is their experiences playing sburb, their chronological age (alt future dave/davesprite had been making timeloops over a span of four months and he says that in total the time from his chronological perspective is close to a YEAR in sburb grinding shit out before he goes back), their relationship to their friends and how their friends see them and how they see themselves, their ontological natures as beings, what their purposes are.

davesprite had his ontological status as a person and purpose changed. he assumed he'd be the one playing and doing important main shit in the alpha timeline with all his friends but then it turns out that wasn't the case due to the events that went down in his timeline. and becoming a sprite solidly changed his degree of existence. davesprite's best friend john asking if he can talk to "the real dave" is when i think he realized just how fucked up his existence as a person has become despite him doing pretty much everything for everyone for nearly a YEAR before the alpha timeline was even able to get properly started. if davesprite didn’t exist, nobody would have (john needed to live to do ectobiology). davesprite knew this and weaponized it against john who john treated as a secondary, lesser dave. so of course he’s kind of an asshole. it’s like his efforts and sacrifices meant squat to the people he considered his best friends because they didn’t experience it. to john he just suddenly appeared from the future and became a sprite.

this is heavy shit for davesprite that alpha timeline dave does NOT have to go through and it did change him in ways that cannot be said about alpha timeline dave. this is not a universal dave experience. so while it’s true that dave has the capacity of act like davesprite under those exact circumstances, alpha timeline dave didn’t undergo those that led to davesprite’s more miserable traits. therefore i don’t think it’s fair to conflate jade’s failed relationship with davesprite in particular as informing of how most of jade and dave’s relationships would unfold, because davesprite has been in exceptionally tragic circumstances, coming to terms with the state of his own existence. the last thing davesprite needs is romance. alpha timeline dave does not carry this burden.

Everyone believed that what was creating the dissonance wasn’t a central part to Dave’s character but an aftereffect of Bird Syndrome. Which you can’t blame them for because there’s nothing that would lead them to think differently. Every character besides Dirk is completely in the dark about Bro’s abuse and Dave stated he’d probably never tell any of the Betas. Which is fine, no one’s owed to know somebody’s baggage. But when you don’t give people a means to understand what you’re going through, especially when it leads you to hurt them, its only inevitable everyone’s going to be confused and going to come to conclusions using what they do know.

rebuttal to this: as i said earlier i don’t buy the whole bird issues thing and i get the handwaviness about being fused with a bird being john’s explanation for davesprite’s bullshittery. however i think it’s important to mention that john and jade both question if becoming a sprite might have had something to do with his change.

being fused with a bird never bothered him, as jade says. it was all the other baggage that came with the prototyping.

this includes playing the game for way longer than anyone else and mindlessly grinding from the ground up for about a year, then turning himself into a game construct and having his ontological level of existence as the platonic ideal form of dave strider lowered in the eyes of his friends.

JOHN: like what? JADE: its hard to explain JADE: just some slight differences in personality i guess JOHN: he still raps sometimes. JADE: yes... JADE: so? JOHN: i just thought i would mention that. JADE: ok i will admit i cant really tell if his rapping style has changed JOHN: trust me, it hasn't. JADE: i dont know if the differences are because he is a sprite JADE: or because he lived for a while in a different timeline... (p.4733)

JOHN: why is he such a basket case? he's like regular dave, but like, aloof enigma edition. JOHN: maybe it's because he's part bird? i think becoming a bird and a sprite did something weird to him. JADE: i dont think being a bird ever bothered him JADE: like i said... its all more complicated than that JOHN: normal dave was so much more level headed. JOHN: i have to admit, i spend a lot of time wondering what he and rose are up to. JADE: me too JOHN: ehh... JOHN: maybe it's for the best he broke up with you. JADE: why? JOHN: well, what kind of future do you think you would have with him? JOHN: he's a sprite. like really, what even is a sprite? how long do they live? will he still be around if we win the new game we are allegedly trying to get to? JADE: i dont know (p.5294)

as for the bro abuse thing, i can’t tell if floral’s position here is that davesprite is fucked up and had a failed relationship with jade because of bro’s abuse, and that dave would also necessarily have failed relationships with jade because he had the same experiences and also doesn’t tell anybody? the wording there is kind of vague and can be interpreted in different ways but that’s how i interpreted it.

they are right that bro’s abuse is something dave keeps to himself. but remember that dave has also deluded himself about it to cope. he doesn’t know what to think of it himself. both alpha timeline dave and davesprite have this baggage, but we explore it more with alpha timeline dave.

i know dave said in the post-retcon timeline when having a conversation with dirk that he could never tell karkat all of this or any of the betas about his abuse. but i still find this pesterlog interesting and i want to put a spotlight on it. even while dave was still chugging that copium, jade was the person he was closest to opening up about the nature of his relationship to his bro at this point. remember this is quite early on in the comic and he didn’t have 3 years on the meteor to contemplate it yet when he said this to her, his bro had just died at this point

GG: anyway dave im really sorry about your bro/dad GG: you were pretty close with him right? TG: meh it was a pretty bizarre relationship by any standard TG: fightin off wave after wave of face pumicing puppet ass every day TG: always being on guard for stealth attacks in the middle of the night while getting up to go to the fucking bathroom GG: heheh TG: but i guess it all sorta amounted to some vague unspoken semblance of kinship TG: if thats a thing TG: like if honor among thieves is something then lets call it camaraderie among ironic rapping roof ninjas TG: but thanks GG: sure TG: i thought about taking his sword TG: when i was there TG: but i couldnt TG: couldnt really bring myself to try to pull it out it was too weird GG: dave we have to stop him!!!!! TG: what GG: jack! GG: he shouldnt get away with this TG: you think (p.3204)

even if he’s in denial about it, deciding to point out the positivity he can rationalize about it to avoid spending too much time thinking deeply about it (it makes him uncomfortable), he’s getting closer to acknowledging the truth here that shit wasn’t normal, about it being “bizarre” and you can tell hes being genuine here when he thanks jade for her concern about his loss

dave then continues talking about his thoughts/feelings on the situation after jade says “sure”, as if he took her concern as an invite to open up about his thoughts even when it’s something vulnerable for him that he tried putting on false bravado in front of terezi about. jade then abruptly changes topic to what’s to be practically done about these tragedies—dave was still on the topic of his bro and she changed the topic to jack noir without clarifying, hence he goes “what”

this is interesting because terezi tried to get something out of him about this and was met by riddly puzzlecock and false bravado but he’s pretty straight up about his current feelings with jade. basically it really depends on the person dave is talking to.

in this specific argument, floral approaches grimbark jade solely from the position of her being uninhibited which is true in many ways, but grimbark jade is also quite nefarious and not in her right mind. i think that even if jade were unihibited and spoke her mind, she wouldn’t have it in her push the mayor into lava to get dave to fight her. thats the evil. floral does acknowledge this in a separate post though, but it’s not really touched on in her argument im discussing. i also want to reiterate that even though it might seem like im violently ripping this post limb from limb its really just something to bounce my pre-existing thoughts off of. this is all written with civility towards and respect for floral

even roxy says something about this—that the schtick doesnt suit her. like it doesnt feel like something she’d have the natural capacity to really be without some external influence

ROXY: so alt grannydaughter english ROXY: whyre u part dog + evil lookin JADE: DO NOT CALL ME THAT!!! ROXY: what JADE: my surname is harley not english JADE: but you may refer to me as jade, or ma'am if you are feeling especially nervous and deferential JADE: which as it turns out is the way you should be feeling about me, ALWAYS >:B ROXY: LOL!!! JADE: lol WHAT ROXY: jade i am in no way buying that ur normally this pompous and tyrannical ROXY: the shtick rly doesnt suit you its so obvious (p.6291)

so i don’t think everything jade says here should be taken to heart about her real feelings or how she would express them if she was being genuine as her normal self. we know jade can get mad but i think we’re giving her evil possession a little too much credit

that’s why i was personally disappointed in grimbark jade when homestuck was ongoing, is it felt like it didnt really give us anything? it was like empty calories while just waiting for the regular jade to come back which she never did. it is interesting to look at in retrospect to see if there’s anything there but…grimbark jade isn't exactly a reliable narrator. i guess none of them are but like, especially not grimbark jade. if i can’t separate what’s genuinely jade under this mess from what isn’t then what’s the point?

like for example this was left out of floral’s argument when showing this part, but in the comic grimbark jade tells dave that he’s “more messed up inside than davesprite” …. right after dave wouldnt comply with her demands to fight her and doesnt want to fight lord english. that’s…not really telling about anything at all for either of them. jade is evil and if things dont go the way she’s programmed to get them to go she’s gonna flip her lid. this is what i mean about her not being in her right mind

JADE: the fact is youre going to have to rely on those powers if you want to stand any chance against a lord of time JADE: it is safe to expect he can only be challenged by someone with a similar command over the aspect DAVE: why is that safe to expect DAVE: where are all these presumptions coming from DAVE: if you can use swords why dont you take the welsh cueball sword and fight him yourself DAVE: i bet you could fuck him up DAVE: youre probably even more extra strong now that youve succumbed to the bark side DAVE: did you ever think about that JADE: dave i am perfectly aware of the awesome powers granted to me by the bark side JADE: it does not matter JADE: i cant be the one to wield your sword against english JADE: it has to be you JADE: it is the will of the empress, and thats final DAVE: the empress can suck it DAVE: i have no intention of fighting him DAVE: and this isnt even me pulling more lame self aware reluctant hero junk DAVE: i am just straight up not going to do it DAVE: see thats not reluctance its just petulant refusal on my part DAVE: reluctant hero shit is when the guys like aw shucks i dunno if i wanna but deep down we all know he really does DAVE: but i really dont DAVE: why should i DAVE: i dont give a damn about lord english or his nebulous atrocities out in nowherespace DAVE: what kind of villain is someone you never met who hardly did anything evil to you or your friends directly DAVE: or even to anyone in your universe for that matter other than through some vague insidious influence DAVE: who even is this guy and why should i hate him DAVE: am i really supposed to be pissed off at a green muscle monster i never met DAVE: cause i aint pissed off at no muscle monster DAVE: hell wasnt he in some ass backwards way responsible for us existing in the first place? DAVE: or all of humanity for that matter?? DAVE: maybe i should thank him before chopping him up via welshscalibur JADE: jeez you sure have some issues JADE: honestly it has become very tiresome listening to this sort of thing JADE: i thought davesprite had problems JADE: his issues i could kind of understand JADE: i thought you might be different, being the alpha dave and all JADE: but no JADE: you might be even more messed up inside than he was! DAVE: what DAVE: why are you dragging that guy into this (p.6385 / 6386)

part 2

17 and 21 for ask game :O

17: top five oldie jams

it doesnt really define old so, im gonna go for before 1990.

1: Working For The Weekend - Loverboy

2: Children Of The Grave - Black Sabbath

3: Time Of The Season - The Zombies

4: Cherry Bomb - The Runaways

5: Hotel California - Eagles

21: five songs id put in a movie score

1: Behind Blue Eyes - Limp Bizkit: i know this song has been in a million billion trillion movie scores before but god DAMN. there really arent many other songs that can convey the raw emotion these guys put into this amazing cover of the worlds shittiest song by the worlds shittiest band (behind blue eyes by the who). they really put their whole bizkits into it

2: Nobody - Skindred: i have this playlist called "songs i would bash zombies heads in with a bat to" and this in there so yea, pretty self explanatory.

3: Revenga - System Of A Down: imagine being some sort of vigilante group and infiltrating a masquerade ball thrown by the rich guy youre trying to take down, thats like, this songs vibe

4: N 2 Gether Now - Limp Bizkit, Method Man: the beat to this just screams montage of main character hyperfocused on creating something.

5: Exit Music (For A Film) - Radiohead: its in the title

planet... have you been keeping up???

yea but ive also been hyperfocused on like 3 other things at the same time so i had no brain capacity to process anything im just reading along everydah something new happens shjsjsjsks

Packing for college is never complete without my parents making me feel like a complete pos: A vent

Back on here bc I feel like I can't really vent abt this to anyone without being a complete bother lol so what better solution than to vent to the void of this account? My problems are so small compared to the bigger picture of life, why would I burned my friends w this when I can just get a similar relief by dumping into the void!

Packing w adhd is always a pain and I always procrastinate. I've hyperfocused on the hangers that I bought previously that are being used by my family and when I asked if I could have them back I was just made to feel like a baby. And maybe I am a baby for getting stuck up on some hangers but it's just so inconvenient to know I own hangers, in the style I like, and the amount I need, and not be able to take them. My dad kept making me feel like a pos for asking for them, saying he didn't know hangers were that expensive and that my mom bought me some and they serve the same purpose. That's not the point. That's not the point I'm making at all and he proceeds to tell me to stop crying over fucking hangers and that I need to finish packing and pack the car.

Which then I say taken aback that I didn't know I was packing the car bc my work injury is flaring up and making my shoulder swollen like never before to which he goes "oh yea? Well I'm tired from working and my feet are swollen too, that's life". Folding all of my laundry has caused me to be in excruciating pain. Now I'm expected to pack the car with my fridge, my luggage, and all the rest of my heavy ass shit solo and im just so overwhelmed and I feel so unheard and I just can't wait to be back on campus where I dont have to constantly be brushed aside and belittled for small things. Or even at all. I can't wait to go back where I don't have to hold my breath. Where I don't have to beg to be called the right name or pronouns. Where I don't have to beg to be given a basic level of respect.im so fucking tired of this place and although going to grad school in Chicago sounds amazing and financially plausible, I might just fucking kill myself if I have to live under my parents roof for another 2-3 years

Them in an uncomfortable outfit (any ocs)

oooh this one is PERFECT for Marcel :0 (I'm taking it to mean any outfit they find uncomfortable to be in, not just something that's like scratchy fabric and stuff like that)

so! they were forced into uncomfortable outfits for most/all of their childhood, so this works out well. I suppose this could count under formalwear as well, but that's more fun if it's something the character wants to wear I think.

most of these outfits were the same: think a generic black vest over white button-up shirt, black pants and shoes, etc. at this point their hair was silver (natural color, they dyed it *immediately* when they left) and much longer- it was completely straight and went to about halfway down their back. the only strange consistency about these outfits were their eyes. Marcel's eye color varies based on emotion, but you wouldn't know it if all you saw of them was these outfits. every time they were made to wear them (and really, whenever they were around their family), their eyes matched their hair. silver, silver, silver. their color for disconnected, closed off, mentally gone. the outfits differed time by time, but their eyes, for once, stayed the same.

anyway im sure its been done but your dad looks gnc af abt dean and YOURE INSANE w/ jack

finally updated my blog a bit (at 4 am but shh time is irrelevant) so just gonna make a little post about it and say happy pride everyone, black lives matter, and stay funky fresh

hi ive been ghosting (i had no idea its been two montHSHGHGH) mostly just out of special interest/fandom shift stuff and being busy with the baby but i just wanted to say i am alive and duncan is still gay and my main blog is @ bibbleb00 if yall wanna follow that but ill still absolutely come back to this blog at some point

I've been listening to adore u by svt a lot lately and yesterday i came across the "baby u r my angel" meme format

and that's when i finally understood svt birthed a meme on accident

google how do i fistfight my adhd so that i dont go absolutely apeshit the second i can hold my tablet pen again

shit gang, i finished a book for the first time in at least a year

yea i dont have a name for the fic yet - but the au is called the chained majesty au! I had started it once but i accidentally deleted the doc, so im gonna try and start it when im done hyperfocusing on danny phantom jhbjsfhKHFASFS - ART ANON

Oooo sounds fancy! and OOF OUCH PAIN. Accidentally deleting docs is pain. I wish you luck in your re-write my dude! <3

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soooo... I like Frank and I like tattoos and sometimes I'll have little phases of hyperfocusing on things I like and I'm in a huge tattoo phase rn, just being excited as fuck over tattoos, also seeing conversations about Frank's tattoos on your blog and it got me wondering if there's like a masterpost or something anywhere of like all of his tattoos? bc I feel like that's something this fan base would absolutely have, but I've never heard of it existing? do you know if that's out there?

ok so yes theres a couple things

first theres this 'catalogue' but its from 2008 so obviously like 14 years out of date....horrible to think about. but it timelines the early stuff quite well

then there's this. which like. i actually hate. it has a lot of his tattoos but some of it is inaccurate like factually, or doesnt have all the info. and also for SOME FUCKING REASON they edited like circles and arrows onto all of the pictures as if you can't just fucking. see the tattoos. and then bc this is like the best archive of his tattoos, when you google search for pictures of specific tattoos its these jpegs with the stupid fucking red symbols on them instead of the raw images. BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. seriously im regularly angry about this 😩

and then theres @frankierostattoos which i think one of my friends runs but i forgot who lmao sorry...and that has a lot of the recent stuff

soooooo i mean no one has catalogued EVERYTHING as far as i know. i mean i probably could if i wanted to be i know his tattoos in my brain like the back of my hand but thats so much work. but yea. his tattoos are a bit of a hyperfixation for me so i understand you

Question for all ADHD folks I guess: At what age did you start dating or even having vaguely romantic friendships? I’m nearly 18 and I haven’t so much as told someone I like them yet. No first kiss, I’ve never dated anyone, I’ve never been asked out. Is this normal? I’m just wondering if late relational growth is a symptom or could be related?

_______________ oh mood im nearly 18 and i havent kissed anybody

ive dated someone online for a year and im trying atm to ask this cute girl out but like,.,.., progress is slow my lads

idk culd be because were a bit behind our peers developmentally for behaviour so we take a bit more to mature

and because rsd makes the idea of telling someone u like them and getting rejected sound like the worst thing in the world

and we dont get asked out as much because we appear #quirky and #weird and are kind of a mess generally so no one wants to be burdened by our fuck up ness

plus were bad at being in relationships because we’re unorganised and can seem like we ignore our partners for ages because we hyperfocused on something else and forgot everyone elses existence, and are forgetful of time and dates and things

hhhhh we do be HIGHKEY venting in the ask chat today LADS

idk thats my OPINION no facts or evidence here

put yall experiences in the notes or asks if u feel like exposing urself today